Introduction

Welcome to my family history pages. The purpose of the site is to allow other family members to share information and to allow other researchers to access the information and exchange common data. This data has been collected since I started this research in 1998. The data is continually expanding and is regularly updated.

To help protect privacy, details of living people are suppressed on the site for all visitors. Data is hidden so that only users who have been granted appropriate permissions have access to this private information. If you are a fellow researcher you can apply for a user account which will allow you access to more details (see Register for a User Account). Registration is very simple.

What will you find here? Well, I was born on the Isle of Wight, but my ancestry was not just from the Island, my maternal line consists of several families who migrated to the Island from other rural communities over the centuries, but the common thread with them all is that they were primarily agricultural workers, from Dorset, Hampshire and Gloucestershire. My paternal line is more urban, my Baker ancestors originating as far as I can tell at least from the East End of London, Bethnal Green to be precise, though my Grandfather was a gardener after he left the Army and married into agricultural stock in the New Forest area of Hampshire.

My wife's family are from Northern Ireland, from the coastal town of Donaghadee in County Down and Portadown in County Armagh.

You won't find too many professionals or landed gentry, but a few have risen to take public office, and a branch of the family did include a few knights of the realm. There are also several family members who were tragically killed in the battlefields of the two World Wars.

Besides my own family history, I am also the Online Parish Clerk (OPC) for two parishes in Dorset which have close connections with my family. The Dorset OPC is a great resource if you have connections with Dorset. My own two parish pages are for Buckland Newton and Glanvilles Wootton.