The Internet has done wonders for those of us who are fascinated by family history. Websites, from the granddaddy of them all, the Mormon www.familysearch.org, to the expanding public www.1837online.com and the generous if over-stretched www.freebmd.org.uk, have made it possible with little effort to trace our British forebears at least back to the early 19th century. We can readily search other people’s findings on the web, and email encourages us to make contact with fellow researchers all over the world.

Why this interest in long-dead ancestors ? I wonder if it largely reflects today’s loss of identity, both in who we are and in the places we came from. My own researches in the lovely little village of Chelsworth, helped by one huge stroke of luck, have brought me into touch with dozens of people from as far afield as Canada and New Zealand, who want to know about their roots in Suffolk. One recent contact loves to describe himself as a ‘child of Chelsworth’.

I know that, for me, it is important to establish the reality and nature of my Irish roots. You may have read the late Pete McCarthy’s lovely book ‘McCarthy’s Bar’ – well, I have the same urge to know more about where my mother and my father came from, and how they pitched up in suburban Surrey, far both geographically and emotionally from their family homes in Tyrone and Tipperary. My father, in particular, left copious notes for me to study – but which of his strange stories were fact and which wistful imaginings ? (My mother, always thrifty and watching the pennies, left just one priceless clue, on the back of a cornflake packet – yes, honestly ! – which told me that her grandmother, christened Maria, was always known as Polly; and so I found her.)

I’ve done all the obvious things to trace my own origins, and also those of my Scottish wife Heather, in China and in Banffshire; she’s a second-generation Shanghailander, as they called themselves, with a great story to tell of internment by the Japanese – but that’s another story. I’ve found that they dumped all the Irish censuses once they’d converted all the vital personal details into cold statistics; but I’ve also discovered the wealth of information in the Australian archives. Two teenage great-aunts were sent out, unaccompanied, to Melbourne in 1864, and their death certificates disclose that their mother came from a town in Kilkenny. You won’t find that kind of detail in British records. And now the family lives there in suburban Melbourne, just down the road from Chelsworth Park – you couldn’t make up such a coincidence, but somehow they keep happening !

But back to Suffolk. My great stroke of luck was the gift of an old book in the keeping of Pen Powell, a member of the Pocklington family who’ve been our Lords of the Manor since 1737. The official-looking book documents all the families who were living here in 1870 and contains a photograph of every one of their homes. It was child’s play to tie in all the information with the census carried out just a few months later, in April 1871. So I couldn’t resist putting it all on my first website, which is called www.oldchelsworth.org.uk; and it’s brought me enquiries from all over the world.

You have to be careful, though. Some people, Americans especially, play ridiculous games with the truth in establishing their links to the noble families of England. I call them ‘gunslingers’; they have the rule “If it might have been so, then it must have been so !” My favourite is a lady from Australia who proudly claimed that, from a humble cottage up the lane here in Chelsworth, a son set out to seek his fortune, and became father of three sons: a Bishop of London, a Lord Mayor of London and an Archbishop of Canterbury … The family name was Abbott, and she proclaimed it as the first family of Australia (in the encyclopaedia, alphabetically, that is).

So, what can you do to get started ? First, if you know roughly when and where he was born, find your grandfather’s birth certificate in www.1837online.com. Your grandmother’s likewise, if you know her maiden name, and perhaps get their marriage certificate.. Then search for their families in www..nationalarchives.gov.uk/ which is indexed, albeit much of it in India (a remarkable 78%, according to a Commons answer !). Have a look at the Mormon website, which contains an incredible number of records of christenings, weddings and burials gleaned from parish registers, and also carries the indexed 1881 British census, all for free. A next step is to look at the newly-published and indexed 1861 census, which is also on www.1837online.com.

These websites and others have done wonders, saving us from the tiresome trips to London – Somerset House, Aldwych and now Islington, as well as Kew. But for local records, you really must visit the Suffolk Record Offices in Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Lowestoft; and while there, don’t forget to look for any wills – they give a much better insight into the real person than the rather cold official certificates. And ask for help – they’re really kind and knowledgeable.

Now I’m going back to my own work. I found out that my English great-grandfather had two wives – my great-grandmother, who died young, and then her younger sister Annie. Wasn’t that supposed to be forbidden ? But that led me to Fred Smith’s second family, in Wales; and we’ve met, and it’s been great. But now the 1861 census has shown that Annie wasn’t really her sister at all – she’s described as an orphan, not a daughter of the family – Li’l Orphan Annie, in fact …

And was my father really correct in saying that three uncles joined the British Army and died fighting for the Empire in India ? His own father hated the English – is it not more likely that they were back home in Ireland with the IRA? If only I could find out whether they were in Dublin, in Easter 1916!

Our thanks to Bernard Quinlan from Chelsworth who sent this article in to us. If you have anything which you would like to send in then please email your articles to kerry.burn@onesuffolk.co.uk .