Meet your ancestors here!
I assume you are a member of the family here by invitation or having googled a name, but if you have just stumbled across it you’re welcome to share our memories!
I know I’m not the only person researching our history – my cousin Stephen and my grandson Ben have both had a go.
I was delighted to find links with the Berry family in Australia through Mel Blake online and Mick Berry in real life! The story of their ancestor Benjamin is here …
I’ve also made contact with spencerjohn468 and Stephen Ward on the Ancestry.co.uk website. I’m indebted to John for the story of my great-grandfather John Leachman and his line and to Stephen for the Naylors of Luddington.
I made a decision to end (or begin – whichever way you look at it) with my parents. My daughters and grandchildren have their own stories to tell and their own family trees from fathers and grandparents. I have a spreadsheet where I keep all the data I find, so please don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to know more than appears on this website. Just leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.
The “Browse” menu gives you the chance to find posts of general interest as well as looking through the stories of our ancestors. They are grouped in families, in generations and in the places they lived.
Locations are mostly English counties, with the exception of Bradford, Chesterfield and Sheffield, important places in our history which you can find by name as well as by their county.
Many of our family lived on the Norfolk/Suffolk border so Suffolk is included in “Norfolk”. Irish ancestors came from Cork and Tipperary, but I have noted only “Ireland”.
Don’t forget that some people will have lived in more than one location – key pioneers who moved from their birthplace to follow the journey which has ended, with me, in Bradford.
For each person there are dates, relationships and some of the stories we know about. If you are looking for someone or a surname in particular, you can use the Search function to find them. Put a name in quotation marks to find a particular person: e.g. “Ruth Johnson”
My mother was a great photographer and collector of photographs so in the more recent generations there are pictures as well as words. I have many more than I can publish here, so please get in touch (by leaving a comment) if you would like digital copies.
This is very definitely a work in progress and I would welcome any help you can give. If you know something I don’t know, or if you find any broken links or technical difficulties, please use the comments box to make contact.