My Family History Journey

Week 2 of this challenge is already upon me, time flies when you’re having fun! The subject this week is a Favourite Find and in my case this is not a person or an important breakthrough of a brick wall but is actually a medium sized rather dusty cardboard box. A few years ago my uncle passed on to my father this rather tatty looking cardboard box to me which he had been given by their cousin. The box had been stored away in her loft since she had cleared out her mother’s house after she died in 1995. Her mother was my great Aunt Mary, my grandmother’s sister. With some trepidation I opened this dusty box – or should that be treasure chest – to find a family’s entire history in the form of photographs, letters, birth certificates, school certificates and assorted documents telling the story of this middle class Edwardian family from the mid 1880s through to the end of the First World War. With wonder I carefully emptied the box sorting the various items into separate piles marvelling a

I have been very lax over the last year in keeping up to date with my blog so I have decided to be more pro-active this year and have taken up Amy Johnson-Crow’s challenge of trying to write something every week. I have signed up to her ’52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks’ challenge. Every week she suggests a theme to use to write something relating to your family history and this week’s theme is Foundations. I initially thought about relating the story of the person who started me on my family history journey, the Rev Robert Cunningham, but that would be a repeat of the post I wrote in September 2020 so instead I have decided to write about my 3 times great grandfather, William Armstrong, as this is as far back as I have got with this particular branch of my family so is the foundation of my research so far. Here’s what I know so far:- William was born around 1814 in the county of Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders. I think he was the son of William Armstrong and Helen Liddle but am still e