My Family

That picture is of my Great, Great, Great Grandmother, Phillis Semark. After months of work on one branch of my family tree I had a breakthrough on Christmas Eve, discovering many more ancestors. It's amazing... she gave birth to a boy who fathered a girl who was the mother of a boy who fathered my Mum. And my Nan was living in the same village as her back in the forties. Thing is... my Nan hasn't any idea who she is, barely knowing anyone beyond my Grandfathers mother in fact. It's a bit weird to think my family have lost so much of our family history even though most of us have grown up with people who were part of it.

When I was growing up in Snodland (and beyond) I was taught that my family had Spanish blood, German blood, Scottish blood... we were a cosmopolitan family with a mysterious past. But I've discovered through my research that this is far from the truth. Not only is our past remarkably unmysterious but it's reassuringly dull. 90% of the ancestors I've discovered so far were born in, lived in and died in Kent. Even as far back as the 15th Century. Those who weren't came from other parts of Britain (given some of the interbreeding among my family in the past thanks to the small hamlets they lived in this brought some much needed fresh genes to the family blood line!). And what is really shocking is that those families I grew up near like the Schoolings and the Townsends weren't just neighbours... they were my relatives.

It makes me quite proud to know that the place of my birth, Kent, has been the place of birth for much of my family for most of recorded history. There's not many people around who can say that!