Our Family's Journey Back Through Time
This has been a work in progress for over a decade now. Still is and always will be.
As far back as 1800, in the 4/8 branches that expand from my own personal family, I’m fairly convinced of its accuracy - bigamy and illegitimacy aside! But as the branches sprawl, and the 1700’s get deeper, names and details are more likely to be based on single sources that lack detail.
This project also began as a hobby, with little focus on corroboration & accurate sourcing. If a family line on Ancestry looked like it fit, it got thrown in. If someone else had a few similar names, I trusted their work was genuine and the information was commandeered as fact.
This site contains all of my research, great and small. So please do check the sources for each entry. If they are detailed and lengthy, you’re onto a winner. But if they aren’t there in abundance, question my truth!
The biggest help you can offer at the moment is by making sure everyone is here, correctly named with accurate dates of birth and death.
Without boring you too much, I'd like to open as much of this site up to the public as possible, while protecting the information of those family members who are still around. So at the moment, to view a living person you would need a user account. Their details would be hidden to the general public.
Get yourself a user account using the link at the top right of the page. If you explain who you are in the "Notes or Comments" section of the user application form, I'll grant you access to everyone. Which you can then help get right!
Site Updates
28th July 2023
- Assigned profile pictures to those individuals who have old photographic images of themselves attached to their entry.
4th April 2023
- Added Marriage Certificate and associated information/sourcing for George Pink & Frances Allison.
- Added Marriage Certificate and associated information/sourcing for Edward Murphy & Ann Rodgers.
- Added Birth Certificate and associated information/sourcing for Wilson Kendall 1862.
26th March 2023
- Added Frances Allison 1844 parents (John and Mary)
- Adjusted Frances Allison’s date of death from 1906 (single source transcribed by third party from presumably worn grave stone) to 1926 (multiple initial glance sources on Ancestry)
- Added John McNichol 1900 WWI Army Records
- Added 1939 Register for Mary Pink (McNichol), Kathleen McGinn (McNichol), James McGinn & Raymund McGinn
- Added Source Citation & Document Image for John William McNichol’s Probate in 1919
- Added 1911 Census for Frances Allison, Elizabeth Clark McNichol & Kathleen McNichol
11th March
- Linked places to Google Maps, so they will display on a map
- Optimised pictures so they load quicker.
- Processed thumbnails so they display on Person pages.
8th March 2023
- Added descriptive titling to all photos.
6th March 2023
- Setup ourancestral.family domain name & email accounts.
21st Feb 2023
- This self hosted website went live.
14th Feb 2023
- Added BBC Radio Archive of Joe Abbott’s 1939 race commentary.
Late January 2023
- Research Log - Bryant Patrilineage
- Detailed sourcing documented from Thomas Stanley Bryant 1895 to John Bryant 1785
Early January 2023
- Attached and sourced several generations of Bryant family parish records
22nd Dec 2022
- 1921 Census for McNichol, Wilkinson, Smith families
Corrections & Clarifications
If you read the first section above, you will know that when this started out, it was more about exploring. Filling in my tree for the sake of it. And not with a clear focus on hard facts.
So if you can see I’ve got something wrong, please do get in touch to correct me.
I can be reached via the Contact link at the top right of this page.
I've been a journalist, researcher & content producer for two decades. Before that, my mum would teach me about tracing her own family tree, in a time without online Genealogy tools, piquing my interest at a young age.
