You may well have seen celebrities on TV tracing their ancestors and discovering some fascinating and sometimes remarkable stories (with a great deal of help behind the scenes from a team of genealogists!)
But you don’t have to be a celeb to find you have fascinating people in your ancestry. After all every one of us is descended from people who lived during the historical times we are familiar with as well as the less familiar events of the past. You may already know of a family member who fought in the trenches in the First World War or perhaps your grandmother was a suffragette but there could be much more waiting to be discovered. Where did your ancestors come from? What did they do? Whether they were rich or poor they are all part of your history.
I began researching my own family history in the late 1990s and was quickly hooked. Since then many historic records have become available to search on the Internet and this is growing all the time but there is also much, much more to be found in archives, libraries and other sources too.
My favourite documents are wills as they often contain details you would never find anywhere else. One of my family wills mentioned an illegitimate child and was the clue that started the search to find out what had happened to this child that was given away in 1893. Other research has uncovered Jeremiah’s story. At the age of 20, in 1837, he stole a watch and was sentenced to 10 years transportation to Australia. Newspaper reports, his jail record in Gloucester, hulk (prison ships) records and convict records from the Tasmanian archives provide a trail of evidence, building a picture of Jeremiah and his struggle to survive in the notorious penal colony of Port Arthur. Two of my ancestors ended their days in the workhouse but no doubt many more of them lived in fear of it. It wasn’t all grim though, one ancestor was the son of a baker but worked his way up to eventually become a very wealthy Victorian factory owner. Another, who began his domestic service as a footman, became a butler to an Earl and lived in a cottage in the grounds of their stately home. He even appears as a visitor’s servant on the 1871 census for Belvoir Castle.
I enjoy researching other people’s ancestry as much as my own. This can be anything from helping to find an elusive ancestor who appears to be missing from the census to a full family history. I also teach a range of family history courses in Nottinghamshire and Lincoln.
Every family has a story to tell and there’s never been a better time to start discovering yours!
But you don’t have to be a celeb to find you have fascinating people in your ancestry. After all every one of us is descended from people who lived during the historical times we are familiar with as well as the less familiar events of the past. You may already know of a family member who fought in the trenches in the First World War or perhaps your grandmother was a suffragette but there could be much more waiting to be discovered. Where did your ancestors come from? What did they do? Whether they were rich or poor they are all part of your history.
I began researching my own family history in the late 1990s and was quickly hooked. Since then many historic records have become available to search on the Internet and this is growing all the time but there is also much, much more to be found in archives, libraries and other sources too.
My favourite documents are wills as they often contain details you would never find anywhere else. One of my family wills mentioned an illegitimate child and was the clue that started the search to find out what had happened to this child that was given away in 1893. Other research has uncovered Jeremiah’s story. At the age of 20, in 1837, he stole a watch and was sentenced to 10 years transportation to Australia. Newspaper reports, his jail record in Gloucester, hulk (prison ships) records and convict records from the Tasmanian archives provide a trail of evidence, building a picture of Jeremiah and his struggle to survive in the notorious penal colony of Port Arthur. Two of my ancestors ended their days in the workhouse but no doubt many more of them lived in fear of it. It wasn’t all grim though, one ancestor was the son of a baker but worked his way up to eventually become a very wealthy Victorian factory owner. Another, who began his domestic service as a footman, became a butler to an Earl and lived in a cottage in the grounds of their stately home. He even appears as a visitor’s servant on the 1871 census for Belvoir Castle.
I enjoy researching other people’s ancestry as much as my own. This can be anything from helping to find an elusive ancestor who appears to be missing from the census to a full family history. I also teach a range of family history courses in Nottinghamshire and Lincoln.
Every family has a story to tell and there’s never been a better time to start discovering yours!
