Sian Williams’ new daytime series My Family Secrets Revealed
Sian Williams helps people uncover their families’ hidden histories…
My Family Secrets Revealed monday-friday / C4 / 1.05Pm
Take Antiques Roadshow, cross it with Who Do You Think You Are?, and you’ve got the measure of C4’s new series
My Family Secrets Revealed.
At Capesthorne Hall in Cheshire, a team of experts help people flesh out their family histories and find the truth about their relatives. Historians Tessa Dunlop and Onyeka Nubia, plus DNA expert Brad Argent (above), use birth records, ships’ logs and family trees to solve intriguing mysteries and uncover secrets.
‘We reunite people with long-lost treasure, prove links with famous faces and solve family puzzles about missing relatives,’ says presenter Sian Williams. ‘It’s a chance for people to find out who their ancestors really are.’
In the first episode, Julie-anne Coates from Liverpool wants to know if her great-grandfather really did desert his pregnant wife and children. Here is her incredibly sad story…
Why did you want to find out about your greatgrandfather?
I’ve been diagnosed with incurable cancer and my passion is to answer as many questions on my family tree as I can before it’s my time to go.
How much did you know already? From what I’ve been told, my great-grandfather David Jones and his wife, Lydia, fell in love and they shouldn’t have. She was from a wealthy family and he was from a very poor family and her family didn’t approve. They had quite a hard life and then he disappeared.
When did he disappear?
In 1909, he got on a ship to find work abroad and never came home. Lydia was pregnant at the time, and the last letter he wrote to her and their children was heartbreaking. He said he was going to leave the ship because it was a floating hell, and said he was never going to leave again when he got home. I couldn’t understand what happened to him.
The experts found out that he left the ship in Cuba to find work in a mine, where he most likely met a tragic end. How did you feel?
I felt quite ashamed. I’ve called him all the names under the sun thinking that he left his family because he couldn’t face the journey home, and it looks like he was just trying to get some money. So if he’s listening, I apologise.