Introduction to My Family Genealogy

This family history game is like knitting treacle - it goes all over the place and it's hard to define what the resulting mass equals.

When my Dad died I thought it would be nice for me to try and unravel some of the paternal family histories and in doing so record for posterity the achievements and life of my Dad, Gilbert Wilfred Hyde.

I knew in doing this I would have to roll into the overall story of the Priday clan because my Mom was a Priday but because one of my cousins had already done the Priday side research I didn't think it would be too much of a problem (poor, deluded fool that I am !!). The Priday branch has its own set of mysteries caused by my Moms Mother stating she was born illegitimate.

The main reason I didn't think it would be too much of a problem was that as I knew it my Hyde family branch didn't have many links because (at that time) I knew there was me, my Dad and his Dad and any spurs or branches would be off the people behind my Grandad.

Lost Family

So as I started the process I created a Hyde family tree on Ancestry.co.uk and sat back with a smug smile. I knew the system would throw up links to official documentation that had been digitised and that I could sort and add these at my leisure.

Within a short time, the first shock arrived by email - there was a chap asking why my Grandad appeared in HIS family tree? Well to say I was gobsmacked was an understatement. It transpired that my Grandad was one of three brothers and I had a whole other family of cousins in South Wales.

Pinning down all the facts about that family branch and more importantly trying to solve the family mysteries that caused that arm of the family to be hidden (from me) until then is a job all on its own. And my second cousin Brian has spent 30 years researching his part of the Hyde family!

So that's one mystery that is slowly unravelling before my eyes and from which articles for Mawddach Dreams are generated as I have time.

True Brummie Connection

I knew my Grandad Hyde was married twice.

What I did not know was the identity of my father's mother or anything about her family. I discovered that she was from the Davies family of true Brummies. Plus, of course, there is the family of the second wife - Florence Bassford nee Chandler.

It turns out that the Davies are a well-established Brummie family with lots of things to interest anyone interested in history, particularly social history. I have since made contact with living relatives, cousins, and found that one of them is not only living in the same place that "my" Sheward family moved to in 1912 but she actually knows some of the Sheward clan - it truly is a small world!

And from initial exploration, it seems that the Chandler family will add more treacle to the knitting basket. The Chandlers have morphed into the Bassford's and yes there is a whole new avenue to research.

Other Branches

As I delve deeper I have found links to Canada, New Zealand, Australia & USA as well as most of Britain. But the biggest shock has been to find the number of connected persons who perished in the First World War. Add to this people who took part in and/or perished in WW2 and I have a whole new strand of research to carry out and articles to write for this site.

The Genealogy Dance

In doing the research I have arrived at a philosophy I am applying to all elements of the research - this is my approach and I accept it may clash with yours.

I will add all other families connected to my bloodline links for completeness but I will pick & choose who to write about on this site. Some families may just get a listing whilst others may get a number of articles, looking deeper into their lives, connections to my family or detailing significant events.

I will try to do justice to any member of the Military I come across, particularly if they gave their lives so the rest of us could live our lives the way we want.

Some people will get articles written about them because there is a direct link to one of my areas of interest.

Unless it can definitely (in writing) be proven otherwise, I will not include any family member born before the Dissolution of the Monasteries (the date I will use is 1536). What this means in practical terms is when Ancestry.co.uk & other such sites throw up potential ancestors with a birth date before 1536 I am going to ignore them and not include those persons in my family tree.

My reasoning is thus:

Prior to 1536 the Monastries controlled parish churches, it was the Monstries that controlled and kept the records of births, marriages & deaths and with the passing of the Dissolution Act of Parliament in 1536 all that was to be swept away - the Monastries looted and physically destroyed (which is why England & Wales is littered with so many ruined religious sites). Yes, some of the documentation of the general population may have survived but mostly all that did survive related to the "gentry", the ruling classes.

All of my extended family is, as far as I know, from the general population and not directly related to the gentry - no Lords & Ladies, Kings or Queens just the salt of the earth general population, their records were unlikely to have existed much before 1500 anyway.

So if your family is interconnected to mine at some level please understand why I will not spend many hours chasing links back before 1536.

Although I will research other families as I choose, my main concern is with the direct bloodline connections of the Hyde, Davies, Priday & Sheward families and I do not apologise for that.

So because of the new dance, my site starts to grow like topsy ....... if you can stay the course, I hope that you will find it as interesting as I do.