Who do you think you are?

[BBMmk2]

This fascinating series has once again returned to our screens. the first programme featured June Brown. Quite an interesting person, despite her involvement in 'Eastenders'!

Who on here has done research into their family history and what came of it afterwards?

My wife did the research and she found she has American cousins in Masschetusess! And came from hampshire originally.

My family well, as far as my father's father side goes, well different kettle of fish.

It turns out I am descended fropm the Plantagents! Precisely John of Gaunt! My wife found that there was this descendant around 1539 and they were from the line of John of Gaunt!

Be interested to hear of anyone else's research?

[Anna]

That's really interesting BBM as I have also researched my family. However, getting information prior to 1841 means ploughing through lots and lots of Parish Records, very few of which are readily online. How did your wife get back to 1539 and beyond? It's vitally important to see the original documents of course, as you know, which is incredibly time consuming and expensive in terms of travel if you don't live near the relevent PRO.

[french frank]

Not me, but one of the most bizarre links to the past must be of the school teacher from Cheddar who DNA tests showed to be descended from Cheddar Man - the 12,000-year-old skeleton found in one of the Cheddar Caves. Not necessarily, 'descended', though, come to think of it. Could have been descended from his brother ... Same family, though.

[Serial_Apologist]

My mother once told me that a long-gone ancestor, a Sir Richard Brackenbury, was responsible for guarding the princes in the Tower. Didn't make a very good job of it!

[eighthobstruction]

Live in the NOW....

[Anna]

Cheesy, Cheesy!! I believe those DNA tests are just making money for someone in America via Ancestry site, and, although I can go back to 1699 on one side (would you believe three, yes, three Church Wardens!) they landed up in the workhouse and then down the mines. It's all very interesting but it really doesn't change the person you are now does it? Unless the Cheddar Man descendent walks on his knuckles?

[Richard Tarleton]

Who on here has done research into their family history and what came of it afterwards?

My wife did the research and she found she has American cousins in Masschetusess! And came from hampshire originally.

Be interested to hear of anyone else's research?

Snap! A genealogist friend has helped us with our research, with help from Ancestry.co.uk and Ancestry.com. My 9x great grandfather was born in Dorset but sailed on the Blessing to Massachusetts in 1635, aged 18. Court records show he was in trouble in the new colony a couple of times - he was brought before the General Court in 1637 for an unspecified offence, and later before the court at Plymouth, Mass., for lending a gun to an Indian. He went on to found a dynasty of many generations of respectable coal and wood merchants. American ancestors included heroes of the War of Independence and the War of 1812 - and two Daughters of the American Revolution.

It was therefore great fun to discover that my 4x great grandfather on my father's father's mother's side, a Highland Scot of impeccable Jacobite credentials, served in the Peninsula War under Wellington but went on to become a soldier of fortune, serving in the Mexican army in the 1820's and 30's (as a number of Brits did) becoming a Brigadier. I am hoping to discover he was present at the Alamo.

Scottish ancestry has turned out to be the most difficult as you really need to know which parish someone was born in.

Otherwise strands from here there and everywhere - one great great great grandfather was a wine merchant in New Bond Street and his shop was next door to the house where Amy Lyon, the future Emma Hamilton, was a parlourmaid - he used to see her scrubbing the step. He was also grandfather to a future First Sea Lord, one time gunnery officer on HMS Warrior...(but that's enough clues ) Another great great grandfather was a shoe and saddle maker in Lancashire....

[scottycelt]

A close member of my family recently enthusiastically delved back into the family history and discovered one or two things of which, on balance, I probably would have been perfectly happy to have remained in some ignorance ...

I did warn her beforehand about that distinct possibility ...

[EdgeleyRob]

I know who I am (I think!)

[mangerton]

I've been researching my family tree for c 20 years and I know exactly what scottycelt means. I've got back to around 1800 on all ancestors, and the earliest date I feel confident about is 1680.

[Segilla]

When I married in 1963, my wife brought her dog with her and I was extremely irritated to see its pedigree. I knew more about that dog's origins than I did about my own. So the hunt began.

It was very difficut in those days with little help available hence the need to write many letters, and to travel to see records - and sometimes to find nothing. It could take months to unearth simple facts which can now be found in seconds, but that was what I did and I have a reference, and in many cases have handled the documents for everything claimed to be factual.

Some lines are full of social nobodies, very important to me of course, but the middle classes tend to be best as they have left a trail of paper.

My MRCS gt grandfather emigrated to the New World around 1860 but ended his life aged 39, a victim of typhoid as a surgeon to a Troop of Colored Soldiers in N. Carolina in the Civil War. His widow returned to London with their children.
A great find, but it was his wife's line which has given intense interest to a lifelong pursuit.

She was descended from a placeman (city councillor) of Boston, Mass. His Loyalty was equivocal at the time of the American Revolution but his wife, daughter and six sons, mostly army officers had to quit the country of their birth and arrived in London.
The youngest, my 3 x gt grandfather quickly got hold of a £5000 heiress, an illegitimate daughter of the Lord of the Manor of Hackney and eloped with her, marrying, as Chancery records reveal, at Gretna Green.

Despite marrying three times in all to satisfy the trustees of the fortune he was outwitted when they agreed he could have it, but told the Cout that it had been lent out on mortgage. And he never got his hands on it.
I was delighted that he was a rascal; people who behaved themselves are not very interesting. Before he left America he had been court martialled. Twice imprisoned in the Fleet for debt it was only recently that I found through ancestry.** that he fathered an illegitimate child.

One of his brothers, a Royal Marine Lt pretended death but was found consorting in France with the future 2nd U.S. President John Adams who appointed him to be secretary to John Paul Jones. Although lauded by Americans as the founder of their Navy, Jones was a liar and a traitor. Another brother, when Barrack Master at Hounslow MDX fled the country due to money irregularities.

And they all had progeny ... .

I have read fascinating resumés of discoveries made by other family historians, many of which would make better viewing than some of the Who do you think you are? programmes - Kim Catterrall moaning about her errant grandfather and so on.

It encourages an interest in history to see how your folk fitted against the background and to find little-known facts such as how successful Jones had been at fighting shipping around the coast of Britain.
And that the American Revolution was not the jolly (one-sided) romp as portrayed by Hollywod. The records are full of accounts of people who agonised over the choice between conscience, belief and business and who risked their whole way of life for a cause which may not have succeeded. And of the cruelty meted out to their fellow-countrymen in the course of the campaign for Independence.

Should this encourage anyone to research their family, one piece of advce. Seek out now your relatatives and get them to tell you all they can recall. Tomorrow maybe too late


** ancestry. Far too much rush to publish 'any old thing will do' transcriptions. And the 19C census transcriptions published by the then Public Record Office are in part, a disgrace.

[Richard Tarleton]

I have read fascinating resumés of discoveries made by other family historians, many of which would make better viewing than some of the Who do you think you are? programmes - Kim Catterrall moaning about her errant grandfather and so on.

Great story and good advice Segilla. I agree with you re the TV programmes - I've stopped watching them - very litle material thinly spread in most cases. Did anyone see that episode of the excellent "Lead Balloon" with Jack Dee where Rick is lined up for Who Do You Think You Are but they drop him because his family are too boring?

One also has to be a bit careful with skeletons in cupboards. Living family members took it quite well that one prominent set of great grandparents weren't actually married when their first two children were born, but at least one of those children would have been mortified to know this were she still living. (You can hide things from your relatives, but not from the records). As for the cousin (several generations ago) who was packed off to Kenya because no-one could think what to do with him - his antics provoked strong feelings among surviving family members when it was all pieced together.....

[Lateralthinking1]

By common consent, I don't look at all British. Never have done. Nor did most of my Mum's side of the family. A lot of people have been surprised when I have opened my mouth. And I have experienced discrimination.

I was though born in Greater London. So were both my parents. So were my four grandparents. A very small percentage of people in Greater London can say that now. I have tried to trace it all back but with little success. There is a very good chance that my eight great grandparents were all born in what is now Greater London too.

June Brown lives a mile from here. She has a very nice place.

[Ferretfancy]

I was never particularly interested in family history until my mother's oldest sister died aged 92, and I found a small bundle of ancient letters in a cupboard at her house. Most of these date from the mid nineteenth century, with references to the Great Exhibition, complicated family links, and the fact that my great grandfather's first wife died of cholera in London in 1848. In fact his house is still there near Waterloo East station in a perfectly preserved street where the tiny workman's houses cost an arm and a leg today.
I transcribed the letters and gave them to my niece, who is a historian. She has been able to trace my mother's family back to the 1580's in the Lancashire weaving industry, a time when people worked on hand looms in their cottages while the Wars of the Roses went on outside their doors.

So, here I am at the age of 76, finding out about a granddad who died in 1900, long before I was born, and connections back to the time of Richard III ! I asked my niece whether we were big shots at the time -- " No', was the reply " Ale house keepers "

[BBMmk2]

My wife went on ancestry and managed to get onto Church Records. Some quite hard to read ofcourse, but managed to get where we needed to! Then my wife struck what well 'gold', so to speak, and found out about my roots! Gulp!