A year ago, I set myself the challenge of writing about an ancestor who died in military conflict, with the aim of publishing a Remembrance Day blog post to mark their life. I’m pleased to report that I have delivered on that challenge… My great uncle Samuel Christie Annal died 78 years ago. Sam was the youngest of the seven children of my great grandparents, Samuel Christie Annal senior and Margaret Ann Clouston Annal (née Miller) but he was also the first of the seven to die. My grandfather, one of Sam’s four older brothers, died of a heart attack in 1953, aged just 45 but the other three ..read more

On 27 November 1826, the brothers, Robert, Walter, John and Alexander Robertson, presented an inventory of the personal estate of their father at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. The brothers were described in the document as: Robert Robertson Herd at Bronsley, Walter Robertson Schoolmaster at Cranshaws, John Robertson Preacher of the Gospel, and Alexander Robertson student of Medicine residing at Cranshaws. National Records of Scotland SC70/1/35 Robert, Walter, John and Alexander were the brothers of my great, great, great grandmother, Elizabeth Robertson and to say that I was surprised to disco ..read more

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I’ve embarked on a virtual journey this year, tracking down the places connected with my ancestors’ lives (I’ve ‘borrowed’ my wife’s as well) and I’ve been tweeting about a different one each day, using the hashtag #365AncestralPlaces. In the process, I’ve learnt a lot about some of the previously less-explored parts of my family tree and I’ve also made some surprising discoveries. I didn’t want to limit myself to the places that they lived and died in so I’ve been including their schools and workplaces, the churches that they were baptised ..read more

Margaret Howland was born on 9 August 1906 at 46 Brunswick Street, Edinburgh, just off Leith Walk but south of the border with the ancient Burgh of Leith. Margaret was my grandma and one of the nicest and kindest people you could hope to meet but she didn’t have the easiest of starts to life. Her birth certificate leaves no room for doubt on one particular matter: she was born to unmarried parents, or, to use the language of the time, she was illegitimate. There’s a blank space on the certificate where her father’s name should be. Birth certificate of Margaret Howland, Edinburgh, 1906. Nationa ..read more

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I spent a day in London last week, pounding the streets in search of ancestors. Over the course of a long day, I visited four ‘live’ archives: the Bank of England Archive, Guildhall Library, the London Metropolitan Archives and the National Archives. But I also took time out to visit the sites of some former libraries/archives/reading rooms, took photos of them and then set people the challenge of identifying them. Eight former London libraries/archives/reading rooms. How many can you name? As I was sorting out the answers to the quiz, and m ..read more

This the last of six blogposts written and published on six successive days, in which I take a look at a particular ancestral gravestone that my wife and I visited on our recent road trip. You can read the other five here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. Today we’re in the Cheshire village of Astbury, now on the outskirts of Congleton but historically the heart of the ancient parish of Astbury. We had no idea whether or not we would find any family stones there but I think it’s fair to say that we hit the jackpot with this one… If you were to draw a triangle connecting the parishes ..read more

This is the fifth of six blog posts, written and published over six consecutive days, looking at some of the family graves that my wife and I visited as part of a recent road trip to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. You can read the earlier instalments here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. The other five stones are all in churchyards (actually one of them was inside the church) but today’s stone is to be found in a large municipal cemetery. In 1866, the Macclesfield Municipal Borough set aside 68 acres of land to the north and west of the town to establish a public cemetery. Like ma ..read more

The third of my six blogs posted in consecutive days, focussing on particular family gravestones, is a bit of a cheat. The other five are stones that my wife and I saw for the first time on our recent 40th Anniversary road trip: today’s is one that we’d intended to go and see but for one reason or another, we had to cancel our plans. So, the images and the story behind this stone are the result of a visit I made to Key Hill Cemetery in Birmingham in June 2017. I’ll get back there one day… My 2x great grandfather, Thomas Port, died in Chaddesley Corbett, the Worcestershire village where he spe ..read more

This is the second of six blogs, written and published in six consecutive days, each one focussing on a particular family gravestone which my wife and I visited on our recent 40th Wedding Anniversary road trip. You can read Part 1 here. Today, we’re in the quintessentially English picture book village of Lacock, in Wiltshire… While my Port ancestors were busy in Oxfordshire, working as innkeepers and yeomen farmers, another branch of my family, the Trumans, were doing similar things in Wiltshire. Most of my direct Truman ancestors seem to have been butchers, but there were also bakers, and qu ..read more

To mark our 40th Wedding Anniversary, my wife and I arranged a six-day road trip, stopping off at various places connected with our families. Liz, my wife, is an enthusiastic family historian herself so she was very much a partner in planning the week on the road. We were particularly keen to visit the places that our ancestors had lived and worked in, to walk for a moment in their footsteps and to try, as far as this sort of thing is actually possible, to picture what life must have been like for them. But we were also keen to find their last resting places and with that in mind we visited no ..read more