Athlone man (70) believes he has found his brother

For Pat McManus, this is shaping up to be a landmark year in more ways than one.

The Cornamagh, Athlone, resident turned 70 in April. Since then - five decades after finding out he was adopted - Pat has made direct contact for the first time with a man in Wales who he believes is his brother.

"It's only three weeks ago that I got to speak to him on the phone for the first time, so it's about building a relationship," Pat told the Westmeath Independent.

"I'm 50 years doing this (family) search, but he didn't know that I existed until a few weeks ago.

"At the very least he's my first cousin, but he's convinced that he's my brother and I'm convinced that he's my brother as well. The only thing that's missing is the bit of science (to confirm it), because everything else fits into place."

The man Pat has been in contact with is Peter Williams in Holyhead, and an ancestry DNA kit will be used to confirm their relationship, though it will be a number of weeks yet before the results are known.

Pat, who's well-known locally for his involvement in boating and the waterways, has previously spoken publicly about being adopted. In 2015, he was featured on a TV3 television series called Adoptive Stories.

He grew up in Monkstown, Dublin, but throughout his childhood he was unaware that he had been adopted illegally.

"There was no (legal) adoption in Ireland in 1950, it wasn't introduced until 1952, but there was a system whereby babies changed hands for a sum of money. That was generally done under the auspices of a priest, the Catholic Church, and a solicitor. So that's how I was adopted," he explained.

"What my adoptive parents did was illegal - they took me and went into the births and deaths register's office and registered me as their child. It was totally illegal to do that. As I grew up, this was all kept hidden from me."

Pat's adoptive parents, Patrick and Mary McManus, are both now deceased. He said his adoptive father was a "lovely" man but he described his adoptive mother as a "very cruel" and "difficult" person.

In 1971, when he was 21, Pat was told that he had been adopted and he began his search for his birth parents.

A long-form copy of his birth certificate led him to an address in Dalkey, County Dublin, and in 1987 he enlisted the services of a private detective agency in order to track down his birth mother.

"They went to the house and 'doorstepped' my mother. She admitted she was my mother, but wouldn't give them any information other than that," he said. "She refused to meet me or discuss anything with me."

He also discovered that he had a sister, who he eventually met in 1995. "I now had a sister I didn't know about, but I did actually know her, which is amazing. We grew up quite close to each other and I had actually gone out with my sister when I was sixteen.

"That could have led to very serious complications, but luckily it was very quickly stopped by my adoptive parents. They knew who she was, they knew she was my sister, but I was kept completely in the dark.

"Here in Ireland, I was told that adopted children had no rights at all, and to me that seems very true because everywhere I went, everywhere I enquired, I hit brick wall after brick wall."

The process which led to the discovery of the man who may be his brother in Wales developed in recent years after Pat took an 'Ancestry DNA' test. This matched him with a lady in London, who proved to be his first cousin.

Through the cousin in London, Pat was able to trace his grandfather, Owen Williams, who is buried in Holyhead. On a visit to see his grandfather's grave last year, he got talking to a woman at the cemetery who knew the Williams family and offered to try to help him trace his relatives.

Pat's grandfather had six sons and it was discovered that two of the sons had worked on ships that travelled between Holyhead and Dún Laoghaire.

"(My father) was most likely going to be one of those two brothers, because my mother would not have travelled to Holyhead or the UK, she would have had no reason to do so," said Pat.

One of the brothers, Owen Williams, spent most of the time on the ships and had a son, Peter, who was still alive and still living in Holyhead.

"This lady who I met in the cemetery went to meet Peter, and when she met him she thought it was me! We were so alike, in her eyes. She had a chat with him, and he knew nothing about this but she put me in touch with him," said Pat.

"I couldn't just go to someone's door and say, hey, I'm your brother, so for me to establish contact with him I had to use an intermediary service, which was very expensive, in order for them to make the contact with him.

"They write to, and telephone, the individual, and initially they weren't getting much response but then they got a response from this man's daughter," he said.

"But then when I eventually made contact with Peter, there was no hesitation whatsoever. We were chatting, as if we were lifelong friends, almost immediately."

Pat, a father of four, has been living in Athlone for the last 40 years. He resided in Beechpark before moving to his current home in Cornamagh.

He said the hardest part of his quest to find his relatives was the uncertainty of not knowing his family history.

"Being adopted and not knowing your history and where you come from - that's difficult to deal with," he said.

"All the children I grew up and went to school with, and went to college with, they all knew who their parents were and who their grandparents were. They had history, and I had none. And that's a difficult thing."

Once it is safe to travel again, Pat is hopeful that he will get to make a trip to Holyhead to meet Peter in person. As he awaits formal confirmation that they are brothers, he said he was now satisfied he had established his family roots.

"To find out for a fact (that he's my brother), and for the science to confirm it, would be nice, but at this stage I know where I came from. I know who my grandparents were, I've been to visit my grandparents' home. I know who my family are," he said.