What secrets lurk in your family’s past?
THE BBC's hugely successful programme Who Do You Think You Are? has tapped into a growing fascination with family history. Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman's emotion as he discovered his maternal great-great-grandmother was denied poor relief because she had an illegitimate child made for memorable TV.
As did Stephen Fry's discovery that his maternal relatives were Jewish and perished in the Holocaust.
The Islington-based Society of Genealogists is hoping more people will kick-start research into their family trees at their Family History Show this month.
Genealogy officer Else Churchill is among a team at the society, based in Goswell Road, who help people trace their relatives - aided by a vast resource of historical records.
"If you have the kind of mind that likes crossword puzzles and detective stories and you enjoy the challenge of putting things together, then family history is for you," says Else, who first researched her own family because she was tired of being asked if she was related to Winston Churchill (she isn't).
"There has been a steady growth of interest - the society's membership doubled and trebled in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and the internet and powerful PCs have made collaborative work of the society and the hard work of volunteers to index records more accessible," she said.
But she adds that not all family history is internet-based.
"There comes a time when you want to check original data or hold the document that your ancestor held and perhaps see the marginal notes made by the vicar in the register. It's unearthing that kind of gold nugget, that gives you the thrill."
The society started in 1911 as "a gentleman's club researching connections to the landed gentry".
But Else, who also runs courses in researching family history, says the "genealogy of the submerged" - the poor and disenfranchised is equally interesting.
"Everyone wants an interesting person. A rogue or a vagabond is great provided it's a few generations back. Stirring up sensitive stuff about what gran was doing in the Blitz is not great. But the odd risqué illegitimacies are the things that make family history come alive. When things go wrong - when they at the assizes or have to claim poor relief - it brings history alive."
The show is run in conjunction with 1837 online, one of a host of fast-expanding internet sites devoted to genealogy.
Business development manager Elaine Collins says it is named after the year that civil registration of births, marriages and deaths (BMDs) began in England and Wales.
Launched three years ago, the "pay per view" site includes census information, military records, BMDs for British nationals overseas and electoral rolls.
"After porn, family history is the next most searched for category on the internet," she says. "People get gripped by it and spend hours online. It really sucks you in."
Elaine says the BMD records on the site are "the key to family history" and were previously used mainly to trace the beneficiaries of wills. But the computerisation of millions of records and the accessibility of the web has opened up family research to the masses.
The website 1837 online has 650,000 registered users and 500,000 visitors a month with a 20 per cent boost when Who Do You Think You Are? is broadcast.
Elaine says 90 per cent of users are tracing their family history, but others include adopted children searching for birth families or people looking for lost relatives.
"I used it at Christmas to check the names of my friends' children to write in their cards!" she says.
"Years ago, the only people interested in genealogy were from titled families with a distinguished history that was probably well-recorded. But the internet has made people more aware that searching for family history is for everyone."
She says researching personal history can spark a wider interest in the past.
"Once you start thinking about your ancestors and the context in which they lived it becomes a personal way into social history.
"You might see the original documents that someone signed a marriage register with an 'X', or lived in a house with eight other families and get a sense of how people lived in those days.
"It is an addictive feeling to solve problems and think laterally. Tracing family trees appeals to that treasure hunt mentality, the piecing together so that people are not just names and dates, but come alive.
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