Women who searched for dad online found they were sisters
TWO women who have spent their adult lives searching for their father were stunned to discover they were sisters.
Lisa Horner, 29, and Rebecca Parton, 21, had posted numerous appeals for information on missing person websites and social media in their separate attempts to track down their father, David Martindale.
They were united when Miss Horner received a reply to her Facebook appeal from a Sue Parton, who said the description of ‘David’ sounded like the father her granddaughter was trying to trace.
The siblings began talking over social media and realised they shared the same father and were in fact step-sisters. A DNA test later proved the relationship. Miss Horner, a mother-of-four from Nottingham, said: ‘It’s a miracle. I’m made up – I can’t believe I found my sister on Facebook. I had almost given up hope on the missing persons website but when Sue got in touch I could not believe it.’
She said she had not seen her father, who would now be 49, since she was ten, and had been looking for him since she turned 18.
Miss Parton never knew her father. She began searching for him after her mother, Andrea, died at the age of just 37 from cancer. After months spent conversing online – with Miss Horner
‘To find I have a sister is amazing’
heavily pregnant with her fourth child – the step-sisters met for the first time two weeks ago, when Miss Horner travelled to Miss Parton’s home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
Miss Parton, a shop assistant, said: ‘I was very nervous [but] we had a lovely day. We went for a walk around Doncaster and had something to eat and just chatted.’ She said the sisters now talk ‘all the time’ and hope to meet up again in Nottingham later this month for her newly-discovered nephew’s first birthday.
Miss Parton added: ‘I’ll hopefully see them all at Christmas too. I always thought I was an only child so to find I have a sister is absolutely amazing.’
The pair are still searching for their father and have been in contact with his family – but nobody knows his whereabouts. Mr Martindale, a handyman, was with Miss Horner’s mother, Sharon Lincoln, 47, for just over a year before their daughter’s birth in 1987.
The couple broke up the following year, and Miss Horner only saw her father once more, when she was ten. She said: ‘My gran used to say that he’d pop out for a pint of milk and not come back for two weeks. He’s missing out on his grandchildren growing up and this whole new family.’