Your ideas, comments and advice
Last week, I had cause to update my father’s status on Ancestry. His profile now reads “Horwood Selwyn Henry Lewis. Died: 19 June 2017”. For the first time, contemporary events had encroached on my family tree.
My interest in genealogy began in 2010, sparked by a conversation with my mother about her uncle, William Gammon. William was the cox of the Mumbles lifeboat that was wrecked in 1947, with the loss of the entire crew. Since then, I’ve spent many happy hours tracing my family and my wife’s, and unearthed countless fascinating stories along the way.
I relish the challenges that tracing my family tree throw up. One moment, I’m sleuthing like a modern- day Sherlock Holmes; the next, I’m applying left-field thinking to a problem as I would to a cryptic crossword. But I also love to think that, by casting light on my distant, long- dead relatives, I am celebrating lives loved and lost – some of which will not have been given consideration for centuries.
My father’s was a life well lived, and though a line has now been drawn under his Ancestry profile, memories of him will live on, around my family. And after all, isn’t that why we all trace our family trees in the first place? Mark Lewis by email Editor replies: Beautifully written, Mark, and a very worthy winner of our star letter prize. We are indeed celebrating ‘lives loved and lost’.