My grandmother used to tell me stories ab,out her childhood, she described her mother and her brothers and sisters, clearly she loved them very much. She spoke with less warmth about her father who had kept the family poor while his money went on drink. He died in a workplace accident when my grandmother was in her teens. Her family were all dead, but I felt as if I knew them. Years later when I was in my teens and my father and my grandparents were dead I realised that there were so many things that I didn’t know about my family history and there was nobody left to tell me.

That was the start of a long and fascinating adventure in family history. There have been times of intense sadness, such as finding that my grandfathers parents died of TB within weeks of each other, leaving their children alone in the world. Mostly it has been fascinating it has given me a sense of continuity and belonging, but it also makes me feel very small like a tiny grain in the sands of time. Thinking about my family history helps. It reminds me that life is not fair, bad stuff happens sometimes, it doesn’t make it less painful but the sense of identity and understanding reaching down the years helps in an odd sort of way.

I drive to the railway station every day and I pass St Sepulchres Church. As I pause at the traffic lights, I think of the many generations of my family who lived close to that church, and marked the highs and lows of their lives within its walls. I think about how everything around it has changed yet it has stood there unchanged for centuries. I think of my great grandmother who lost three sons in the First World War, two died within a week of each other, however did she find the strength to carry on? Most of all I think of her father Shadrach, my great great grandfather. By the age of five he had lost both parents and he and his older sisters were sent to the workhouse. Still very young he was sent as an apprentice to a cordwainer (bespoke shoe maker) who lived very close to St Sepulchres Church. He found a wife, a family, a trade and a future, and he lived the rest of his life within the shadow of that church.

Another great grandmother buried seven sons before they were three, her three daughters survived to adulthood, but her daughter Kate died of septicaemia following the birth of her first child. You can not measure the loss of infant sons against the loss of a young wife or against the loss of young men, soldiers, little more than boys. Gun fodder, missed only by a grieving family, yet ninety years on they are still known and mourned by me. Crushing grief is crushing grief, you can not measure loss. My ancestors all found a way to bear their loss, to accept it and continue with life, in doing so they treasured the memories of their loved ones and took them forward with them into the future. More than a hundred years later, far more than just their names survive, so that I can claim to know something of them as real people.

Please take a look at my articles

History Matters – Or Does It?

Family History – Expect The Unexpected