Consulting Certificates: Tracing birth, death, marriage certificates

Tracing Family History: NarrowBoat, Spring 2006

Lorna York

Lorna York looks at documents that help you track down your boating ancestors

Have you ever wondered who your ancestors were, where they came from and what their occupations were? I did, and it opened up a whole new world to me. History was one of my favourite subjects at school, but in truth none of the facts and figures I learnt related to me. However, when I started on my journey of family history I was able to place my family into world events, so those events become more real. I also came to realise the relevance of social history – because my family had been living it. When I started my journey back into the past I was told by so-called experts that I would never find my family: they didn’t get married, and they definitely didn’t register or baptise their children. You may wonder why this was said. Well, all my family on my father’s side were canal boatmen. But the experts were wrong. I have managed to trace parts of my family working on the boats back to the 1790s – that’s almost to the beginnings of our canal system. …