Tracing Your Roots is the series that helps put branches on your family tree.
Each week Sally Magnusson follows the ancestral trail back in time to uncover colourful stories and hidden slices of social history. Resident genealogist Nick Barratt is on hand with tips and inspiration to help you explore your own family's lineage.
Programme details
24 September 2008
Intriguing Deaths
This week we examine how death can breathe new life into family research. Finding out how our ancestors met their end can open up new avenues of research for the genealogist.
Stories in this week’s programme…
“Extraordinary suicide at Shepherd’s Bush”
Marilyn Greenly’s great great grandmother died, so her death certificate says, from swallowing a key. Marilyn set out to learn more about Mary Chandler’s time in the Fulham Union workhouse and called on Jane Kimber of the Hammersmith and Fulham Local History Centre for help in explaining her ancestor’s bizarre death.
Find your local archives here Find a newspaper report here
“Gored to death by a stag”
Marion Marriott was told that her grandfather had been killed by a stag. Odd, she thought, given that he lived in a leafy Berkshire town. Now she’s found out what really happened, and how Harry Neville’s death profoundly affected his children’s lives and, a century later, that of Marion herself.
Thomas Wood was killed when his horse-drawn furniture van crashed on a steep hill in Lewes. Why, though, was he there in the middle of the night? His descendants reveal the answer and unravel a web of deceit around the circumstances of his death.
Roger Keight always knew that one of his ancestors had been trampled to death by an elephant. Which ancestor, and which elephant, had never been explained - until Roger found a link with a famous explorer in the Congo.
As a boy, Ross Hutton loved the idea that a smuggler ancestor had been hanged for murdering an exciseman. A little research, though, turned the story on its head, teaching him not to believe everything your mother tells you.
The BBC is planning a pan-BBC Remembrance campaign to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Armistice. Tell your personal family stories and share artefacts, photographs and memories with others on the BBC Remembrance Wall from 22nd October. Click here to learn more.
Tracing Your Roots is the series that helps put branches on your family tree.
