Real stories

Extraordinary real-life stories of ancestry research to inspire you

Ivan Watson's great great aunt Mary Sangster McDonald, photographed c.1892 with her first husband Peter Watson

Family hero My Scottish ancestor was Queen Mary’s private nurse

Huguenot Quentin Coquard's 1764 marriage record

Eureka moment I traced my French ancestry in seconds with this website

Descendants of the Alicandro, Anginotti, Canetti, Carboni, Pellegrina, Pelligrino (Julie Fawcett, far right), Persighetti and Saccomando families in the former church of St Vincent, Sheffield

Reader story I reunited the descendants of Sheffield's Little Italy community

Private R.A.S. Pagani aged 19

Family hero Dad escaped Dunkirk and the Death Railway

This old family photograph from 1909 shows William Williams, seated left, at the wedding of his daughter Harriet

Eureka moment I found my mystery ancestor through DNA links

Christina Longden with (left to right) her father Brian, nephew Eesaa Robert Rasheed, and brother Steven. Brian is wearing his 2x great grandfather Robert ‘Reschid’ Stanley’s fez

Reader story My ancestor was one of the first British Muslims

Amanda Webb

Family hero My ancestor owned the land where Richard III was buried

Peter Ameglio with his father Giacomo (Jack), stepmother Antonietta and half-sister Rita

Eureka moment A scribbled address helped us find my GI grandfather

Polly Button author Stephen Moore and his wife Tina

Reader story My ancestor was murdered by her lover

Bertrand Clark tennis player

Family hero I'm related to the first black tennis player to play at Wimbledon

Cissy Lecky First World War nurse

Family hero My great aunt kept her WW1 nursing a secret

Annie Gulvin, gardener

Family hero My grandmother blazed a trail for female gardeners

Philip Frank, back row, with family 1900

Eureka moment Ellis Island held the key to my great uncle's wartime death

Adrian Stone with his Jamaican family tree

Reader story My family came here with the Windrush generation

Alf and Harold PoWs

My family hero Secret diaries revealed Dad's WW2 story