A ZIMBABWEAN woman has appealed to newburytoday readers to help trace her family.
Jean Kok believes that she is descended from the mother of a well-known local trader.
Sixty-four-year-old Mrs Kok, of Harare, believes that her grandmother, Florence May Phillippo, was born in Speen and gave birth to her uncle, Walter Horace Simpson, in 1914, before she went to Africa to start a new life and married John Robert Harding.
Records show that Mr Simpson was born in Donnington in 1914 at number six, Hunts Cottages, where he lived until he died in 1974.
Disabled from childhood, he was brought up by his great aunt, Mary Stockwell, and worked at the AWRE, as it was then known, at Aldermaston.
He later started his own second-hand furniture business in Kings Road, Newbury and when it rapidly expanded he bought new premises from Percy Andrews in Northcroft Lane, Newbury.
The issue is especially important to Mrs Kok because she wants to leave trouble-torn Zimbabwe and live in Britain.
However, there is a problem.
She discovered that when her grandmother subsequently married a South African, on the marriage certificate she named herself as a widow, Florence May Simpson.
Various name changes on birth, death and marriage certificates have led the British authorities to doubt that the woman Mrs Kok claims is her grandmother, is the same woman who was born in Newbury.
As a result, the immigration authorities have refused to acknowledge her right to live in this country.
Mrs Kok’s South African cousin, Brian Roberts, contacted newburytoday to ask readers if they remembered any local family members, to help fill in the missing information.
He said: “To present a watertight case, there are a details that need confirming, so I am hoping that some relatives will come forward and help.
“There must be many people in Newbury who remember Walter and even Mary Stockwell.”
Florence is thought to have sailed to Africa to start a new life, having never again contacted Mr Simpson or Mary Stockwell, who died in 1957.
If you would like to help solve the mystery, Mr Roberts can be emailed on bgr@manos.co.za