Are you interested in your British family heritage? Did your ancestors have fascinating stories to tell? Did they travel overseas to live in lands far away from their homes? Who are your people and just what series of events led you to be born when and where you were?
This is your chance to commission research that can be of great personal interest to you and your family. Bring them together with fascinating discoveries, or be part of a wider community of people who share their past.
One of our specialisms is that we can add to the genealogy and outline a definitive historical context that can bring the past vividly into the present.
We use a variety of subscription and non-subscription services when conducting all of our research. We also use primary source archives and materials to further strengthen the research. We are familiar with a great many research centres in the UK, such as the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, the National Records for Scotland and National Library in Edinburgh, and the National Archive in London.
Our research can provide:
- Copies of historic documents
- Detailed report that provides details of your ancestry
- Professional family tree charts
- Personal accounts
- Narratives about your ancestors’ lives
- Transcription of old hand written documents
- Photographs or moving images of ancestors and places and people relevant to them
All or some of the above may apply to your situation which may also benefit from a particular medium used to present the findings. We would strongly urge you to contact us so that – at no cost to you – together we can chat through exactly what it is you wish to achieve and what you expect. We can then design a bespoke package to suit your requirements.
This makes a unique gift, that the whole family and beyond can appreciate at a very affordable cost. But more than that, it can also serve as a legacy document for generations to come.
The following example is work completed by us and highlights the type of research that we are able to provide.
The vast majority (around 80%) of the UK population in Edwardian times was ‘working-class’. Since there was little money for luxuries such as family photographs, and ‘the lower orders’ were unlikely to be featured in newspapers, finding pictorial evidence is frequently demanding. But occasionally, lateral thinking, persistence, and a little bit of serendipity come together and the result is historical gold dust.
Beginning with Florence [x]’s name, date of birth (1897), and fragments of family memories, we were able to trace the teenage Florence’s employers. As an aristocratic and garlanded military family, they made occasional appearances in contemporary newspapers through which we identified their address at the time. Unfortunately, nobody at the local history groups or archives in the area recalled Florence’s now long-departed family. However, a lengthy keyword-trawl (using the employer’s address, and name) through social media groups eventually turned up a series of early 1920s photographs from the local archives featuring the family’s infant grandson. Just as clearly visible, but utterly uncredited and anonymous was Florence dressed in her nursemaid’s uniform. Double-checking with the only known surviving family there was no doubt that this was the same young woman, just a year or two after the family portrait had been taken.
The family photo we were given to work from (Florence, middle of the back row)
Some of the photographs we discovered of Florence as a domestic servant just a year or two after the family photograph was taken.
This is the briefest summary of the detective work involved in this project. Please contact us if you would like to discuss how we might be able to help you, if you would like a more detailed report of the methodology, or if you are interested in how this story developed.
French Phillips Historical Consultancy 