In 1936, a pregnant single woman in England made the difficult decision to give up one of her newborns, separating fraternal twins.
It would be 78 years before the girls were reunited.
The two women, now living on different continents, found each other when the daughter of one made a surprising discovery during some genealogical research. Her mother, Ann Hunt, had a twin sister she never knew about.
The daughter, Samantha Stacey, wrote a letter to a woman in Oregon, asking if she was born in Aldershot, England. Elizabeth Hamel called England and said she was. In moments, she was speaking to her very long-lost sister.
After a year of calling on Skype and getting to know each other, the two finally met on May 1 in California, a long way from Aldershot, where they were born to a mother who worked as a live-in servant.
Alice Lamb was a cook and the girls' father -- a man named Peters who never met the twins -- was in the British Army, the BBC reported. Hamel said she was born with a curvature of the spine, the reason Lamb kept that daughter. She couldn't afford to keep both of them.
Hamel, who lived with an aunt for the first years of her life, said she had been told as a child that she had a sister. But she knew it would be difficult to find her, especially since her twin likely changed her name when she got married. And she had no idea if her sister had moved from Aldershot, as she had done.
When they saw each other for the first time, Hunt was overwhelmed.
"I couldn't speak. I was so happy," she said Monday. "It's like you're dreaming. Even now I have to pinch myself." For the rest click here
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