Real stories

Extraordinary real-life stories of ancestry research to inspire you

Amanda Webb

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

Sid’s family hero Ernest Payne is pictured here with his trainer Arthur Hale. He later married Arthur’s younger sister Dorothy in 1908

Family hero My relation won a gold medal at the 1908 Olympics

Rescue workers carrying a stretcher reach the surface of the colliery on 29 May 1951

Family hero My relation was killed in the Easington Colliery Disaster

Henry and Annie Chard

Eureka moment DNA exposed my ancestor's double life

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