Tall Tales from the Trees

What’s not to like about Lechmere Guppy! Tattoo’d school inspector, once-shipwrecked son-in-law of a refugee from the French revolution, f...

Is it possible for a family tree to have black sheep? Shouldn’t they be black leaves? Or are black sheep only found in genealogical databa...

I have written here before about the role my ancestors played in the founding of London University . Baptists and other non-conformists, w...

Why do I write about all these people? Sometimes it’s because I know they have a story worth telling. Sometimes I pick on someone precisel...

Some family stories are proved or even unearthed in the course of research. Others are disproved by the same process. Some remain beyond c...

My great grandfather’s cousin Catherine Gurney (known as Katie in the family) founded four convalescent homes and orphanages for English ...

In a terrific example of sucking up to the local gentry, my 3x great grandfather William Reid named at least two and arguably four of his ...

Charlie Masterman was a grandson of my 3x great uncle Thomas Gurney. A biography of him by Eric Hopkins published in 1999 is subtitled The...

My 5x great grandfather John Templeman was from Torryburn in Fife, just west of the ancient Scottish town of Dunfermline. He was a damask w...

It’s been a while since I wrote about anyone called Austin Cooper – there are dozens of them in my Cooper tree, all taking their name from...