I was born in New Zealand in 1942 to a Swiss farmer Frank Vonlanthen and his wife Ruth Anna Ayo, a nurse of Anglo-Indian origin. Ruth was born in 1918 in Allahabad (now Prayagraj) in Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India.
Her mother was Elizabeth Charles (family name Lena) who married mail-train driver Richard Ayo in Allahabad in 1908.
The couple had six children – Richard and Stanley, both of whom died young, then Myrtle, Ivy, Richard and George.
Sadly, in 1917 Richard senior died at the age of 36 as a result of peritonitis (abdominal inflammation). Lena and the children moved into the Ayo family compound in Allahabad, where Ruth was born in 1918.
At some point after Richard’s death, Lena began a relationship with Richard’s brother Duncan. They had two sons, Kenneth and Dudley, who were born in 1925 and 1927 respectively.
I’ve yet to find a marriage certificate for Lena and Duncan. Lena became a matron after serving in a military hospital, while Duncan was headteacher of an Anglican school. Any whiff of scandal could have compromised both their careers.
Duncan and Lena emigrated to New Zealand in 1933, taking Ruth and the younger children with them, although the older siblings stayed on in India for several more years.
My parents’ marriage ended when I was six months old. This meant that I went to live with Lena in 1942 while Ruth continued her nurse’s training.
In 1958, Lena told me that she had adopted Ruth, explaining that her French cousin had had an affair with an Indian judge and died soon after giving birth to her. Thank goodness I didn’t ask my mother about this.
Another smokescreen emerged in the 1960s, when Myrtle (married name Williams) said that Lena told her that Ruth was the daughter of the children’s nanny.
Ivy (married name Sabbage) offered yet another version of events – that Lena’s close friend Mary Lawrence was Ruth’s mother, and after Mary’s death in 1919 Ruth had been placed in an orphanage in Simla (now Shimla).
Myrtle and Ivy were sent to boarding school while Lena was pregnant with Ruth, and she had very little contact with any of her siblings throughout adulthood.
Mum died of cancer in 1963, when I was 21. She grew up believing that Duncan was her father, but had little to do with him in life. I also discovered that when Ruth married she gave Richard Ayo’s name as her father on her marriage certificate. So who were Ruth’s true parents?
Between 1958 and 2018, I researched every avenue and enlisted the help of genealogists. Each of the stories I’d been told led to a dead end.
In 2020, I decided to take an AncestryDNA test. I had strong matches with Lena’s grandson Glenn Ayo and her great grandchildren Paula and Chris Williams.
Ruth’s younger brother Dudley is still alive aged 97, and he agreed to take a test. Dudley and I shared 1,756 cM, which crucially linked me with his father Duncan.
My genealogist cousin Geraldine Charles recommended that I obtain a DNA test from an Ayo unconnected with Lena. This is where Dudley’s second cousin Roland Ayo, of Sydney, Australia, came in; he is the grandson of James Samuel Ayo, the brother of Richard and Duncan. Eureka! Roland’s results matched with Dudley, Glenn and my DNA. This proved definitively that I am descended from the Ayo family.
Relatives descended from Lena’s first husband Richard had much lower DNA matches with me, which suggested that Richard wasn’t Ruth’s father. By this point, I felt sure that Duncan and Lena were Ruth’s biological parents and my grandparents.
Why did Ruth put Richard’s name on her marriage certificate? It’s my belief that Lena gave the required information to Ruth at that point as part of the smokescreen. This must have challenged everything Ruth believed about her past.
Remarkably, an India Office record revealed that Duncan and Lena formally adopted Ruth in 1924. Therefore, she was adopted by her biological parents.
Finally, I could piece together my mother’s complex story. After Richard Ayo died in 1917, Lena and Duncan must have begun their relationship and conceived my mother. The truth would have caused a scandal, so Ruth was fostered as a baby by Mary Lawrence, and placed in the orphanage after she died. For propriety’s sake, Lena and Duncan pretended to family that Ruth was an adoptee.
It’s good to know that there is a science, DNA, that can be relied upon in such circumstances. It’s also a relief to know that I am genetically a member of the family I’ve spent my whole life with.