Gemma

My own family tree research started with a passing comment my father mentioned one Christmas about my many-times-great-grandparents being friends with Jane Austen. One evening, in that grey period between Christmas and New Year's when you don’t know what day it is or whether the bins need to go out, I created an Ancestry account.

Adding in the details I knew, I found the great-grandparents from the story, but there was one issue... They were married three years after my direct ancestor was born, leading me to Charlotte, my 6×GG, who had been written out of history after her death. It was actually the second wife who had been friends with Jane Austen.

So that is how Jane Austen indirectly rewrote my family tree and led me to find the other forgotten woman!

I kept hunting, travelling back in time, finding people born during the Crusades and others who died on them. Somewhere along the way, the search stopped being about remarkable ancestors and became about ordinary people whose stories had quietly disappeared.

My search took me to Fleet Street in the 1750s, where my 7×GG Elizabeth, recently widowed, apprenticed her son (my 6×GG) to herself. Finding that document, complete with her signature, remains one of my favourite discoveries.

Another branch led me to Hampstead in the 1880s, where 18-year-old Hannah, newly orphaned, took on the family farrier business before marrying and starting her own family.

And that leads me here. Hannah's daughter Doris (my great-great-aunt) arrived at Long Grove in 1938 and, after her death in 1941, was buried in Horton Cemetery.

Tracing Doris's story opened a new chapter in my research. Whether I'm researching my own family or someone else's, I want to look beyond the dates on a census or baptism record and understand the social history, circumstances and small details that shaped ordinary lives. My hope is these stories bring forgotten people back into view - not simply as names on a family tree.