Hello! I'm very new to this site so please bear with me!

My great-grandfather was given up for adoption when he was a baby and I have been trying to track down his biological family for some time now. My family have both the original adoption agreement as well as letters from his birth mother to his adoptive parents. Although these documents have provided me with the appropriate names, they haven't gotten me any further in finding any other biological relatives.

In a complete stroke of luck I stumbled upon photos of my great-grandfather's biological mother on an antiques website based in England who were attempting to sell the photos (she had been an actress). These were the first photos my family had ever seen of her and the resemblance to my great-grandfather was truly shocking, especially to my great-aunt, his last surviving child. I got in contact with the owner of the site who said he'd had her entire family tree in his possession but had recently sold all of it, bar the photos, to a relative. He also said our family were descendent of Huguenots. I asked if he would put me in touch with the relative but I never heard back from him.

I have contacted a number of theatres in London, have checked the National Archives as well as the Essex Archives and used Ancestry.com along with a number of other geneology sites and have found the following information regarding my biological great-great-grandmother:

Name: Marian Gertrude Edith Hyde
Birth: 07 May 1873, Victoria Park, London
Residence: Chigwell, Essex
Parents: William and Mary Ann Hyde (nee Saint)
Siblings: William, Ethel, Madeleine
Birth of son: Cyril, Paris, France, 1903
Marriage to Wilberforce Blundell Spencer-Richards, 1916, England
Death: March 1962, Rochford, Essex

What my family does know from the letters we have is that Marian's stage name was Mavis Hope which was a nod to her family home in Essex, Maviswood House (now a boarding house which I have contacted and had no luck). She gave birth to my great-grandfather in Paris (we assume because France was the only place an unmarried woman could give birth legally). She named my great-grandfather Cyril Hope after her stage name and gave him up for adoption when he was a toddler. He grew up in Potton, Bedfordshire, later moved to London, and then on to Canada where he remained until his death in 1988.

I've found marriage certificates, birth records, census', voting records, etc. for Marian and many of her siblings and her parents but what I can't seem to do is track the family line to present day or go further into the past, any information I find becomes too convoluted or hits a dead-end. I also don't have enough information to trace any connection to Huguenots in the UK.

Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated!

- Madeleine