WHEN Glenys Ellis returned from a trip to Hamburg it signified the end of a long and emotional journey.

This was a mission to find out more about her family and one Glenys has worked tirelessly to investigate and she is now reaping the rewards of all her hard work.

Along with many other people Glenys was keen to trace her family history but her family had a number of mysteries she needed to solve.

Glenys (who was called Holt before she married) lives in Egerton and says her story began with her mother's birth certificate which had remained in a drawer for some time.

Her mother was born on March 31, 1913 and it was at the centenary of her birth that Glenys decided the time was right to research her family tree.

Her mother had been born to an unmarried mother and the father's name was not on the certificate.

At the age of three months she was, unofficially, handed over to a 47-year-old Welsh woman called Alice Roberts who was a widow with two children of her own, called Emma Jane and William Edward. They were both in their twenties.

"I often questioned, in my mind, why Mrs Roberts would raise a child especially when the census showed that she took in lodgers to supplement her low income," says Glenys.

Further census details proved to Glenys that her mother's birth mother married, six months later in October 1913 and went on to have six more children.

"To cut a long story short my research led me to a second cousin in Australia who informed me that Mrs Roberts' children were witnesses at that wedding.

"This came as a great shock but reinforced the fact that William Edward knew my mother's birth mother quite well," she adds.

William Edward Roberts became the main character in Glenys' story. He was born in Ruabon in 1889 to Alice (nee Williams) and Joshua Roberts and the family lived in Cefn Mawr until they moved to Oldham (which would be in Lancashire at that time) to find work.

On November 27, 1914 he enlisted and was appointed as a private in the Cheshire Regiment 21st Btn No 47808.

"It was so interesting to see his handwriting on the army papers. He was later transferred to the 63rd Company Labour Corps No 37618 because of an eye problem," says Glenys.

Her mother's birth certificate is stamped twice on the back, having been sent to a records' office in Woolwich on August 4, 1915 and subsequently to the Army Pay Office in Shrewsbury on December 8, 1916 and another office in Nottingham (Central Labour Corps).

Further research, through Army records, traced a memo dated December 1916 which had been sent to William Edward in connection with deductions from his pay for the upkeep of a child, together with the revelation that he had, in fact, adopted my mother while he was a single man.

"All the facts point to him being the father and, therefore, my maternal grandfather," says Glenys.

William Edward died on December 21, 1917, from pneumonia while a prisoner of war in Camp Gefangenenlager, Minden.

He is buried in the Commonwealth War Grave number V 58 in Ohlsdorf Cemetery, Hamburg where on March 4, 2015 Glenys was, finally, reunited with the grandfather she never knew.