Eureka Moment
After four decades of research, Tim Burrell has been able to trace his family back to 13th-century Somerset. But the best moment came recently when he discovered an astonishing coincidence.
“An Indian journal led me back to the Middle Ages!” says Tim Burrell, who shares an amazing coincidence
Tracing your ancestry back to medieval times can be relatively straightforward if you have a ‘gateway’ ancestor, usually a member of the nobility or aristocracy. However, Tim Burrell’s route back to the Middle Ages has taken 40 years of research, which he carried out with his wife Margaret.
The couple began researching the family tree in the 1970s, visiting the record office at St Catherine’s House on Kingsway in London. It has been a true labour of love and Tim would like to dedicate this article to Margaret, whom he lost in 2019.
My Brick Wall
My 2x great grandfather was the wonderfully named Lieutenant George Augustus Patterson Brady.
I was intrigued to discover via census returns that he was born in Bombay, East India, c1824. So Margaret and I searched the records of the East India Company at the British Library in London, and found his birth record. We also discovered that his mother Sarah Henrietta Light married his father George Brady in Madras in 1823.
Sarah was aged only 16 when she married George. What was a young girl doing in India in 1823? We searched through East India Company records, but the trail went cold for a long time. This was the 1970s, and genealogy was a much more challenging process. It was the advent of the internet that provided exciting revelations.
My Eureka Moment
In 2014, I did a search for Sarah Henrietta Light, Madras, and a link popped up to the Asiatic Journal, which was a monthly register for Europeans in India. This recorded her marriage to George Brady and, crucially, revealed her father’s details.
His name was William Stratton Dundas Light, a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Madras. William was born on a ship sailing from Britain to India in 1777. His father, also called William, was a member of the Indian Civil Service.
More good old-fashioned legwork followed. In the British Library, I found a book called Annals of Two Extinct Families, by John Alexander Temple. Incredibly, it told the story of Sarah Henrietta Light’s family and its connection to the Luders, who were related to a knight of the Holy Roman Empire.
This was my first eureka moment. The book traced generations of the Light family back to the middle of the 16th century, when they lived at Lytes Cary Manor in Somerset. Critically, it specified that my 8x great grandfather was born William Lyte in 1606, but died as William Light in 1677. The change of spelling was pivotal.
The book also revealed that William Lyte’s father Thomas (born in 1568) was a genealogist. He researched the family history of James I, tracing him back to the infamous Roman senator Brutus.
A Google search for Thomas Lyte gave me another eureka moment. He had built his own family tree that went back to the middle of the 13th century, and this was available online. At the top of it was my 20x great grandfather William Lyte, who was born in 1230.
Crucially, Thomas’ tree connected with the generation furthest back in the Annals of Two
Extinct Families, which included
William Lyte, born in 1606. It was an amazing feeling to discover this, and reassuring to be able to rely on two solid documents – Temple’s book and the family tree.
Margaret and I visited Lytes Cary, which is owned by the National Trust, and we discovered some illustrious links. Henry Lyte, my 10x great grandfather, was a distant cousin to Elizabeth I via her mother Anne Boleyn. The family is also connected to the Dukes of Marlborough.
My Breakthrough
We now fast-forward to 2019 when I went to visit my nephew Dan in Somerset. He lives in part of the former rectory in the tiny village of Goathurst, only a few miles from Bridgwater. Dan’s also very interested in genealogy, and I showed him the vast family tree that Margaret and I had created. We were intrigued to note that in 1278 Roger of Goathurst’s daughter Margaret married William Lyte’s son Robert.
The next day we visited the local church, St Edward the King and Martyr, and saw a plaque on the wall. Lo and behold, Roger of Goathurst was the original patron of the church in 1321.
Our greatest eureka moment happened then. Dan went online to find out where Roger of Goathurst lived, and discovered a document called The History of the Manors. Goathurst Manor originally stood on the site that later became the rectory. So Dan was living on the exact location of his 20x great grandfather’s home! This was an unbelievable moment – we were both utterly astonished.
It’s wonderful to say with confidence that you can trace your ancestry back to the 13th century. However, I couldn’t have done it without my wife Margaret’s original work on the family tree. Her records are fantastic.