Transcription brick wall smashed!

There’s nothing I love more than a madcap gallop down the decades, seeing just how far I can go on one ancestor’s line before I have to take a tug on the reins. So with the Tonge family still largely

QMargaret Woodhall (née Smithson), born c1827 Liverpool (according to the 1851 census), was the sister of my great grandfather, James Murray Smithson, born c1835 in Edinburgh. Their father was William

MEMORIAL INSCRIPTIONS Amanda Leedham Pen & Sword, 176 pages, £14.99 Pen & Sword has now published more than 100 guides and handbooks for family historians, a remarkable achievement, and there’s no sig

Poring over maps of Bolton, Ordnance Survey old and new, I’m wondering why my great-grandfather John Tonge and his family moved house quite so often. To help, I’ve drawn up a list, in date order, of a

The creation of a quadrangle of Jacobean-style houses ignited enthusiasm in the British press in 1924. This hamlet of nine thatched homes was dubbed “the all-electric village” and stood in Grey Wood n

ANTHONY ADOLPH is a professional genealogist and the author of 11 books KATHERINE COBB is a member of AGRA based in Somerset NICOLA MORRIS is a genealogist based in Dublin (timeline.ie) JAYNE SHRIMPTO