Many years ago I started looking into my family tree. This was hard when I was too young to drive and the main way of getting information involved travelling to a likely location and poring through old records in libraries and churches.

Thanks to the wonders of digitised records, the internet, and an Ancestry account, it got a lot easier!

Some observations thus far:

• I applaud my great-great-grandmother’s desire for consistency, but forcing the whole family to change the spelling of their last name because some official messed up writing a birth certificate is a bit much!
• Middle names are wonderful for helping identify people
• Calling one daughter “Eliza” and another “Elizabeth” is an utter pain (yes really, they were both baptised at the same time)
• Nobody can spell Phoebe
• Censuses are brilliant, let’s have more
• Census-takers should take handwriting lessons, or at least use block capitals
• Please be more imaginative when naming your children, but not so imaginative that people keep writing it down incorrectly

Think we might be related? Get in touch!