Tall Tales from the Trees

My great grandmother Jane Reyner came from one of the oldest mill-owning families in the Lancashire cottonmill town of Ashton Under Lyne...

I have the contents of the writing desk of my great great great uncle Charles Castle, passed down to me by my uncle John Salter. It’s a tr...

John Salter, a cousin of my great great grandfather’s, was a pioneering horticulturalist. As a prolific breeder of new varieties he was in...

I’m a genealogist, not a gardener. There is a strained joke to be made about roots, branches, family trees, cross-pollination and bad appl...

With the help of someone who got in touch via this blog I recently found the identity of my 5x great grandfather, John Davis of Little Mis...

I’ve written here before about my cousin John Cooper-Chadwick’s exploits in the imperial colonization of southern Africa . In between his u...

In all my family tree research I am constantly in debt to the earlier and more thorough research of others. Recent contact with a cousin in ...

I’ve been exploring the noble Scottish Hepburn pedigree lately – far more than I needed to really, but that’s genealogy for you! My genui...

My great aunt Helen’s ancestors, the Verrall family from Lewes in Sussex , were a prominent lot, at the heart of Lewes life for many generat...