The Family History Project

Meet William Bridges.   William was born in 1825 in south Hampshire.  His brother, Peter, was one of my great-great-great grandfathers.  William is one of the latest additions to the enormous family history project I have taken on.

My great-great-great grandfather's brother, William Bridges, born c.1825

It started reasonably enough, a few questions to parents and grandparents, as I was after a simple tree diagram of my great, and maybe great-great, grandparents.  Instead, the project ballooned as I found my appetite becoming more and more insatiable for new information.  I wanted to know where, exactly, I fitted in to all these illustrious ancestors.  The answer is still clear as mud, but it is slowly revealing itself through families of railway workers, farmers, shoe makers and plumbers, a family history traced back, on some lines, to the reign of Henry VIII.


My grandfather Derek and great-grandfather Cecil Major at Major's Garage, Newton Abbot, 1920s

Over the past three months I have discovered things that I never thought I'd know.  The family history of my late grandfather, who was left in an orphanage when he was only ten, and who's history nobody knew anything about; a great-great-great-grandfather who shot a woman dead after mistaking her for a deer; an accident-prone Dartmoor farmer who appeared many times in the local newspaper with broken bones and bruised limbs; a great-grandfather who was stung by a scorpion during the First World War.  The stories are endless and more fascinating that anything we could ever invent.

Walter H A Sillence, First World War soldier and scorpion sting victim 

As it turns out, this project is merely getting started, and there are still many places to visit, maps to examine, newspapers to read through, and records to decipher before I begin to get a proper insight into the lives and times of all the people who went into making me.  In the meantime, feel free to look at my evolving family history photo album:

https://picasaweb.google.com/Nichgull/FamilyHistoryProject?authkey=Gv1sRgCJCWvLb6j-fGGg

This is the single most absorbing project I've ever taken on.  I'm looking forward to sharing some of it with you over the coming months!