This website is mostly for telling stories about my ancestors but perhaps a little information about my family tree would also be helpful. I’ve been working on my family tree for over 10 years on Ancestry.co.uk and it now includes over 2500 people.
The section of tree below shows my grandmother Florence May Mott on the left, her parents Ernest and Eliza and 3 further generations of her ancestors. Note that women are recorded with their maiden names, which is the convention in family trees and makes it easier to search for earlier generations on female lines. In a couple of cases I don’t know the woman’s maiden name, but the baptism record has shown that (for example) Henry Mott’s parents were John and Sarah Mott. To find out Sarah’s maiden name I need to locate the record of her marriage to John Mott. More records are being transcribed and made available online all the time so I hope to be able to fill in some of these gaps one day.
My family tree used to be publicly available for anyone to see on the Ancestry website, but a few years ago I experienced a problem with another Ancestry user, who insisted that my Grandad had divorced my Grandma, emigrated to Australia and remarried (to this woman’s Grandmother). I was fairly sure that this hadn’t happened and I suggested that her Grandfather and my Grandfather probably had the same name but were not the same person. I also pointed out that Manchester was a big place and Bolton is not an uncommon name in that region! After a few messages had been exchanged, I realised that she wasn’t interested in what I was saying and just wanted to fill up her tree with people – even if they were the wrong people. She copied some photos of my Grandad and other family members into her tree and they are still there as far as I know. No real harm was done but I learned to be more careful about who gets access to my tree. Of course all family members are very welcome to look at it and any other family historians who might find it useful, so please contact me and I will give you the necessary permissions. So long as you promise not to steal my Grandad!
