AN IRISH grandmother is searching for the London-born sister she has never met.
Nuala Lee, born Agnes ‘Nuala’ Allen in Ballysadare, Co. Sligo, only recently discovered she had a sister after asking her grandson to find out information about her father, Thomas Fallon, who she last seen when she was just one month old.
Now Nuala, who is based in Birmingham, is determined to find her sister, who was born in London around 1957 and had the surname Cahill.
Her grandson Matthew O’Sullivan, who is based in Donegal, told The Irish Post that he hopes to find his grandmother’s sister and finally reunite them.
“My grandmother never met her father from the day he walked out and went to London,” he said, “and she was only a month old then.”
Nuala Lee's father Thomas Fallon“My grandmother stayed with me over Christmas, and said she’d like to know what happened to him, so I started doing a little bit of digging.
“I managed to contact a relative of Thomas Fallon, and he told me that he remarried in 1961, as his first wife [Mr O’Sullivan’s great-grandmother] had already died.”
Although Nuala Lee had never seen her father that she could recall, her grandson also found and showed her a photograph of him.
Now he is trying to find his grand-aunt so she can meet his grandmother.
“My grandmother is 84 and she hasn’t been in great health,” Mr O’Sullivan said, “so I’m trying to get it done as quickly as possible and reunite her with her sister.”
After searching through birth, marriage and death records, Mr O’Sullivan believes Thomas Francis Fallon, who was from Collooney in Co. Sligo, had a daughter with a Kathleen Josephine Cahill in London in 1957.
He thinks she was named Martha Cahill and may have been raised by Kathleen’s brother – whose first name he believes is Philip – or another sibling.
Kathleen Josephine Cahill and Philip Cahill were children of Michael Cahill, an army pensioner.
Mr Fallon and Ms Cahill were both working in London hotels through the 1950s and '60s, he as a porter and she as a waitress.
They were married in St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Wandsworth in September 1961.
Mr Fallon died in the late 1960s and Ms Cahill died in 1987 in the borough of Westminster.
Do you have any information that may help Matthew O’Sullivan find his grandmother’s sister? Contact Erica Doyle Higgins on 0208 900 4354, or [email protected].
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