Genealogical and historical information and links for anyone researching their ancestors in England and the British Isles

 Home ==> About the site

As the last millenium drew to a close I was looking at my past and the events which had brought me to where I was in my life and with the aim of bringing some structure to my memories I wrote down the important events and in which year they had taken place.

When I had got back to my birth in the 1960s I decided to do the same for my parents and in doing so found out how little I knew about their lives. And when I had got back to their births in the 1930s I tried to do the same for my grandparents and realised that I knew almost nothing about their lives. And then when I got back to their births I stopped.

I had no idea of what happened before my grandparents were born. What little knowledge I had ended in 1900 and everything before that year was a mystery to me.

I had once visited the village church where my grandparents were married and seen the house nearby where my grandmother was born. My grandfather had told me that we were related to Montgomery, but that was the sum of my knowledge about my family history, and at the time I wasn't particularly interested.

But now having lived abroad for a number of years and having reached a certain age I became inquisitive about my roots and finding out what had happened to my family, not only back into the distant past but up until the present day.

I wanted to not only find out who my ancestors had been and how they had lived but to see if my family history could throw any light on my own life today and on the patterns of behaviour which seem to have been passed down from generation to generation. That was when I became interested in genealogy.

And so with the help of documents that my grandfather had left behind I started my search. Living abroad I was forced to use the internet but on visits to England visited record offices and the villages and churches which were connected to my family.

I have now gathered information on different branches of my family, some of it back into the 17th century, often with the help of newly found relations.


I found the connection to Montgomery and another one to the spy Kim Philby.

I found among my direct ancestors people from all walks of life; country clergymen and Oxford graduates, Victorian London cab drivers and agricultural labourers. Civil servants in the East India Company, jewellers to the King and Queen of Portugal, a stone mason who helped build the Crystal Palace, dyers working in the East End and a Scottish Lord. I found schoolmasters, dressmakers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights and postmen.

I found ancestors from Cornwall to Yorkshire, from Liverpool to London, from the great industrial cities of the north to the small rural hamlets of the south and west, from Scotland, from Wales.  I found ancestors born in Lisbon in Portugal and Gdansk in Prussian Poland and Huguenot refugees from France. I found connections further afield from North America to St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, from South Africa to India and further still to New Zealand.
I traced in my own family history the 19th century migration from small villages to the cities and the subsequent waves of emigration to (and immigration from) all corners of the world. I found in my family history the history of the British Isles.

Martin Bradley, 2003





Genealogy is a fascinating journey and as in life no one knows where it will take them.

I hope this site helps you in your search.

Martin Bradley, 2024


In 2003 - the year after I launched this website
- the US Family Tree Magazine chose it as one of
the 10 best personal websites for that year

.

Home Genealogy in England