This blog will, over time, feature stories about my family, starting from my four grandparents:

• James Aaron Stocking (1901-1965)
• Jessie Ephgrave (1901-1974)
• Horace Brown (1901-1994) and
• Elizabeth Sarah Fage (1901-2002)

and back through the generations, with an occasional hop forward to more recent times. The photo at the top of this page is of my grandparents’ wedding: James and Jessie Stocking, 1929.

I try to research families as a whole, including siblings, spouses (and to some extent, spouses’ families), children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. It’s a big task but I enjoy the detective work, how it allows me a glimpse of life in earlier generations and takes me down side-tracks of history and to familiar and new places.

My research started 40 years ago with family conversations and drawing rudimentary three-four generation family trees on paper. More followed: visits to county archives to scour microfiche images of parish records and local newspapers; significant expenditure on birth, marriage and death certificates from the General Record Office (GRO), and then more and more research online. Since taking early retirement in 2018, I’ve started to check each fact and source for each person – and added lots more.

For me, this site is an aide-memoire and a helpful check on what I have – and have not yet – discovered. Writing the ‘stories’ also highlights gaps or connections that I might miss simply by adding data to my family tree. I hope it also offers something of interest to others, both in terms of the stories themselves, and the sources used to explore them.

Navigation

The most recent blogposts are featured on the home page. At the bottom of each is a set of tags which can be clicked to find like-posts. There are also previous and next post links, and links to related posts. The latter are created automatically, so it may not be obvious what the link is!

The SEARCH box appears on all pages and will find any post featuring the searched-for word or phrase, or part-word/phrase.

The All Stories menu option lists titles and short summaries of all blogposts, in reverse chronological order of when they were posted.

The Direct Ancestry menu lists posts specifically about my direct ancestors (rather than other members of their families), with a thumbnail sketch of each. It’s a bit untidy, sorry.

Use the Filter by Category drop-down menu to find posts featuring specific surnames (direct lines only), places, generations and other key content.

The Sources menu gives an overview of the sources I’ve used most in research for this blog and will be updated over time.

Caveats

I have tried to re-check my facts and sources before posting stories on the blog, but I’m not infallible. I also tend not to post details about people still living, unless they have given their permission. I might, therefore, have more data on more recent generations, but they won’t necessarily feature here.

If you spot an error or, indeed, have additional information from your own sources to supplement mine, please do add a comment at the bottom of the relevant post. I do my best to respond within a few days at most.

Dr Lesly Huxley (also Plumridge, nee Stocking)