MY WORKING LIFE
Have the same laugh as Prince Harry and suspect you might be related? British family tree expert Anthony Adolph will help you trace your ancestors.
British family tree expert Anthony Adolph helps people trace their ancestors and can sometimes connect them to famous families or royals. Here he tells us about unfortunate surnames, nasty surprises and why we’re all related. What exactly does a genealogist do, Anthony? We trace family trees and family history. Our work is to trace back further than people know already, preferably with the best evidence we can find to make sure we are connecting the right generations together. The aim is to travel as far back as can possibly be done – using oral history in the first instance and then original records to build on that, and also using the other tools available including nowadays, genetics.
How did you get into it?
I got into it because my surname, Adolph, is of course a ludicrous one and I was teased about it at school. I was asked if I was related to Adolf Hitler at the age of eight. My parents had no idea where the name came from and that’s what prompted me to start trying to find out.
Where do you begin with a client?
You start by asking them what they know – people usually know at least something about their family history. You then work out how much of what they say is likely to be accurate and you become very used to picking out the parts that are more likely to be hearsay or imagined. You also ask if they have any documentary evidence. Then we work back.
Where in the world has the best records? Britain has among the very best, so being a genealogist in the UK is a very fine thing. If you wanted to do this job in Egypt, for example, you’d be very poor and miserable as there are virtually no archives that enable you to do this kind of work. In Britain the records go back
Who are parents of my earliest known ancestor? That’s what everyone wants to know. They also want to find out if they are connected to royalty
hundreds and hundreds of years.
Why would people hire you instead of just sleuthing online?
For my experience, really. When tracing a family tree, it’s like finding bits of a jigsaw and you need to know whether the piece you’ve found is the right one or not, and the more experience you have the more likely you are to spot the right one.
How common is it for white people to find a non-white ancestor and vice versa?
Quite common. Over the past 30 years there’s been a lot of work in finding out about early black and Indian immigration into Britain. I made Extraordinary Ancestors for Channel 4 in 2000, and Meet the Descendants for BBC Radio 4 in 2003-4, both uncovering surprising black, Asian and other ancestors of apparently white British people.
What’s the most common reason people want to know about their ancestry?
I suspect quite a lot of the time people are after some money and hope to inherit something – or get an invitation to Buckingham Palace – but people tell me they’re doing it purely for interest and I’m sure a lot of the time that’s true, especially when they have an unusual surname like mine.
What did you find out about your own family surname?
We came from Germany in the 1830s. I went back to the place where the family came from and found the records that proved it. I’m not related to Adolf Hitler, of course, I’m delighted to say. In fact, I did find a family connection with the Duchess of Cambridge.
Is it reasonable to say that a large percentage of Brits must be related to William Shakespeare? All British people must be, one way or another – although most people won’t be able to prove it. If you go back far enough, we’re all related to each other.
How come?
It’s a theory called the ‘most recent common ancestor’. If you go back up your family tree you have two parents, four grandparents and so on. If you go back a thousand years then the number of potential ancestors greatly exceeds the number of people who were actually alive at the time. So you know that at different points cousins must have married. That gets the numbers down, and means we’re all related. The fun, of course, is when you can use records to prove connections.
Is there a mystery all genealogists would like to crack?
Yes, it is: ‘Who are the parents of my earliest known ancestor?’ That’s what everyone wants to know. They also often want to find out if they have a connection to Royalty; it’s nice if you can find it, because you can then link your family into the whole of British history. One problem is that there are lots of commercial websites that have family trees that claim to connect people to Royalty, but they’re wrong. If you find a pedigree online that looks too good to be true it probably is – and you’ll probably find you can disprove it really quickly.
If someone were interested in starting work on their own family tree what should they do? Talk to all of your family and ask them what they know. Write it down, then build on that using original records.