Kentish Express Ashford & District
How to trace your family Whodo you think you are?
Gone are the days of rifling through dusty church archives to delve into your family’s dim and distant past. With a world of records now available at the click of a mouse, Gerry Warren looks at how easy it is to trace your ancestry in Kent...
Have you an intriguing black sheep character in your family’s long lost past or even a link to a Royal household?
Well, according to family history experts, these are some of the most hoped for findings for people researching their ancestors.
Genealogy has become increasingly popular in recent years as the internet has given us the ability to search vast databases of historical, civil and military records at the touch of a button.
So, while the coronovirus keeps us in lockdown, learning about our own family ancestors is proving another way our home computers can educate and even amuse us.
The county has its own experts at the Kent Family History Society, which is based in Canterbury but has branches in Ashford, Maidstone, Medway and Deal.
It has access to records of burials in Kent cemeteries, as well as other civic information in archives and libraries, offering its members support and expertise in researching family history.
Chairman David Wood has uncovered some surprising ancestors in his family - from a distant relative who was sent to Tasmania for murder to another who was part of the Bohemian Bloomsbury set in the early 1900s.
And, remarkably, he thinks most of us have a tenuous link to Royalty.
“If you go back far enough to the time of the Plantagenets, when Kings were having up to 20 children, you can see how that plays out through the generations,” he said.
“You may recall the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? about actor Danny Dyer discovering he was related to William the Conquerer and Edward III - but that came as no surprise to genealogists.
“Many people researching their family history hope to find someone exciting from their past - other than the usual farm labourers and shopkeepers - especially a hero or even a villain.”
David, a book shop manager, has some tips for anyone just starting out on researching their family history.
“Start with yourself,” he says. “Write down everything you know about yourself and your immediate family, and what you don’t know. You know your birthday, but do you know the date of your baptism, for example?
“The Family History Federation has a very useful booklet to download from their resources page called ‘My Family Tree’, suitable for all the family to fill in.
“Contact your relatives by phone or social media to get their family history memories - which is an ideal activity for children. Older relatives could have documents, such as certif
icates and wills of ancestors, to fill in the blanks.
“Now is an excellent opportunity to go through all those old photograph albums annotate the back of the photos using a pencil.”
Mr Wood says a useful introduction to family history is available on the Kent Family History Society website (kfhs.org.uk) under ‘resources’, covering civil registration, censuses and parish registers.
Although libraries are currently closed, birth, marriage and death certificates can be ordered through the General Register Office website, but it is asking that orders for family history reasons should be delayed until the current crisis is over.
Indexes for the certificates covering births 1837-1916 and deaths 1837-1957 are on the GRO website, uniquely including mother’s maiden names and age at death. Other indexes for the certificates can be found at FreeBMD, as well as commercial websites such as Ancestry and Find My Past.
Wills from 1858 to the present can be ordered from Gov. uk (search for ‘Wills and Probate’) and are only £1.50.
Retired journalist and local history buff Ken Nickoll, from Broadstairs, has been investigating his family tree for many years. Remarkably, his research has taken him back to his nine times great-grandfather Henry Nickoll, who he discovered was a farmer and butcher in Mersham, near Ashford, at the time of the English Civil War.
Before the advent of the home computer and the internet in the 1980s, amateur genealogists like Ken, 68, would visit churches and pore over dusty tomes in record offices and libraries to try to find clues to their ancestry.
But now, at the click of a mouse, they have access to thousands of out-of-print books, wills, parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials, military and court records, census returns and much more.
“It is amazing what you can find out about your forebears on the internet,” Ken says.
“My family tree now features almost 800 relatives.
“But it isn’t just a list of faceless people. Using the internet and some of the specialist family tree websites, I have uncovered many of their stories, which turns them into living and breathing individuals.”
One of the relatives Ken discovered on the internet was Captain John Harvey, who commanded HMS Brunswick at the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794. His ship was severely damaged after sinking one French vessel and wrecking two others.
“Harvey, who had previously been the Mayor of Sandwich, was wounded three times in the action, only leaving the deck when his elbow was shattered by a French roundshot,” Ken explains.
“His arm was amputated on board but he later died from his wounds in Portsmouth.
He was hailed a national hero and a monument was erected in Westminster Abbey to his memory.
“On a lighter note, I found a biography on the Google Books website containing an amusing story about Captain Harvey’s elder brother, Richard, who was vicar of St Laurence, Ramsgate, until his death in 1821.
“The book revealed the Reverend Harvey was rather too fond of fine wine and sometimes had to be taken home in a wheelbarrow!”
By far the biggest subscription online resource is Ancestry.co.uk, which has 24 billion digitised historical records which users have accessed to create 100 million family trees.
But there are also lots of tips, tricks and advice available on its Facebook page, where experts are hosting regular advice sessions with Ancestry’s genealogy team.