Family Skeletons

and how to deal with them with Alan F Judge

So how many skeletons do you have in your family? What do you mean, none? Everybody has skeletons; it’s a family requirement. Some they’re willing to boast about, others they’d prefer to keep well and truly under wraps. If you’ve been making proper use of the Covid-19 lockdown then you must have thought about tracing your family history. So where do you start?

Well, obviously, you start with Granny. She will sit you down and tell you how great-great-Uncle George was really King George III in disguise, and how the Smith family all have their roots in the Norman invasion. All rubbish of course – or is it? Until you check it, you’ll never know. My great-grandfather, Sidney Angell, was born in 1861. His family lived in London where an estate known as the ‘Angell Millions’ existed (Google it). It’s still up for grabs. Sadly, I haven’t been able to prove that great-granddad could have been a beneficiary. On the other hand, we can trace my mother’s ancestors, the Aske family, back to around thirty-five generations ago in the 12th century. In the 16th century, one of them, Robert Aske, upset Henry VIII by starting an uprising against Henry’s decision to leave the Catholic Church (The Reformation). It was called the Pilgrimage of Grace. In the end, Henry had them all arrested and the leaders, including our very distant ancestor, were all drawn, hung and quartered (get it in the right order). OK, you’ve spoken to Granny, she’s admitted that her story was a bit wild and has now given you details of her parents and grandparents. What next? Well, in years gone by, family research usually meant a trip to the local parish church to look through their registers of births, deaths and marriages and to the Public Records Office, but most of this can now be done on the internet. This does make it a bit impersonal though. Just looking at the handwriting and notes in the old registers, some of it centuries old, always sent a shiver up my spine. Take a look at this 1790 marriage bond between my four times maternal great-grandfather and his future wife, Sarah. Neither could write, so they ‘made their mark’, two crosses at the bottom of the document. There’s nothing like actually holding a document one of your ancestors has handled over two centuries ago. You can start the family tree with yourself and work backwards, but I prefer to work from the earliest ancestor up to the present day. Try not to be led astray by making suppositions based on unproven information or you could end up in somebody else’s family. There is much more to researching family histories than I can cover in this short article, but I do heartily recommend it if you’re stuck in a Covid doldrum. If you find a few skeletons, don’t be frightened of sharing them with us.

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