The beginning

I started researching my family in January 2006, a first cousin, Jean Alice HORNCASTLE (1935-2005) had died in September and my sister thought that she might be the last of the Horncastles. Both of us had been considering our family history so we got together and I wrote down everything about the family we could remember. I remember our sense of shock when we realised that we did not know the names of our grandparents!

We pooled our documents and photographs which we had shared after our parents' deaths and I scanned them all and started investigating our family history.

Our timing was fortunate, Ancestry had just released the UK 1901 census and allowed its partial use for free for a month, FreeBMD was making good progress and we had our parents' maariage certificate which gave us the names of our grandfathers. I was computer literate, we already had broadband access and I had time.

Almost all my research has been done online but I have also met up with several of my distant relatives both via email and in the flesh. Much of my tree has been developed from contacts via GenesReunited which is well worth the £10/year membership. The exchange of information is vital to family history research but must be done with caution. Fortunately, I have only come across a few 'grabbers'.

My sister and I have also had fun visiting places associated with our family in England and on the Continent.