November 2007

Remembrance Sunday and the 11th November itself are days that have always been very important to me. They are days for reflection, to think about those who have fought or are fighting for their country (and for us as individuals) in all wars, whether they have died or...

I remember it was a lovely sunny Sunday morning the day war broke out. We listened to Mr Chamberlain’s speech on the wireless in the kitchen, the only wireless we had, and my parents were very serious and shooshed us when we, my two younger sisters and I started to...

I always had a vague interest in the idea of following up my family tree. I knew my maternal uncles had done quite a bit, and I had made sporadic attempts to put something together now and then, picking my mother’s brains. Eventually, I decided to make a start myself....

I have a very tatty photograph of a gun carriage sitting in a garden.  My mother always told me that it was my father's fault that it ended up there, although she never told me exactly what happened. I knew my father, Benjamin Thomas, was in the Royal Horse Artillery...

My favourite ancestor and the one I would most like to meet, is my great great grandmother Ann Alison Corbett. From the information I have been able to find, her life was at least interesting and quite possibly exciting, but she also faced more than her share of...

Nearly everyone has a moment, when researching their family tree, that reduces them to tears. Mine was when I discovered the existence of, and half an hour later the death of, Henry Ayton the brother of my great great grandmother Emily Esther Ayton. The 1851 census...

My research would have ground to a halt very early on without the Family History Library at The Church of the Latter Days Saints in Coventry. None of my ancestors have any connection with Warwickshire and day trips to County Record Offices would have been expensive...