Family history

    I have a copy of The Oxford Guide To Family History by David Hey into which I have hardly delved. I hadn't consciously thought that I am the last male Richardson of our corner of that family until I signed my niece's guest book at her wedding earlier this year. I haven't paid much attention because I loosely subscribe to the idea that tracing a family tree is a bit pointless as one either runs out of public records or reaches a point in the family tree where nobody cared about such things or the oral history is lost. Or why must one be a slave to the patriarchal system and only follow the mail (Freudian slip?) male line. One only has to go back four generations, to great-great-grandparents, to then have the task of following sixteen families. The book talks about something far more interesting than the bare-bones genealogy and that is finding out about the lives of ancestors, their occupations and social milieu.

    The only things I know about my grandfathers is that one served in the RAMC during the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa and was a postman in civilian life; and the other was a Gloucestershire wheelwright; and that family names include Coates, Farmer and Gaze. But my sister, being much older than I am, might put me right about some things. Of my grandparents only my paternal grandmother was alive when I was born.