Who do you think you are?

[David Underdown]

I've not done that much on my own family history, though I've helped out my dad's cousin a bit who is digging into it. My main research in this sort of area has been in researching the names on a few First World War memorials to add some more context to those whose names "Liveth for evermore", including finding a few omitted from the official Commonwealth War Graves Commission list and finding sufficient evidence to get them included. These two areas overlapped slightly in a great-great-uncle of whom I had no knowledge until about a year ago whose service I've now researched in some depth. He joined up underage and died of wounds at a casualty clearing station during the Battle of the Somme

We do know that my wife is the 15-times great niece of Sir Francis Drake!

[Ferretfancy]

David Underdown

Searching dates on memorials can lead into awkward regions. I once travelled to Chatham with a friend of mine to find his father's name on the Naval Memorial there. My friend did not remember his father, who died during WWII at Anzio, but after discovering the date, he realised that his sister could not possibly have been her father's daughter, a secret only guessed after nearly sixty years, and one he never divulged to her.
Still, discoveries can be fun as well. I've now found the pub in which my grandfather did his euphonium practice in the 1890's, it still has its sign on the wall, but is now offices, and I've successfully identified him in a band photograph from 1870 in which a ten year old boy he's nearly dwarfed by the instrument. I never knew him, he died in 1900 leaving a widow and six daughters.
I can't match Sir Francis Drake, but one of my ancestors lost an arm at Corunna during the Napoleonic Wars. Another British disaster!

[Serial_Apologist]

If I was to name some of the people allegedly related to my family by blood or marriage, people would say I was making it up, so I intend keeping schtum on this subject. Given my complete physical unlikeness to my mother or my father, I often wonder, but the little kinship I feel for either half of my family, who in any case rarely keep in touch notwithstanding periodic efforts on my part, dissuades me from having much interest in this subject. We have to make our own roots, at the end of the day, and mine are in the west London of my 1940s/50s childhood.

S-A

[David Underdown]

David Underdown

Searching dates on memorials can lead into awkward regions

Not just dates, on looking a little harder at the circumstances of the deaths of a couple of the men I've researched that the cause lay more in their activities in the bedroom, rather than those on the battlefield... There were some interesting medical euphemisms for Syphilis in the WWI era! Mind you, in those pre-antibiotic days, about 10% of the population had it, including Winston Churchill's father apparently

[Stillhomewardbound]

It's curious the connections that come up. My ex-wife was distantly related to one of the Endurance crew (from Dover), meanwhile Ernest Shackleton's immediate surviving relatives are neighbours of my father's family in Ireland.

Makes you 'fink, dunnit?!

[Stillhomewardbound]

Unlikely connections: The Observer produced a marvellous April 1st spoof of the Sunday Times magazine and their feature 'Relative Values' in which two members of a family talk about each other. This paired Gasgcoines Bamber & Paul as rela life father and son with hilarious consequences.

[Nick Armstrong]

It's curious the connections that come up. My ex-wife was distantly related to one of the Endurance crew (from Dover), meanwhile Ernest Shackleton's immediate surviving relatives are neighbours of my father's family in Ireland.

Makes you 'fink, dunnit?!

Indeed. An energetic aunt has traced my maternal side back through a few centuries (largely in Lancashire and Yorkshire) including the stage manager of the Regent Theatre, Salford, and (allegedly) Sir Robert Peel's butler. But the question marks are more intriguing - my dad found belatedly that he was adopted, in Liverpool in the 1930s, with an original name from mainland Europe. Some initial correspondence led nowhere. Material there for the "Who Do You Think You Are?" team... or maybe a Stephen Poliakoff drama. One day perhaps we will find out more. I confess to some curiosity as to half my genetic make-up...

[Stillhomewardbound]

An even spookier one and I can't divulge too many details, but let's say an in-law who was given up for adoption ... turns out on tracing the birth parents, one half of whom was the brother of one of my one of my parent's earliest adult friends; and if you're still following ... this is a connection across two countries. Now what are the chances of that.