Wendy Percival

When I volunteered to help find information about an unknown WWII hero, I thought it would simply be a case of looking up a few things on Ancestry. I should have known better! I’ve since found myself caught up in this intriguing mystery which has taken me "all across the world" looking for answers. The church warden in the parish where I live had been curious about a plaque high up on the wall of the church, commemorating Edward Hugh Harold DeLacy-Staunton, who’d died “servin

On a recent #ancestryhour someone shared a fabulous photograph of their grandmother as a child, all dressed up for a special occasion. The occasion in question was her confirmation day. It reminded me of the photo I have of my own grandmother, Edith Alice DIGGORY, which I believe was also taken to commemorate her confirmation. Don’t you just love her velvet dress! I guessed she must have been about 14 years old when the photo was taken and it inspired me to set up her “7UP” s

Revisiting one of my WWI stories this week on the the Bite-size blog… Read about how a conversation on Twitter’s #AncestryHour led to the discovery of a coincidence and a shared WWI story with fellow author, Helen Baggott. Click on the image of my husband’s grandfather below to find out more. To find out about the Esme Quentin mystery books, click on the image below!

When was the last time you sat down and wrote a letter by hand? It must be quite a rare event these days – with emails and messaging being dominant. On #AncestryHour this week, Frances Thompson was interested to hear from anyone who has letters in their family archive. She does – 100s of them! They were written between 10 siblings (born from 1868 to 1884) and she explores them and their stories in her podcasts at 100 Years of Cox. The earliest correspondence I have are a few

On #AncestryHour this week (Twitter, Tuesdays 7-8pm BST) I mentioned my blog post, Tragedy & Loss, about the death of my 2x great-grandmother, Eleanor Hick (nee Williams) in 1872 shortly after giving birth, leaving her husband James Hick with a young family of 6 children, including a baby girl. The conversation turned to what had happened to the children afterwards, and also to whether James had remarried – a common, and practical, solution in such circumstances in those days

I rashly accepted a challenge on Twitter’s #AncestryHour this week! We’d been discussing those common surnames which tend to get side-lined to the “too difficult list” because it’s so hard to pin down who’s who – names like Smith or Brown and Welsh names like Jones, Davies, Williams, Evans and Roberts. Throwing down the gauntlet I can’t quite remember how it happened now, but after a bit of banter with fellow blogger, Jane Hough (allthosebefore.org) about being brave enough t

I’m currently listening to the audiobook version of In the Family Way, by Jane Robinson. It’s a fascinating account of illegitimacy and society’s attitude towards it from WWI to the 1960s. Coincidentally, on Monday (23rd November) it’s the anniversary of the marriage between Emma Shelley, my 2x great-grandmother, and George Wenlock (not my 2x great-grandfather) in 1876. I say “coincidentally” because Emma was part of the first illegitimacy story I came across when I began my

Alfred Joseph Saunders, my husband’s grandfather – pictured here with his wife Caroline and daughter Eunice Irene – joined the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) in May 1916. Officially he was assigned to the “ship” President II but this wasn’t a ship on the high seas but a land-based reference for administration purposes. Alfred was not a pilot but a carpenter and his joinery skills would surely have been in demand maintaining aircraft, given the nature of their basic constructi

I’ve reinstated my Five Minute Memories daily habit. I have a list of grandparents and great aunts on my iPad and each day I jot down something I remember about them. I’ve recently added myself to the list, to encourage me to record my own childhood memories. It was a subject discussed on #AncestryHour recently - that we shouldn’t ignore ourselves as an important part of our family history story. Here are a few items from my list: Grandparent memories My paternal grandmother,

It was a transport theme on this week's #ancestryhour. Followers posted pictures of their ancestors beside an eclectic selection of boats, cars, bikes and motorcycles. So I thought I'd adopt the idea and dig into my own photo archives for a few photographs on a similar theme. You may recognise the photo of my dad in his 1937 2 stroke Morgan, which I wrote about in my post If Only I'd Kept... Dad had once owned a motorbike (also pictured) but changed to a car after he came off

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 the Workhouse and Escape from the Workhouse), I discovered that my great-grandparents, Frances and Edward Colley, had had two children who'd died as babies. Coincidentally on Twitter's #AncestryHour this week (7-8pm on Tuesday evenings), one of the topics under discussion concerned keeping paper records of something that hadn't made sense, or

Last week my copy of the Family History Record Book devised by professional genealogist, Sheridan Parsons, arrived and I spent the weekend filling it in. The book's designed to be a handy reference and summary of your family history research, not only helping you identify where you've reached but see where there are gaps in your journey e.g. unknown dates, certificates not yet purchased, information not yet gathered and so on. The pages are arranged so that couples are on the

I crawled into the back of the loft the other day (no mean feat, I have to say!) and dug out the carrier bag of my late dad’s cine films. I want to get them digitised so all the family can view them. There are 17 four-inch spools, dating from 1961 to 1973. For Dad’s 80th birthday some years ago, we rented a cottage in the beautiful village of Lacock in Wiltshire, pictured below ("our" cottage is in the right-hand photo), and arranged a family gathering, where we set up the ol

The family historian's greatest frustration - unnamed old family photographs! When we came across a fabulous Victorian photograph album belonging to my husband's late parents, we were very excited to find the photos were labelled on the back. Not only was the name of the sitter written down but also their date of birth and the date the photograph was taken. But disappointingly this only applied to the photos on the first couple of pages. The remainder - more than 30 - were un