OFF THE RECORD
Alan Crosby looks back at ten years of WDYTYA? Magazine and the people and places his own research has led him to
Alan Crosby reflects on 10 years of discovery with WDYTYA magazine
It’s hard to believe that Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine is ten years old this issue! Where has all that time gone? Equally astonishing is the fact that we’ve now had 14 series of the programme as well, and they are just as good, if not better, than when they began. I’ve contributed to every issue of the magazine since it started in 2007 and I’ve found it really interesting and stimulating to be involved in this aspect of family history.
The great strengths of the magazine are its strong editorial hand (thanks Sarah), its powerful visuals and the innovation and ambition it shows. As a professional local and family historian I love seeing my two historical interests so skillfully combined.
It’s great to see how the programme and magazine always emphasise the importance of historical context. They both suggest going beyond the simple collecting of names and dates, to learn how our forebears lived and shed light on the world they inhabited – the challenges, opportunities, trends and issues of the time. Best of all, the magazine demonstrates that anybody and everybody can explore the past. You can tackle new types of records, investigate background themes and issues, and begin to piece together why certain things happened to discover what lay behind the apparently bland information of baptisms, marriages, burials, census entries and certificates.
Ten years of my own research have led me to some amazing places: Kraków in Poland, the rainforest of Queensland, a military cemetery in Canberra, a sportswear shop in downtown Calgary, a luxury hotel in the Rocky Mountains, beautiful hillsides in the Derbyshire Peak District and the remains of a long-closed iron and steelworks near
Seeing your ancestor’s signature ‘in the flesh’ is a reward in its own right
Wrexham. I have family members that have lived or, in some cases, are still living in these places. As such, I’ve enjoyed wonderful visits with my Polish cousins; had an emotional meeting with my father’s half-brother, who we didn’t even know about until a few months before; and joined my Canadian third cousin, who was born and bred in Alberta and who immediately engaged my son in deep conversation – not about family history but about which players were being signed by Arsenal.
Online resources – ever growing and increasingly accessible – now generate excitement in ways that were undreamt of in 2007. Thanks to the web I’ve been able to track my grandfather’s wayward sister to a grave in the cemetery at Little Rock, Arkansas; discover parish records from the early 18th century that relate to a previously unknown family connection in a village I often drive through; learn all about my great uncle’s tattoos; find out that a forebear was a slave owner in Jamaica; and read my relatives’ signatures on the 1911 census.
The web is a never-ending source of historical delight and thanks to it my family tree has been transformed over the last ten years. I’ve made and continued friendships and family relationships across the globe and I’ve spent happy hours browsing census returns, newspapers, parish records and military records. But I still spend a lot of time in record offices, because although it seems as if everything is online now, the reality is that about 97 per cent of our archive holdings have yet to be digitised and must still be consulted in their original form. Touching the will or the inventory of one of your ancestors and seeing their signature ‘ in the flesh’ is a pleasure and a reward in its own right.
What will the next ten years bring? Who knows? But I do know that the fascination of family and local history will continue to grow stronger, and I look forward to celebrating the 20th anniversary of this excellent magazine in October 2027.