Anyone who’s read the ‘About Me’ section of my blog, or accidentally stumbled across certain earlier posts of mine whilst innocently looking for something more useful and interesting to read, will probably already know that I’m quite invested in my family ancestry and genealogy. And before you ask, yes, there is a difference. Think of them as siblings: related, competitive, more alike than either will admit, and each one more convinced that they’re more important and cleverer than the other.

This particular interest only really took a hold of me two or three years ago, and for two very solid reasons. Firstly, my wife Sonia has been obsessed with local history and her family tree since the mid-to-late ‘80’s, and some of that enthusiasm has clearly, and unapologetically, seeped into my bloodstream over the years. Secondly, while doom‑scrolling through Facebook one day, as one does, I stumbled across an old photograph of a soldier on someone else’s wall, casually but proudly wearing his 2nd Boer War uniform as if posing for some kind of turn of the century dating app. That soldier turned out to be my Great‑Grandfather Charles Bagnall, and at that very moment, I felt an overwhelming urge to not only want to get to know him, but to learn absolutely everything I could about him. Until then, it’s fair to say I knew absolutely nothing about any of my ancestors, but by this point, my curiosity had well and truly been poked with a big stick.

At the time Sonia first threw herself into her research, the internet wasn’t exactly the sleek, ever‑present beast it is today. If you were lucky enough to have it at home, it arrived via a dial‑up connection that screamed like a wounded robot with its nuts trapped in a vice, and moved at the speed of a damp sponge. You also had to switch it off every time someone wanted to use the telephone, meaning any attempt at online research was regularly punctuated by shouts of, “Are you STILL on that thing?! I need to ring your Auntie Carol!”.

As a result, most of the real digging had to be done the old‑fashioned way, which meant trudging to the local library or archives like some sort of Victorian scholar. The alternative was speaking to relatives you barely knew, who’s stories you didn’t particularly trust, and in some cases, who you actively tried to avoid at family gatherings. All in the noble pursuit of discovering which great‑great‑grandparent had the good sense to pass down your hair line and good looks.

Now however, thanks to modern technology and a Wi‑Fi network that behaves like an obedient but slightly over‑excited butler, you can do as much, or as little research as you fancy without even having to wear socks. Entire family histories now sit behind shiny websites such as Ancestry, My Heritage, and Find My Past, all proudly boasting 24/7 access to millions of birth, death, marriage, and military records, plus newspaper archives stretching back to the dawn of time (or at least to a time when people first started arguing in print).

But don’t be fooled by the cheerful TV and online adverts where someone types in “Grandad” and instantly discovers they’re descended from a medieval duke. In reality, wading through these databases is like tiptoeing through a field full of long grass and hidden rakes. One wrong click and you’ve accidentally attached a Victorian chimney sweep from Cornwall to your family tree, and he’s now refusing to leave.

And then there’s the so‑called “researchers” and “distant relatives by marriage” who stomp around freely in the genealogical countryside wearing their metaphorical size‑11 boots, gleefully trampling over your carefully planted facts. Before you know it and in the blink of an eye, they’ve grafted half of Yorkshire onto your lineage, and confidently announced that your great‑great‑aunt was actually a Norwegian fisherman named Bjorn… Let me give you an example.

Sonia and I spent around six months researching my Great‑Grandfather Charles, and when I say “researching”, I mean the sort of obsessive, sleep‑deprived detective work that would make Sherlock Holmes himself tell you to calm down. We hunted down everything: his birth, his marriage, his wife, his children, his siblings, his mother, where he was born, where he lived, what he did for a living, when he joined the army, his service numbers, his battalions, where he fought, and because family history loves a dramatic twist, unfortunately, when and where he died.

By the end of it, we’d gathered so many documents that the living room was starting to look like the aftermath of a stationery shop explosion. We had newspaper clippings, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, and even letters from military museums who truth-be-known, were probably wondering why we were suddenly so invested in a soldier who died in 1917.

And after all that, we proved, with actual, grown‑up, legally recognisable evidence, that Charles was born in a Walsall workhouse to Susannah Bagnall (hence the surname), father unknown, and was later killed in action at the Battle of Bullecourt, France during World War I. But despite having enough proof to satisfy a courtroom, an historian, and possibly even a mildly sceptical ghost, some people still manage to look at all this and say, “Hmm… I’m not sure”. Because apparently, for some, even the simplest of facts need to be delivered by way of interpretive dance before things finally start to sink in.

Do a quick search for my Great‑Grandfather Charles on one of those shiny genealogy websites in particular, and you’ll be greeted with a spectacular buffet of absolute nonsense. According to at least one so-called researcher, his father was named Alfred Bagnall (wrong), who worked as a tin‑plate worker in Walsall (also wrong), and that Charles himself was still strolling around Walsall in 1967, presumably popping to Woolworths for a bag of pick‑and‑mix (very, very wrong). Who knows maybe he made a full recovery from being dead… the wonders of modern medicine eh!.

Once this sort of fantasy fiction gets added to someone’s online family tree however, it spreads faster than most STD’s. Suddenly it’s on two trees, then three, then four, and before you know it, your being assaulted by regular “helpful hints” suggesting you’re related to a 14^th Century French nobleman, three American Presidents, an Egyptian Pharaoh, and an Icelandic nail technician from Reykjavik. All because one person, somewhere, decided that “close enough” was a perfectly acceptable standard for historical research.

And can you do anything about it? Can you correct their records? Can you gently point out that your great‑grandfather was not casually chomping away at his bag of sweets 50 years after his death? Short answer: No, Long answer: Absolutely not. Your only options when faced with agreeing or disagreeing to said false information, is to answer either “yes”, “no”, or “maybe”. Unfortunately, there is no “this is complete and utter bullshit” or “don’t even think about linking this to my family tree” option available. Once it’s linked, there is no escape.

It’s not just these false allegations causing chaos, either. Take a leisurely stroll through old census records, certificates, parish registers, or whatever scraps of paper our ancestors managed not to set fire to. The sheer volume of miss-information, creative spelling, and outright guesswork is enough to make your eyes water. Bagnall becomes Bagnal, Bagnal becomes Bagnel, Bagnel becomes Bagneil, and at one point I’m fairly sure someone just panicked and wrote Bagfeil, presumably after sneezing mid‑stroke with their quill and ink.

And that’s only on the documents that actually survived, the ones that weren’t lost during World War II bombing raids, eaten by mice, used to start a fire, or repurposed as someone’s shopping list. No wonder the quest for truth ends up feeling like an escape room designed by someone who actively dislikes you.

Still, I suppose we can’t hold the appalling grammar, random spelling, or general “that’ll do” attitude against people who almost certainly received an education consisting of three hymns, a stick of chalk, the cane, and a stern warning not to ask stupid questions can we?

You also have to question John Logie Baird’s failure to invent the television much earlier too. Had he pulled his socks up and sorted it out by, let’s say 1723, our ancestors might’ve spent their evenings watching endless repeats on BBC1 instead of enthusiastically producing enough children to populate a small nation. And just to make things worse, they didn’t even bother with variety. Oh no. They had to go full chaos mode.

Five sons all named Thomas, one after their Grandfather, one after his Uncle, one after the neighbour’s milkman, one because the vicar suggested it, and one because they’d simply run out of ideas. Four daughters named Mary, allegedly after Great Aunty Joan, but also suspiciously similar to the name of next door’s cat. And then, for reasons known only to the universe, enough Johns to launch a full‑scale military campaign against China, should the mood ever take them.

Trying to untangle it all is like attempting to complete a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces are missing, the other half are duplicates, and someone’s written “THIS ONE’S ALSO NAMED JOHN” on the box in wax crayon. Is it any wonder it all gets so confusing?

What I do find interesting however, is despite Sonia and I entering the world in the exact same town, in the exact same building, and barely a year apart, our family histories behave as if we were born on opposite sides of the planet. It’s like the universe took one look at the pair of us and said, “Right then, let’s run two completely different simulations and see what happens”.

On paper, we should have had identical childhoods, same locality, same era, same access to the same questionable 1970’s wallpaper, yet our family trees have gone off in such wildly different directions, it’s unbelievable. Though none of this is to imply that either of us had it any easier than the other one growing up.

In part, Sonia’s family tree reads like the guest list to a Victorian gala: wealthy, church‑polished coal merchants with money, the sort who tithed generously and still had enough left over for a second home in Shropshire, Willenhall lock‑making royalty, including members of the Squire family who founded the now world famous Squire’s Locks in 1780, and which is still going strong today, MBE’s, knighthoods, and enough French, Spanish, and Italian royalty and nobility to make even the Vatican take notice before nodding in approval. It’s Sonia, of course she has a duchess or two tucked away somewhere in the branches of her family tree. If her ancestry had it’s own soundtrack, it would be that of a finely tuned string quartet.

My tree on the other hand, if you believe everything you read in the newspapers, is made up of petty criminals, the sort who stole things that weren’t worth stealing, war widows, because someone had to bring a little dignity to the situation, and a Great Grand-Uncle who would’ve given the Peaky Blinders a run for the money given half a chance. My ancestry doesn’t have a soundtrack, it has the distant sound of a police siren and a bar brawl somewhere.

There are some wins however, as I’ve recently found out I’m related to a relatively famous TV personality who has his very own MBE, well, relatively famous round these parts anyway, an historian and published author, whom I was also friends with on Facebook before we realised we were related, and even a friend from the football who I’ve known for 25+ years and we didn’t know we we’re related. So yes, Sonia’s family tree maybe on par with Downton Abbey, where as mine struggles to keep up with Fawlty Towers, but it’s all starting to balance out quite nicely… I think.

If you do ever decide to dive into your own family tree, which is something I’d definitely recommend, try and treat it less like a sprint and more like you’re assembling flat‑pack furniture from IKEA: go slowly, make sure all the parts are present and correct, read everything at least twice, and don’t trust everything that’s written down, because genealogy has traps. Big ones. The sort of traps that lure you in with an “official document” that turns out to be about someone completely different to the person you’re attempting to research, they just happen to share the same name, the same haircut, and have a similar occupation. Before you know it, you’ve proudly added the famous Victorian play-write Kevin Bagshaw to your family tree, only to find out later that ‘your’ Kevin Bagshaw, was in fact, nothing more than a convicted horse thief from Dudley… Have fun.