Tall Tales from the Trees

I wrote about my cousin Austin Cooper once before. He was Canadian, but served with the Black Watch Regiment during the First World War. Wi...

In 1584, my poor old 12x great uncle Ralph Sadleir was hauled out of statesmanlike semi-retirement by Queen Elizabeth I to fill the post of...

V.I.P. in this case stands for Very Important Prisoner. My 12x great uncle Ralph served under four monarchs, in some of the highest offices ...

I inherited the contents of Captain Charles Castle’s writing desk. Charles was my 3x great uncle and I have hundreds of letters sent to him,...

It turns out there are not one but three nineteenth century architects (at least) named Stephen Salter. What started out last week as a simp...

Parents just love alliteration, don’t they? In my Salter family tree there are countless Samuel Salters and Sarah Salters and Sophia Salters...

My 7x great grandfather Thomas Gurney of Bedfordshire was already shrouded in the mists of time when my 3x great grandfather William Brod...

The advance of non-conformist congregations in the nineteenth century was a grand movement of empowerment for the ordinary people of England...

Henry Bayley was a first cousin of my great great grandmother Ellen Bayley. With his brothers William and Charles he inherited the family c...

I couldn’t help but notice after my recent blogpost that not one but two of my ancestors have had their whisky premises bombed out of exist...