On finding the Statuary Declaration made by my father changing his name, I spoke with my mother one day, telling her that I had come across it. Her initial reaction was “you just can’t help yourself!” She then went on to say that I was not to speak with my father about it, or tell my brother & sister. She said that Dad was very much ashamed of being born illegitimate and that he had run away from home at an early age because his stepfather had beaten him.
In 1984 I decided to write to my Dad’s sister Mary, and try and get information from her on my grandparents. In all honesty at this stage I was only thinking of my dad’s mother, Mary May Brice, as at least I knew her name.
Aunty Mary told me that her mother had died in 1937 from cancer and a nervous breakdown after finding out that the cancer was incurable. She also said that her mother had married Theodore Wilhelm Vetter, who she had met in Greenock (in the Barossa Valley) in about 1914.
In the same letter she also said “Don’t worry too much about your ancestors, I don’t, build up a good life for yourself, wife and young ones, that really is all that counts. I envy your youth, so you be grateful too & make the future good for you & yours, compared with my youth you are very lucky.”
I now went in search of more certificates and found both my paternal grandparents death certificates, though my grandmother’s was registered under Netter and Theodore’s under Vetters.
Life was changing for me now, and the research into the family started to drop off. I separated from my wife & moved back to Sydney in 1991, and work took me travelling around Australia. For the year 1995 I was based in Adelaide but I never tried to look up anything about my father’s family.
It was during this year that my father started to get seriously ill, and he did start to talk about his youth. He mentioned the street where he lived at Brighton in Adelaide, in the early 1920s, that they had money, and a big German car, the only one of it’s kind in Adelaide. I asked Dad why he had changed his name, and he told me that his step-father had beaten him, and he had run away. They had sent the police after him, who had also beaten him and put him in a boy’s home. He decided to run away again, but change his name so they could not find him. I asked how he decided on the name, and he said he had picked it out of a newspaper.
One weekend while working in Adelaide I visited Brighton. I found the house where Dad lived and I wanted to take a photo of it to show my father. I knocked on the door and asked the owner if they would mind me taking a photo from the front yard so I could show my dad. They were very kind and invited me in to the house to show me the rooms. They also showed me the original certificate of title, with my grandmother’s name on it. They promised to photo-copy the certificate and post it on to me.
When I got the photo of the house in Brighton printed, Dad was so excited. He got out of bed (the first time in weeks) and rang his sister to tell her I had been in the home. This was early December 1995, and Dad passed away on the 18th of that month.
Once again my research stopped.
It was not till October 2009 when a friend who was tracing his family history told me that there was a new website that allowed you to search Australian newspapers. I decided to have a look and found that they had the Adelaide Advertiser online. I quickly typed in Theodore Vetter and up came a vast number of entries for him, but one jumped out at me.
September 5, 1919 – MORE DIVORCE CASES – A Wife’s Petition.
Here was an article outlining the divorce proceedings of Theodore Vetter and his first wife. The article also mentioned that he had committed adultery with a Mary May Brice (my grandmother) but more importantly for me was a statement by Theodore that he “was the father of two children by Miss Brice”.
After 32 years of researching, 25 years from 1st seeing his name, here was finally proof that Theodore Wilhelm Vetter was my grandfather!
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