Real stories

Extraordinary real-life stories of ancestry research to inspire you

Mary Anning

Family hero Mary Anning was my ancestor

Sister Helene (R) and Monica

Family hero My great aunt is the ghost nun who haunts Croydon

Debra Barnes' mother Paulette Szklarz as a baby with her family

Reader story A twist of fate saved my mother from Auschwitz

Birthday party in India

My Family Album Some of my favourite photographs

VE Day celebrations in Cowley

My Family Album Meet my family from Cowley

Bronislawa Kokoszka's ID card

Family hero Nana and Grandad escaped the Nazis

Fred Williams fishing

Eureka moment DNA solved the mystery of my Dad's adoption

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