Written by Peter Conquer

"My name is Peter and I was born in Cardigan in February 1950. My mother died in 1952 of polio after being taken to Tanybwlch isolation hospital, Aberystwyth.

My story starts about three years ago when although I knew I was adopted, I did not know what had happened. The BBC had been showing some programmes about adoption which had made me curious. My wife decided to ring the BBC and got the info about where to start. It took two years to find out my family name, address and what my fathers name was. His name was David Charles Horton born in Cardigan, he married his housekeeper (my mother) Eileen Daphne Kemp in 1949. David already had four children from a previous marriage, he employed Eileen as a housekeeper after sadly his first wife Hannah died after a tragic accident.

Eileen had me in 1950 and my brother Andrew in 1951.He was five months and I was eighteen months old when she died. My father could not cope with all the children so it was decided the youngest two, me and Andrew would be adopted. We were taken to Tanybwlch hospital until we were collected by our new families and taken to live in Frimley Surrey.

We lived next door to each other not knowing that we were brothers adopted by neighbours, and were told about our adoption and that we were brothers when I was eleven years old. We had played together and had no idea that we were brothers, Andrew's name was changed to Barry and mine was David, changed to Peter. We looked nothing like each other Andrew was a redhead and I was very dark haired. Sadly he died in 1993 at the age of forty one years old.

After getting my info I decided I would go to Cardigan to find my roots, but I was worried my birth father may be still alive and I had mixed emotions about that. On the internet I found out that he had died in 1961, so March 9th was the date I was off to Cardigan. My wife said to me how can you go all that way and not try and find your brothers and sisters, so she decided to write to all the Hortons who still lived in Cardigan, she looked the names up on the BT web site and wrote eleven letters. She hesitated in posting them but did in the end. At this time I knew nothing about any of this. Three days later she had a call from Ellis Horton one of my brothers, he had received one of the letters. He had got together with my other siblings one brother and two sisters, Gloria,Cyril and Mary, age ranging from 75 yrs to 61 yrs old.

Mary still had the adoption papers and a photo of me as a baby in her draw,they also told me I had two other sisters that were taken by my maternal grandmother at the time of my adoption, these girls were my mother's children.

So I started to look for them. I found them, one is Marjorie who had lived only ten miles from Cardigan all her life and the other is Sally who lives in Kent. We have visited Cardigan three times now and couldnt have wished to meet a more lovlier family, after 52 yrs we all got together and our story and pictures were in the Tivy Side newspaper. I have met about eighty six relatives in Cardigan, after being an only child it is quite wonderful to know I have all these people in my family."

Written by Peter Conquer