In The Footsteps of Your Ancestors

Most people will probably know me from my role as an on-screen expert in VoltageTV’s top-rated “DNA Journey” show on ITV, ITVX, and The Ancestry YouTube Channel , or from one of my live Shows. But I have also been involved as Consulting Genealogist Guide for Ancestry, AncestryUK and AncestryProGenealogists . It’s a bit like an episode of the DNA Journey Programme that you can have for your very own ancestors, and you at the centre of it as the “celebrity”, shown amazing details by Ancestry ProGenealogists, and if you’re really lucky – me – off the TV show!

Huge amounts of research goes into unravelling the mysteries in your family tree, and breaking down and climbing over the brick walls in your research.

Latest Tour

I recently took a lovely couple “Walking In The Footsteps of Their Ancestors” around rural Hampshire and Portsmouth to find a man called Walter who was a soldier in Bohemia, an explorer and founder of Colonial America, an Artilleryman in London, and a Lieutenant Governor of Portsmouth, then mysteriously disappeared at the time of the English Civil War. They had already been to other parts of the country finding out about other branches of their ancestors, and now they were reaching right back to the 16th Century with me as their guide.

Forensic Research

The research to find Walter our mystery man from nearly 500 years ago was daunting, and included trawling the State Papers of King Charles I, almost indecipherably stained Parish Registers, painstaking AI enhanced translations of Wills written over 400 years ago in cursive script, and a forensic AI analysis of multiple volumes of early colonial records comparing page by page different transcriptions and later writings, showing what was true, was was feasible, and what had no substance. Then deep research into the characters our mystery man Walter interacted with, which gave us a deep insight into the man, his world, and his likely destiny.

The Church

Along the way, we went to a Church founded nearly 1,500 years ago to convert the ferocious heathen Jutes of Southern England to Christianity, our client stood in the ruins of their ancestor’s Great Hall in their Manor House, sat on the mediaeval pews that would have been graced by the posteriors of their ancestors, and even (with the permission of The Church Warden) rang the Church Bell installed in the Church by her family in the late 1500s, capped off with a superb Family tomb in black and white marble, with life sized effigies of the family and miniature carvings of their children, all with the guidance of the Local Historian and Author, and the Church Warden.

Being in deepest rural England on the hottest day of he year, we simply had to retire to the shady coolness of a 15th century pub for lunch, and gaze into the cool crystal clear waters of the Trout stream running through its garden.

But that was just the beginning.

Portsmouth

After we bade farewell to the village we headed down to the Coast, to Portsmouth, to walk literally in the steps of their ancestor Walter, in one of the few parts of the City which, fortunately for us, wasn’t flattened in World War Two by the Luftwaffe, and still had the original late Mediaeval and Stuart fortifications standing more or less as they looked when Walter was Lieutenant Governor of the City after his return from the Colonies.

We started at the old Garrison Church and the site of the Governor’s House where he would have prayed in the one, and slept in the other, the volunteers had kindly held it open for us as the last visitors of the day, which meant that we had the unique chance to have the place to ourselves while we took it all in.

From the domestic and religious, we mounted the City Walls and first visited the Square Tower, once the Governor’s residence (prior to his house being built) and then converted to a massive gunpowder and arms store during the English Civil War. This was used to negotiate the Royalist garrison’s escape the during the siege of Portsmouth by Parliament, when the Royalist Governor, Walter’s Commander, threatened to blow the tower up and the besiegers and half the town with it! This lead to the Royalist Garrison being allowed to depart in safety aboard a Dutch Ship that had arrived to aid their escape. As a last “hurrah!” the Governor hurled the keys of the Square Tower into the sea as he and his men made their escape, to prevent the enemy from entering the Tower and firing the roof top cannons on them as they departed.

We then walked on along the walls to the Round Tower – the main defensive Tower of the City that held the huge guns that would smash enemy ships approaching from the sea. These gun emplacements were set up and managed by our client’s ancestor Walter, and the gunners trained and commanded by him as well, in addition we saw where a gigantic chain stretched across the sea to nearby Gosport to protect the mainly English Naval base behind it and the guns. We stood and looked out across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, drinking in the the view that Walter was charged to defend during his Lieutenant Governorship, and we fell into that reverie that is felt by Family Historians, when, just for a moment, you feel you’ve become, as I call it “unstuck in time” and are experiencing what your ancestors experienced as though you were standing beside them.

I call this “shaking the fruit out of the Family Tree” – all those stories that put flesh to the bones of dates and places, and conjure up the ancestors who brought you here.

Most gratifyingly we received lovely feedback from the client:

“The day with Paul was amazing. He did an excellent job on connecting the dots with what little information we knew. His drive for answers was a definite plus for my understanding of the family. I would have never been able to learn so much about my father’s side of the family. I can’t thank everybody enough that was involved in my ancestral journey. Everyone exceeded my expectations with their knowledge of my ancestral journey.”