My journey into Genealogy was inspired by my maternal Grandfather, Thomas Henry Pearce, who saw service with the Royal Flying Corps, then the Royal Air Force, during World War One. He joined the post war Territorial Army and the Fire Brigade, then was drafted into the Army and fought in a number of theatres during World War Two. A family anecdote relates that as he was being evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk, while boarding one of the flotilla, Tom came face to face with his teenage eldest son Victor, who had joined the Royal Navy on leaving school in 1939. Tom was also the father to eleven children.
The research from my own family tree trunk split into maternal and paternal, then branched into my eight great grandparents. Eight surnames to explore; Kelley, Pearce, Boffin, Rose, Wright, George, Harbage, Lacey. My own generation contains only one cousin that I know of who was a career military man within the wider family. Go back a generation and my father and uncles were all put through ‘national service’. Back another generation, then one or two world wars have family involved in all three British armed forces. Back another generation, family involved in the conflicts in South Africa and further back to the Crimea, further back to my five times great grandfather John Kelley, who served with the 18th Regiment of Light Dragoon Guards. The same Regiment that a young junior officer, Arthur Wellesley, served in between 1792 and 1793, who would be known as the Duke of Wellington.
I have always had an interest in social history, so combined this with speaking with aunts and uncles, as my grandparents had died by the time I set about writing down anecdotes and asking questions. This in turn led me into the world of online family trees, with all that goes with this. My first tree on one of the major sites was with https://www.myheritage.com but I soon found that the restriction on the size of my tree, unlocked via a subscription, was limiting at a time when I was still very much finding my feet. If you are blessed with a stash of family photo’s then the sites photo editing tools are recommended. I then began a tree with https://findmypast.com which, in addition to having an unlimited amount of people on the free tree, I have found to be the best site for me searching UK ancestors. I have spent time with https://ancestry.co.uk as well as http://www.wikitree.com htpps://familysearch.org/en/untited-kingdom/ and heartily recommend their wiki and tools for researching across various countries. Each of this mega sites has free tools that can be enhanced by various paid subscriptions. I finally settled on developing a tree with htpps://rootsfinder.com as their free version has a lot of tools, it incorporates the DNA arm of searching really well, you get hints from http://www.findagrave.com familysearch as well as findmypast (who have now bought the site) to cross-reference from. It’s also a smooth process to cite material and I have found the free allowance for media storage (newspaper articles, photo’s ect.) quite adequate so far.
Another family anecdote told by Tom to his daughter, my mum, was that generations back a young Pearce direct ancestor had followed a gypsy girl from Somerset to the bright lights of London. This was how our family came to relocate from the west country to north London and the home counties. I had some fun investigating this one, I found the ancestor and the story holds up, going on UK Census information. On the paternal Kelley side, Louisa Kelley, niece to my twice great grandfather William, became the resident Superintendent of the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) at their Colchester residence in the early years of the 20th century. Trailblazer Louisa never married and died at the age of forty. Louisa’s sister Hannah, married and helped run a family newsagents business in the same town, when a few pieces of information dovetail together, a wider picture begins to emerge.
What was an interest, has developed into a profession after accreditation with Strathclyde Universities excellent online course ‘Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree’, which forms part of the Future Learn portfolio. It has put so many more tools in my toolbox. In a twist of fate, I was employed as a Team Leader for the 2021 UK Census; so was able to experience the modern version of how an ‘Officer of the Crown’ went about putting together the information that appears in transcribed online UK Census searches. My ‘patch’ was a chunk of Barnet; Willesden/Golders Green, in north and north west London, I know it well, having driven double decker buses around there in what now, looking back. seems a previous life. Tom was born in Marylebone, London, he later moved west to Willesden where his emerging young family would start life between the wars.
Currently in production is ‘My Family and Other Ancestors’, a book comprising; a chapter on each of the families and forebears of my great grandparents, plus picture galleries, appendices, anecdotes, a little of my poetry and insight into mythical/historical events. The title is a nod to that most enjoyable autobiographical book by Gerald Durrell, ‘My Family and Other Animals’.
Root, Trunk, Branch, Twiglet 