Untangling the tonges

Unusually, my story begins at the end with the perplexing death certificate of my great grandfather William Taylor. William died aged 71 in May 1938, in Gosport, Hampshire, and the death was registere

Two baby boys born out of wedlock four months apart. One grew up to be Thomas Tonge, my 2x great-grandfather. The other, William Smith, sadly didn’t fare so well. Last month, when I came across the ba

Family history research can, as we know, take us down many paths with surprising outcomes but I would never in my wildest dreams have thought that it would result in my cousin and I standing on a foot

Q I have a query about my ancestor Henry Clark born in 1893 in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He emigrated to the US in 1922, leaving Liverpool on 10 November 1922 and arriving in Montreal Canada, then he heade

Nellie Sloggett is not a name that gets uttered very often these days, but she is nevertheless a very important figure in the history of folk collection, and someone who should be far better celebrate

Many, many years ago – nearly 60, to be exact – I began to research my family tree. These were the olden days, long before the internet was even a twinkle in a scientist’s eye. My grandfather was able