#52ancestors (Wk22): At the Cemetery – George Backhouse

The cemetery is our location in this week’s family history post, coming after the ‘delight’ of seeing the corpse of Leeds United’s three-year return to the English Premier League well and truly buried at the end of the 2022/23 season this last weekend. The club was relegated back to the EFL Championship, ending with it …

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#52ancestors (Wk16): Should Be a Movie – Spencer Simpson

It’s got all the ingredients. He’s got more than a hint of actor James Cagney about him in many photos. Maybe from some angles, even Herbert Lom with my grandfather’s slicked back hair in younger days. My grandfather Spencer Simpson - more than a whiff of James Cagney. His wife, despite having a difficult life …

#52ancestors (Wk13): Light A Candle – Harriet Ann Noad

Tough times, but a response equal to the strength of the leather she used when a young boot machine hand starting out at work in adult life turning out new boots at one of the many local factories in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Born into the soles of a family of crime and challenging poverty, my …

#52ancestors (Wk8): I Can Identify – John Willie Simpson & Ellen Walton

I can identify John Willie Simpson and Ellen Walton as one of my four sets of great grandparents, but they are the couple with the least essential information associated with their profiles. In the case of Ellen, her family line goes no further back than this, and is the least well populated on my entire …

#52ancestors (Wk7): Outcast – Joseph Noad

The Penal Servitude Act (1853) substituted imprisonment with hard labour on UK shores for what had been transportation to a distant British colony when the sentence was for less than for fourteen years. Had it not been for that Act of Parliament, my 2x great grandfather Joseph Noad [8 May, 1834 (Leeds, Yorkshire) – June, …

#52ancestors (Wk5): Oops – Thomas Backhouse

When I first started doing my family tree as a teenager in the 1980s, I thought my first mistake was pretty justified. Unilaterally, I decided that when it came to research, I was only interested in my Mum Mary’s side of the family. It was because my Dad’s Dad, Spencer Simpson (1914-1982) was such a …