Who Do You Think You Are? — Katarina Johnson-Thompson

 

Last Thursday’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? rounded off the series with athlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s episode.

Katarina was keen to follow her father’s family in the Bahamas, where Katarina herself was born before moving to Liverpool as a small child.

We got a glimpse of Bahamian history — though perhaps if the episode had spent a little more time on this part of the family’s story, it would have made it even better — before following Katarina’s ancestors as they emigrated to Miami in Florida.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Harriet Walter

 

Harriet's ancestor, Marie Carandini;
National Library of Australia / Wikimedia Commons

Last Thursday’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featured actress Harriet Walter, whose family are undeniably posh.

Much of this episode featured on the exploits of an Italian ancestor — the son of a noble family, who had the grandest of educations, but was drawn to ballet and the stage.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Adeel Akhtar

 

Last Thursday’s Who Do You Think You Are? saw Adeel Akhtar exploring his Indo-African roots.

This episode was super-interesting, and covered a part of history that we don’t get to hear about very often, following the Indian community in the heart of Nairobi, Kenya.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Ruth Madeley

Actress Ruth Madeley’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? aired last Thursday, bringing us back from our sports-related break.

Was it worth the wait? Yes!

This episode was amazing.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Joe Swash

 

Joe Swash’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? aired last Tuesday on BBC One — and it was such a good one!

Joe was keen to learn about the Italian side of his family — so that is exactly what this episode focussed on.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Amy Dowden

I had the opportunity, this week, to briefly appear on BBC’s Points of View to discuss this episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

You can see that on iPlayer here, with the WDYTYA? section starting around 8-10 minutes into the programme.

Who Do You Think You Are? — Zoe Ball

The first episode of the new series of Who Do You Think You Are? aired on Tuesday at 9pm on BBC One, and featured presenter Zoe Ball, as well as a brief cameo by her father, the comedian Johnny Ball.

Zoe was expecting her family to be from the North-East — which many were. Others, however, were from as far away as Glasgow in Scotland, and Camborne in Cornwall.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Diane Morgan

 

Last week's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? wrapped up the current series with actress and comedian Diane Morgan.

Diane is possibly most well-known for mocking TV history programmes by playing hapless historian Philomena Cunk - which is somewhat ironically fitting for this programme.

Diane's personality is what carries this episode forward - there was a genuine element of wondering what she would say next, with a gladness that we were coming along for the ride.

Her family's stories, though, are equally compelling. 

And it turned out that her father's ancestor, German Charlie was, (spoiler alert!) actually a German man known as Charlie - which Diane seemed more genuinely surprised at than I would have guessed.

There are also poignant moments relating to a lost love, killed on the battlefields of World War One.

The stand-out feature of the episode though, is Diane's Scottish ancestor Isabella - who had something of a reputation in her community.

It took a large amount of strength and obstinance, though, for a 19th Century woman to take a man to court over child support payments - often known as maintenance or affiliation

.

It's often surprising to people that there was a mechanism in place to provide child support for unmarried mothers - it somehow doesn't chime with our modern view of Victorian society. 

Making the father pay for the child, though, made it less likely that these children would become a 'burden' on the parish or poor law union (i.e. the state and the taxpayer) - which many saw as a win.

A lot of women were reluctant, however, to come forward and stand before a court - and often to have the details of their love lives cross-examined and then reported in the local press - due to the stigma attached to being an unmarried mother or 'ruined' woman.

To take several different men to court, then, as Isabella did, would have taken some serious gumption on her part!

All in all, this was a highly-entertaining episode to end the series with; let's hope we won't have to wait too long for the next one!

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details. 

Who Do You Think You Are? - Aisling Bea, Fred Sirieix and Will Young

 

I have three episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? to catch up on with my little write-ups

 - sorry for the delay, but I've been busy the last couple of weeks, researching my wonderful customers' families.

Comedian and actress Aisling Bea's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was, unsurprisingly, focussed on Ireland.

Aisling wasn't surprised at all - though she had been hoping for some variety in her family's past, the result was one she had been expecting. Her family are and were, very Irish.

This was a solid Irish-centred episode, taking in the famine and the fight for independence.

Especially notable was the link to the Irish language as a form of resistance and cultural heritage, as well as the uncomfortable history of those who benefitted from the famine - including Aisling's relatives.

History is not always as straight-forward as good and bad, and what Aisling found was the story of a young widow doing her best for her family, against a background of disaster.

Much as Aisling's episode was definitely Irish, TV personality Fred Sirieix's episode was most definitely French.

It made for an interesting episode - we rarely get to see history from a French perspective here in the UK, and as one of our closest neighbours, we should perhaps know more about French history than we do.

We covered a lot of ground here - both wars, Bordeaux wines, and Parisian orphans were all on the roster, and Fred led us through them all.

The explorations of the wars were particularly interesting - we are, of course, familiar with the history from the British perspective, but the 'home front' was very different in France, and that difference is important for us here to understand.

Will Young's family history also included tales of World War Two - which has been something of a theme this series.

In fact I think that Will's grandfather, considered by many in the family to be a 'bit of a loser' was one of the few relatives Will thought he could be proud of, by the end of the episode!

Will's family were very, very, posh.

And very, very, involved in the British Empire. Including the slavery part - and it just kind of got worse from there.

It's not often that the celebrity is actively hoping for their ancestors to get their comeuppance... but Will had good reason to, in fairness.

Another reminder that history is what it is - much as we'd sometimes like to change it!

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details. 

Who Do You Think You Are? - Layton Williams

 

Actor Layton Williams' episode of Who Do You Think You Are? aired last Monday, rather than Tuesday, due to BBC scheduling conflicts.

Layton's episode was a lot of fun - and worth the watch just for the energy and personality he brings to everything.

The episode looked at both Layton's British family and his Jamaican roots, starting with the British side.

On his British side, Layton carried on the theme of Ross Kemp's episode last week by following the World War Two experiences of his great-great-grandfather.

He learned that the family moving to Bury (where Layton was born,) was as a direct result of his ancestor's war work.

(The name 'cat nana' to describe Layton's beloved great-grandmother in this part of the episode is extremely cute!)

Beyond the war, the episode looked at Layton's links to London and an ancestor with musical links.

Moving on to Jamaica, Layton follows his father's line into the dark history of slavery.

Although the link is not 100 per cent certain due to the lack of record-keeping in some periods of Jamaica's history, there is a high likelihood that the show was able to trace the enslaved people in Layton's ancestry.

One of his likely female ancestors in Jamaica was recorded as having been born in Africa, meaning that she would have been transported against her will to Jamaica aboard a slave ship.

The history is poignant, and important, and Layton's positivity shines through without dulling the truth of an inhuman situation.

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Mishal Husain

 

Journalist and broadcaster Mishal Husain's surprising and interesting episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (WDYTYA?) aired last Tuesday.

Mishal started her journey where she expected to - in India and Pakistan, in the days of the British Empire. 

From there she followed the 'Anglo'-Indian (or, in this case, Irish-Indian,) part of her family, and a hard-working doctor named Thomas Quinn.

Thomas managed to break the barriers placed in the way of mixed-race people in British India, eventually becoming the private doctor to a maharaja.

Following her European ancestry, Mishal learned of her family's life in a Danish-Indian trading port, as well as in French-Indian settlements.

The big twist (and if you haven't seen it - you might want to stop reading here!) - came when she learned that one of her white ancestors was not European... but American.

Travelling to the USA, and clearly more than a little surprised by the turn of events, Mishal ended up in the prestigious halls of Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and beyond that to the founding of the United States as a whole.

This was an extremely interesting episode - not only in its own right, but also as an example of how interconnected we all are, across many different countries, whether or not we know it.

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Gemma Collins

 

Series 21 of Who Do You Think You Are? brought down the curtain with reality TV star Gemma Collins.

This was a solid episode, but after Olly Murs' cracker the episode before, it felt a little anti-climactic.

Still, it probably didn't feel that way to Gemma - and that's what matters!

Gemma's episode featured some difficult discussions surrounding foster care and mental health.

Mostly these were done well - explaining that our modern understanding of schizophrenia is a lot different to the understanding of the condition in the 1950s. 

Sadly, a lot of 'normal' teenage behaviour, i.e. rebelliousness, skipping school, back-talking, - especially pertaining to teenage girls - was caught up in the pathology of the day. This lead to a lot of people becoming institutionalised with no medical need.

I think the episode missed, though, that along with those who were unfairly and wrongly entangled in the system, were people who were genuinely unwell.

Was Gemma's biological grandmother one of them? It's not clear - we don't have her medical notes, and the only first-hand accounts we have are from people who were children at the time, and unaware of their aunt being a patient at mental health hospitals.

It's impossible to tell whether or not Gemma's grandmother was treated fairly or unfairly without having more information - but that ambiguity wasn't really, in my opinion, made clear enough to Gemma. 

She seemed to come away with the conclusion that her grandmother had been one of those who were institutionalised for normal, frowned-upon, behaviour - which is entirely possible.

The circumstantial evidence of her teenage pregnancy and the known attitudes of some of the medical leaders at the institutions she was a patient at, strengthen that possibility.

But it's also entirely possible that her grandmother was extremely unwell. Because that also would have resulted in her becoming a patient at those same hospitals.

We sadly can't know - with the information presented - what the reality of the case might be, and it would have been better, in my opinion, to make that more clear.

Other parts of the episode included the criminality and poverty of London at the turn of the 20th Century, and Gemma's roots in Essex.

The latter was probably one of the less surprising features, but the remoteness and uniqueness of the Essex island Gemma's family came from was interesting enough.

Again, this was a solid episode, but probably would have been better off in a different place in the running order.

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Lesley Manville

 

This series of Who Do You Think You Are? finished off with the story of actress Lesley Manville's family.

Though a solid enough episode, given how many excellent episodes this series has had, it would perhaps have been better situated in the middle of the series. But that's just my opinion, of course.

Lesley's family tended to border on the non-conventional - on both maternal and paternal sides of the family, there were stories of couples who lived together but were actually still married to someone else.

Perhaps it's a sign of the upheaval of the times that they lived in - the period during and after the First World War for one couple, for example - that they felt able to live as man and wife, despite not legally being man and wife. 

Divorce was, of course, still strictly regulated, and inaccessible to many people.

Most of the episode, though, focussed on the life and fate of Aaron Harding, a participant in the Swing Riots that spread across the country in 1830.

The Swing Rioters protested poor pay and working conditions for agricultural labourers, as well as being staunchly anti-mechanisation, and often destroying farm equipment such as threshing machinery which they saw as a threat to their jobs.

The riots that Aaron Harding participated in seemed to be more about conditions and pay, rather than any real shift towards automation, and the ire of his group of rioters was directed primarily at the local workhouses, then known as poor houses, which represented the failing poor relief system at the time.

Due to the value placed on property over people in this period, the destruction of a house was actually a capital offense.

That meant that the penalty was death.

Luckily, Aaron's sentence was commuted... to transportation for life in Australia. And it's to here that Lesley follows his story.

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Chris Ramsey

Last week's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featured comedian Chris Ramsey, who describes himself as pretty lucky.

Was his family as lucky as him? Well, they survived some pretty horrible situations - and that's pretty lucky, at the end of the day.

The luck angle is nice - but it feels a little bit forced in the editing. 

I think it's trying just a touch too hard instead of playing it cool - but that's just my opinion, of course.

Much of the episode was based around military careers - an ancestor who served in the Royal Naval Division during the First World War, and another who served in the Navy during the Second World War.

The Royal Naval Division was essentially the Navy's land-army - and it was this division that Chris' paternal great-grandfather served in.

Miraculously, he survived the action at Gallipoli in 1915, and missed the Battle of the Somme due to a case of scabies (...which probably didn't feel that lucky at the time, since scabies is pretty gruesome, but probably was grateful for in the end.)

Chris also looked into his grandfather's war service in the Second World War.

As well as being part of the gruelling Arctic convoys - and receiving a Russian medal for his service - Alf Ramsey was one of the first people to visit Nagasaki after the detonation of the second atomic bomb.

Slightly lighter fare came in the form of a lottery one of Chris' ancestors entered - and won - in order to give birth in a charity hospital.

Medical care for pregnant women is now, thankfully, pretty standard, but it wasn't always so, and Chris' ancestor had to go through both morality-based interviews, and the lottery process, in order to have the chance of giving birth in an environment which had much better survival outcomes for both mother and child than most families could dream of.

Yet another reason to appreciate the NHS.

When you think of it, we're all pretty lucky to be here at all - given what our ancestors had to go through to get us here.

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Dev Griffin

DJ and presenter Dev Griffin's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? aired last Thursday.

Dev has clearly struggled a lot with his identity over the years, knowing little about his mother's Irish family, and even less about his father's Jamaican roots.

The Irish, (Griffin and Weafer,) sides of his family were, prior to the generations that Dev knew here in the UK, proud Irish nationalists.

As part of the Irish Republican Army (the IRA,) they were involved in the fight for home rule, and the Easter Rising.

(It's worth noting that this particular incarnation of the IRA came prior to the Provisional IRA - the IRA which most of us will be familiar with from news stories.)

Dev was interested to learn about the history of Irish independence from the Irish side of things - 

- history may not change in terms of dates and facts, but the significance and meaning of those facts can change vastly depending on the perspective from which it's viewed.

I always try to walk the line of perspective in my research in a way that promotes compassion and understanding, without flinching from the truth of the facts themselves, and for the most part I hope I achieve this.

The paternal side of his family saw Dev travel to Jamaica to learn more about his family there.

The pastor in Jamaica made for an excellent guide to the life of both the local church and Dev's specific family members who were, at one point, excluded from the church for 'fornication.'

...This was probably evident, as Dev's ancestor happened to be about eight months pregnant at the time of the exclusion. 

The couple ended up both getting married, and being let back into the church - so all's well that ends well!

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Emily Atack

Presenter and comedian Emily Atack had her turn at the Who Do You Think You Are? treatment in last week's episode.

Emily's family background is not necessarily the most typical - aside from the showbiz professions of her parents, most people don't have Sir Paul McCartney appearing casually in their family snaps!

Paul McCartney is the first cousin of Emily's maternal grandmother, and Emily grew up with Paul and his brother, Mike, as a present part of the family.

She even visits 'Uncle Mike' on-camera to discuss the family.

As such, the first part of this episode is a must-watch for Beatles mega-fans, with Emily providing snippets of Beatles history, and looking into the McCartney side of the family.

The McCartney family were, perhaps unsurprisingly, extremely musical - in a uniquely working-class-Liverpool kind of way.

(Though, I have to admit, my favourite part about this family was how Joe McCartney got his tobacco supplies for the week.)

And - shocking news! Their original name was not in fact McCartney, but McCarthy. Like many Irish immigrants, the name assimilated alongside the family, and became McCartney over time.

This was one of those episodes with so much to cram in that we didn't get to really dwell over one family story for long.

In some ways this is a shame, as things very much had to keep moving instead of diving into a particular topic, but at the same time: who doesn't want their family to be full of interesting stories?

The rest of the episode worked hard to cram it all in.

In short we had: links to Wrexham Football and the FAW, a champion whistler (yes, that's a thing,) Butlin's, a mining accident, and, sadly, the tough topic of suicide.

 

This series of WDYTYA? has been excellent so far - let's hope it continues that way!

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Chris and Xand Van Tulleken

 

Last week's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featured two for the price of one, with TV doctors, and twin brothers, Chris and Xand Van Tulleken.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Chris and Xand's family turned out to be very Dutch in origin, though with a link to an exiled Dutchman living in England at the beginning of the 19th Century.

Working-class people are rarely prominent enough to be exiled, so it's probably no surprise that the Van Tulleken family was historically a bit posh - especially given the oil paintings of ancestors that adorn the walls of the family's home.

Although achieving a low-rank of nobility - something the brothers banter about quite a bit in the episode - the Van Tulleken family were largely of the merchant classes.

Unfortunately, given the time period and the history of the Netherlands, that led to a discovery of an ancestor who was heavily involved in the slave trade - not in a distant, though still deplorable, indirect way, either.

Ambrosias Tulleken was a slave-holder and trader in Dutch Suriname and Demerara, which is now in Guyana.

The brothers were understandably extremely shocked by the revelation, and very uncomfortable.

History is not always pleasant to the modern eye - it is what it is, and we can only learn from it.

A much sweeter story came from Dutch Indonesia, where the brothers found one of their ancestors had married a mixed-race Indonesian woman.

Despite Chris' initial cynicism, Xand's romantic theories won out through the historic sources - their ancestor had given up his army career because his intended bride's ethnicity was not approved of.

From their ancestor's own words, preserved in a book - something very few of us will be lucky to find, but an invaluable resource - it was abundantly clear that he both loved and respected his wife, and that her death affected him deeply.

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Kevin Clifton

Last week's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featured celebrity dancer Kevin Clifton, known to everyone as 'Kevin from Grimsby.'

And while Kevin is, indeed, from Grimsby, his family history takes him much further away.

This episode featured one side of Kevin's family - his paternal line, whose history is mostly based in Canada.

And it's here that things get very interesting.

But also difficult - history is often uncomfortable, and this was something an emotional Kevin found out.

He lamented that it was 'always the men' in this ancestral line who inflicted the most pain and suffering on the women of his family, and had to grapple with being the descendant of both the men who caused the pain and the women who suffered from it.

A case of divorce in his family's past was covered in the newspapers - divorce being something highly unusual both at the time and in that particular area.

The press coverage was... revealing - with the husband taking a pre-emptive strategy, including denying - prior to any allegations being made - that he chased his wife with an axe and threatened to kill her. It's a very telling thing to try to get out in front of.

The abuse that was admitted to in court was bad enough, but considered acceptable at the time - it hopefully stands as a testament to social progress that admitting, in a court of law, that you had given your wife black eyes is no longer seen as a reasonable thing, and would now affect the divorce proceedings.

The main 'thread' of the episode, though, was the story - passed down through generations - of an Indigenous woman named Matooskie.

While it's not uncommon for families - especially in the US and Canada - to acquire a myth of Native heritage somewhere along the way, a specific name is much less so.

Matooskie, it turns out, was a First Nations (Canadian Indigenous) woman, who Kevin-from-Grimsby is directly descended from. 

A well-documented and somewhat iconic individual amongst First Nations historians, her story is even more interesting than my brief description of this episode (hopefully) makes it sound.

To me, though, what is truly important is not only that the story was passed down through the family, but that her Native name - Matooskie - is the one that was remembered by her descendants, rather than her Christian/European name of Nancy. 

It shows that regardless of her descriptions in church records as 'a half-breed woman' or her callous treatment by her Scottish husband, she retained her culture and her identity - enough to pass it down through the centuries.

Ready to start your own family history journey? I offer a range of professional genealogy services, check out my website for more details.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Ralf Little

 

The last episode of Series 19 of Who Do You Think You Are? featured the actor Ralf Little.

Ralf Little is best known for roles in TV series like The Royle Family, Two Pints of Lager and A Packet of Crisps, and Death In Paradise.

Much of Ralf's episode was a little like a Boys' Own adventure - full of aeroplanes, war, and football!

As seems to have been quite a theme this series, Ralf found out previously unknown-to-him things about his grandparents.

He had known that his grandfather did 'something in the war,' but not what - or that his service with the Royal Navy's air division involved working as an engineer on 'Seafire' aircraft. The Seafire was the Naval version of the well-known Spitfire planes of World War Two.

His grandfather had made his way to the Royal Navy as a medical assistant, a job that continued his prior medical experience - namely working as a male nurse in a mental hospital.

This entire episode in Ralf's grandfather's life was unknown to him - but vital to the history of Ralf's family, as this was where his grandfather had met his grandmother, who was working in the hospital laundry.

What really thrilled Ralf, though, was the story of another ancestor - who played international football for Wales.

...Although it's safe to say that his ancestor's relationship with football was not straight-forward, being entangled, as it was, with one of the (several) Welsh religious revivals.

Traditionally, football is a less popular sport than rugby in Wales - certainly in a 'national sport' sense -  in part due to the dislike of football by many Welsh chapels and religious leaders. 

The links between football and hooliganism, foul language, and a culture of drinking, meant that many chapels saw the sport as a bad influence on young men.

The most Puritanical of chapels saw sport in general - and football in particular - as taking away time that could be spent in the service of God and the community. 

For most, though, it was the culture of alcohol and gambling that caused them to try and divert their congregations away from the sport.

Looking for your own family's story? I offer a range of genealogy services. Feel free to drop me an e-mail to discuss your research needs.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Matt Lucas and Anna Maxwell Martin

Presenter and comedian Matt Lucas' episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was focussed on the experiences of his Jewish family during the terrible events of the Holocaust.

Specifically, he wanted to know about his Jewish grandmother's experiences in pre-war Berlin, and what had become of her extended family afterwards.

Recent history can sometimes be the most devastating, affecting, as it does, people we knew and loved.

Like many, Matt Lucas' relatives sought safety in a place that they thought would be safe - Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

Sadly, The Netherlands did not remain safe for long - despite being a neutral country, Germany invaded and occupied the country from 10th May 1940. 

This meant that Dutch Jewish communities were also persecuted and murdered in the Holocaust. The safety of Amsterdam was no longer safe.

A big surprise came when Matt found that one of his family members had known, and lived with, Anne Frank and her family before they went into hiding - and in fact Anne had mentioned him in her diary.

It's another example of just how personal the past becomes through the lens of family history.

Actress Anna Maxwell Martin's episode also featured difficult events in the lives of her grandparents.

Following her Irish paternal family, her uncle explained a little more to her about how difficult it was for their grandparents when one of their three sons died of Leukaemia. 

It was also interesting that her uncle's view, as the older brother, was a little more measured than the experiences of Anna's father, who was younger when their brother died and felt more of a coldness in their collective childhoods than Anna's uncle did.

Turning to her maternal Scottish family, Anna looked into the family of her grandfather, Maxwell - whose name she took as part of her stage name.

Maxwell's upbringing was harder and more cruel than Anna had imagined. As a five-year-old child, after the death of his mother, Maxwell had been sent to an orphanage - where he was separated from his sisters, due to a policy of splitting boys and girls.

His father - Anna's great-grandfather - was still alive at the time, which led Anna on a journey of finding out why he had not been able to care for his younger children.

What followed was a tale of drunkenness and severe domestic abuse - for which Maxwell's father went to prison several times.

He was obviously returning to his wife when released from prison, as many of their large family of children were born after his first recorded offence.

Which may explain why, despite having died in her 40s, the picture of Maxwell's mother looks like an elderly lady. Her life was not an easy one.

One of the more difficult things about family history is that we can't change the past.

We can only try to understand and honour what our family members have been through.

Looking for your own family's story? I offer a range of genealogy services. Feel free to drop me an e-mail to discuss your research needs.