Q & a

Q My ancestor, Charles Hayes, was born on 6 October 1700 in Harrow on the Hill to Charles Hayes and Ann Ewster. He attended University College Cambridge and, described as “one of the Gentlemen of the

I was very interested to read Nicola Johnson’s article exploring the world of stokers in your January 2026 issue. My great grandfather, John Thomas Gray, was a stoker on the HMS Indomitable during the

Q My maternal great great grandfather was called John Budd. The family story is that he was abandoned in an orphanage as a baby and was given his name there. Aged 11, he was said to have been turned o

I was a teenager during the Second World War, although the term teenager was not in use in those days. You were just a lad. What’s more, one often left school and became a worker at age 14, as I did i

As regular readers of this column will know, unusual anomalies in birth, marriage, and death records are far from uncommon. What they do offer, however, is the opportunity to dig a little deeper into

Q Here is a photo (Figure 1) of my great-grandfather George Brighty Pumfrett, taken whilst he was serving as an Officer with the 17th Lancers. The image is taken from a glass plate which my father had