In 2002, I became curious about my Father’s family.
No real idea why except that no-one in our family ever talked about previous generations. Nothing. Nothing about my grandparents’ parents, no photos, no real stories. so when the 1901 census became the first one to be digitised, I looked up my paternal grandfather and found not only him but his whole family including my five great Aunts and my great grand parents. Well, I just had to find out more didn’t I? And I’ve never stopped. I have gone from idle curiosity to full on historian.
Researching family history is just like being a detective really. The further I’ve gone on, the more curious I’ve become. And I’m sure others like me will recognise that slight quickening of the heart when you find a connection, a surname, a recurring address, a name that goes on through the generations …”could that be “my” Lydia/Annie/Hannah?”
I have researched both my Mother’s and my Father’s sides of my family. I find it endlessly intriguing, interesting and fascinating and I have found myself becoming increasingly sucked in. According to one of the Society of Genealogists’ Newsletters from last year, this is known as “Genealogical Attention Deficit Disorder” – otherwise known as the freedom to pursue whatever looks interesting …
On both sides, I find my ancestors are firmly anchored in Southwark in south London. Borough to be precise on the south side of the River Thames. My Father’s family were Tailors mostly. Always in Southwark (until the 1930s when my great great grandfather – who lived to be 98 – moved to live with his daughter and her husband in Croydon) sometimes a little bit further away, maybe Lambeth. And some further into the City of London, Cannon Street and Holborn for instance, when those were residential areas rather than the commercial districts we know today. Both my parents’ families have been in and around Southwark since the beginning of the 19th Century. Mum’s family were dockers and lightermen or labourers working on or near the Thames. Mostly all casual labourers from very humble stock.
I have had my Ethnicity DNA done. With the preponderance of Irish surnames I have discovered on both sides of my family, I am not surprised to find I am 55% Irish.
Here are my results:
| Area | Ethnicity Estimate % |
| Ireland – specifically Munster (County Cork) | 55 |
| Scandinavia | 17 |
| Western Europe | 11 |
| Iberian Peninsula | 8 |
| Great Britain – specifically Southern England | 8 |
| Low Confidence Regions – likely Finland/Northwest Russia | <1 |
Where the results are specific (in my case Cork and Southern England) it means that I have relatives who lived in this region in the last couple of hundred years. I’ve yet to locate my Scandinavian forebears, likewise any from the Iberian Peninsula. It all seems a bit exotic for a girl from South London.
I am a Member of the Society of Genealogists, the East Surrey Family History Society (Bermondsey and Borough fell under the regulation of the County of Surrey until the formation of the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark in the local government reorganisation of 1900) and the Catholic History Society. I regularly attend workshops and talks at Southwark Cathedral on the history of Southwark and Borough generally.
Although I was born and grew up in London, I have moved away now but I live close enough to London to go back there regularly and I am fortunate that most of both sides of my family lived in a small area of London that it is easy to visit. I often find myself wading through overgrown graveyards, wandering up and down busy London streets looking for locations at which my family lived and researching areas as they were in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
The discovery of my Midlands antecedents has led me to plan a visit to the Midlands to both look at the areas in which they lived and research the local Parish Registers which are held centrally in Worcester. I now include the Maidstone area of Kent on my travels too since the discovery of family firmly grounded in that area for decades in the 18th century.
As well as my own family, I have also undertaken research for other people.
Linda Swinburne Family History Blog 