This website celebrates the myriad people who have made my husband, Michael, our sons, Ralph and Adrian, and me what we are.
An interesting mix of Cornish, West Country, Midlands and London, our ancestors, with their combined skills, could have catered for our every need.
We have hatters, shoemakers, tailors, dressmakers and shirtmakers. Our framework knitters could have supplied us with hosiery and silk gloves. We have farmers, millers, grocers; we have saddlers, coopers, joiners; we have carpenters, ironmoulders and engineers. One even played the serpent in church.
There are stories about some of them which hint at dark deeds. What about a 26GGF (William de Tracey) who murdered Thomas à Becket? Or Cornish cousins who struck gold in Colorado, each later to be murdered in separate incidents in Telluride, the town where Butch Cassidy staged his first bank robbery?
Among the interesting relatives we've discovered are Mary Ann Brailsford, who planted the first Bramley Seedling apple tree, John Spilsbury, who invented the first jigsaw puzzle, William Butler, who worked with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, later to own a tar distillery, William's grandson, John Henry Iles, who built Dreamland at Margate, and Rowena Cade, who founded the Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
And who could resist mentioning that their Grand Uncle Archie Waring married Hannah Booth, Florence Nightingale's cousin?
Living relatives include a couple of actors, Jeremy Northam and Julian Wadham, artists Jonathan Yeo, who recently painted a critically acclaimed portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh, and Patrick Brill, aka Bob and Roberta Smith, now a Royal Academician, whose work was shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth, and Tim Rich, a dendrologist, who, in a single morning in 2007, took seeds from two plants, thereby preserving the flora of the entire continent of Antarctica.
Maritime links include Sir Roger Grenville, Captain of the Mary Rose, his son, Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge and Amy Grenville, an aunt who married Sir Francis Drake's uncle, not forgetting our cousin, Roderick Davis, the Olympic gold-medallist yachtsman.
The surnames of all our direct ancestors are shown in upper case and to make searching easier, I’ve added the relevant family name to each story title.
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