My father died in 1997. I was 54.
My father was only three years old when his father died in 1914. He was the youngest of six children born between 1901 and 1910. In 1914 at the time for my grandfather's death his wife, my grandmother was 33.
What seems to me to be remarkable is that my paternal grandfather was born in 1856. I never knew him of course but I find it difficult to believe that just two generations takes me back to the middle of the nineteenth century.
Before my father's death in 1996 he started a family tree. He never really got beyond his immediate relatives and mostly those still alive at the time. He never found his parents marriage; he assumed that they were married after the birth of his eldest sister in so only searched before 1901.
I picked up where he left off and was hooked. At the time - late 90s records were beginning to appear on the internet but, compared to now, there was very little. The details of the story are in my family history still an ongoing project. Most of my early research was done at record archives.
The ancestral search has continued beyond my own family. I have helped friends and acquaintances who have started trying to discover their roots but often hit a brick wall.
We, my wife Christine and I, moved to France in 2002 and I continued my genealogical research. Then I had a break. I stopped getting results so decided to wait and that turned out to be a few years. There were a few cursory searches and the odd contact with possible connections but not much until recently. We returned to the UK in 2014.
I run a computer skills group for the local U3A (University of the Third Age)** and this led to taking a target based approach for the participants. Computer skills aren't use much without an objective.
This coincided with a growing interest amongst members of the U3A in family history. So there genealogy met computer skills.
I may get bored with my own family history but will never tire of those of others. I feel sometimes rather guilty; a peeping Tom; voyeuristic. But it is fascinating. No skeletons to uncover here about other people's cupboards but there is more to tell about mine as my family history unfolds.
With my interest rekindled I discovered a Futurelearn course. A Family History course run by the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.
That led to me applying successfully to join their Post Graduate course "Genealogical, Palaeographic, and Heraldic Studies" with the same university. I have recently completed the first year. It has been absorbing, bewildering at times but certainly it has provided me with significantly greater knowledge and awareness of what is available. And, if you think there is a lot of information online, bear in mind that it has been suggested to me by two experienced and eminent archivists that only about 5% of the information potentially useful to genealogists, is available on the internet.
It is now 1 September 2018 and I have successfully completed the Post Graduate Certificate where my knowledge expanded significantly. It taught me that I did not know as much as I thought. Most of all I have learned where else to look in the warren of resources or should I say warrens. There are many of them to burrow deeply.
I am in the process of building a new website to advertise my professional services. Keep a look out at https://www.rootsandgenes.com. It will also include a blog which will consist mainly of contextual historical events that will be used alongside clients' websites. For me it is the historical context of our ancestors' lives that is makes sense of the way they lived, worked and in the decisions they made.
Michael Turner
2 October 2016
Updated 23 August 2017
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