Family History Research
Introduction
This is the repository of my family history research. I have been researching my family history on and off for 15 years. Over this time I have gathered information on over 700 people. Most of this material exists offline, but over time I will transfer all the data onto this site (except, of course, information on living individuals).
I publish my data on this site for several reasons. The most important reason is to provide my relatives with a convenient way to track the progress of my research. I also hope that by publishing a free and well referenced body of work my chances of linking with other researchers is greatly increased. If you identify any connections between your research and mine please contact me.
Browse the genealogies
Please browse my genealogical data by selecting a name from the surname list in the right-hand sidebar. To better understand how the genealogies fit together you might like to refer to the ancestor chart.
Research interests
I have long been interested in history in general, and archaeology and social histories in particular. I am most interested in investigating the social histories of my relatives and ancestors. This means more than just gathering names, dates and places and then formatting them into a tree or GEDCOM file. It is more challenging to investigate the social context in which my relatives lived and build a story from that.
I am most interested in researching the Welsh side of my family since that is the one I know least about and it's the most difficult to investgate (there being seemingly only five surnames in Wales). I am also researching the Stone and Pratt families (Sussex), a branch of the McMurtie family (Girvan, Australia and New Zealand) and the Hayes and Christian families of Bourne, Lincolnshire and New Zealand.
Presenting the data
I have opted to present my data using the Hypertext Indented Narrative method, as described by Mark Humphrys. This method makes the data more readable than a chart and allows the reader to better examine indivduals within their family context, or within variable resolutions. Well marked-up text (which this site aims to present) is also easier for search engines to index, and hopefully easier for other researchers to locate.