Family History & Genealogy

Family history is most valuable when it moves beyond names and dates. Used carefully, genealogy can recover class, occupation, religion, migration, kinship, loss, ambition and the communities in which lives took shape.

My genealogical writing uses archival evidence, family papers, census returns, newspapers and oral testimony to reconstruct lives which rarely entered formal biography. The aim is to place individuals back into the social worlds that formed them.

Start Here

These three essays provide useful starting points for the way I approach genealogy: reconstructing a life from records, recovering overlooked people from photographs, and connecting family history to wider social history.

William Jones of Glandwr Hall, 1792–1882: From Dolgellau to the City of London and Back Again, a detailed reconstruction of one life across law, migration, property and Welsh identity.
Nancy Laurie (1840–1915): The Governess Behind a Shrewsbury Photograph, showing how a named Victorian photograph can open a route into work, class, household life and memory.
Richard Emmett: From Salford Poverty to the British Army and Crewe, following an ordinary Victorian life through poverty, military service, migration and family responsibility.

Reconstructing Individual Lives

Mary Anne Wilkins Lucas, Later Middleton Evans: The Woman Who Helped Give Llandrindod Wells Its Hospital, recovering a woman whose philanthropy and family connections placed her within the civic history of Victorian Llandrindod Wells.
Arthur Owen Jones: The Welsh Cricketer Who Captained England, tracing a celebrated sporting life back through family, place and the social world that formed him.
Nancy Laurie (1840–1915): The Governess Behind a Shrewsbury Photograph, reconstructing a governess’s life from a photograph, census evidence and the households in which she worked.
Sister Annunciata Briffa, A Forgotten Photograph and the Quiet Power of a Religious Life, using family memory and a surviving image to recover a life shaped by faith, vocation and service.
David Jenkins (1850–1891): A Farm Labourer’s Life and Death in Rural Wales, reconstructing the precarious working life of a Victorian agricultural labourer through family and newspaper evidence.
Richard Emmett: From Salford Poverty to the British Army and Crewe, tracing the long movement of one working-class life across industrial England, imperial service and family settlement.

Families, Place and Welsh Inheritance

William Jones of Glandwr Hall, 1792–1882: From Dolgellau to the City of London and Back Again, showing how one family story can illuminate migration, profession, property and the making of status.
Trevor Owen Davies (1895–1966): A Farm Boy at Christ Church, Oxford, following a Montgomeryshire farming family into education, ministry and wider Welsh public life.
Tea and Waterfalls: John and Jane Waters of the Llyfnant Valley, recovering a rural family through landscape, tourism, work and the social history of a secluded Montgomeryshire valley.
Esgair Llywelyn and the Last Prince of Wales: A Montgomeryshire Family Legend, examining how family tradition, landscape and national memory can become intertwined across generations.

Family History as Public History

“My Relations Are Part of a Rich Tapestry of Welsh Heritage”: My Feature in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, reflecting on how long-term family research can reach a wider public audience and contribute to Welsh historical memory.
Off the Rails: Why I Wrote the Story of Alfred Jenkins, explaining how the life of one railway worker became a wider study of occupation, family memory and working-class Britain.

Further essays will be added here as the family-history and genealogy archive grows.

Explore Books and Research

My genealogical books place family reconstruction within the social history of work, faith, migration and community. Explore my books and research.

For family-history, archive or research enquiries, Contact Antony.