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The joy of a letter
Who doesn’t love to receive a personal letter? But these days, we’re more likely to communicate by email, text or message. Helen Baggott,...
Wendy Percival
May 22, 20202 min read
Truth, fiction and an unbelievable coincidence
Imagine you’ve settled down to read a novel when you suddenly spot the name of one of your ancestors in the text. And not just any...
Wendy Percival
May 2, 20203 min read
The sanctuary of gardens
During this lock-down period, those of us lucky enough to have a garden are extremely fortunate. Perhaps some have realised the value of...
Wendy Percival
Apr 10, 20202 min read
Friends like Family
...set me thinking about the friends in our ancestors' lives of whom we may largely unaware...
Wendy Percival
Mar 27, 20202 min read
Loss of a loving father
The Prime Minister spoke this week about the current Coronavirus situation being the biggest crisis in a generation which made me think...
Wendy Percival
Mar 20, 20202 min read
Floods of dismay
It's been distressing to watch the news reports over these past couple of weeks concerning flooding in many areas of the UK, and...
Wendy Percival
Feb 29, 20201 min read
Banking the old fashioned way
I came across my dad's old bank book the other day. It was a Midland Bank savings account and he’d opened it with the sum of 2 shillings...
Wendy Percival
Feb 21, 20202 min read
Mystery wedding and jaunty hats
Happy Valentine's Day! A great excuse for browsing the family photograph albums for wedding photos. The style of weddings have changed...
Wendy Percival
Feb 14, 20202 min read
Travels into the attic
With the UK leaving the EU today, it was rather a coincidence to discover a bundle of my dad’s old British blue passports this week while...
Wendy Percival
Jan 31, 20202 min read
The gruesome truth
Shortly after 1871, my great-great grandmother, Emma Shelley, vanished. Not literally, obviously. But I couldn’t find her anywhere. She’d...
Wendy Percival
Jan 24, 20202 min read
Murder trial witness
As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, I discovered, while browsing the British Newspaper Archives, that, Henry Viner, an ancestor of...
Wendy Percival
Jan 17, 20203 min read
The joy of steam
Doesn’t everybody loves a model steam railway? (And if you are a fan, there's a treat in store at the end of the post). My husband‘s been...
Wendy Percival
Jan 10, 20202 min read
#WWI Christmas
I'm lucky to have amongst my family treasures four beautiful embroidered postcards, known as "WWI silks" sent from the front during the...
Wendy Percival
Dec 20, 20192 min read
It's that time of year again. Oh no it isn't, oh yes it is!
I have a pantomime dame amongst my ancestors! My maternal grandfather Herbert Colley (I never met him, as he died when my mum was only...
Wendy Percival
Dec 13, 20192 min read
#FamilyHistory does transport
It was a transport theme on this week's #ancestryhour. Followers posted pictures of their ancestors beside an eclectic selection of...
Wendy Percival
Nov 29, 20192 min read
Another #familyhistory #7UP
I came across this lovely photograph of my gran, Edith Alice Diggory, at about 14 years of age, (possibly taken on the occasion of her...
Wendy Percival
Nov 22, 20192 min read
An exciting find!
I signed off last week's blog post (Mystery of George's WWI wound) lamenting the fact that I had no photograph of my great uncle, George...
Wendy Percival
Nov 15, 20191 min read
Mystery of George's #WW1 wound
A photograph of my great-uncle Tom Diggory, my gran's older brother, always stood proudly on my gran's mantelpiece. Tom had been wounded...
Wendy Percival
Nov 8, 20192 min read
Home Sweet Home
With the clocks going back an hour here in the UK and the winter ahead of us, it's that time when I think of evenings in front of a...
Wendy Percival
Nov 1, 20192 min read
Sad deaths and a new life
In the process of finding out more about my great-aunt and great-uncles's brief stay in the workhouse in 1886 (see posts, A Brush With...
Wendy Percival
Oct 25, 20193 min read