The Farndale Story
The Farndale Story is Work in Progress and will emerge properly over
the coming months. Most of the pages are not yet written or are still in first
draft. The Farndale Story is planned to be finished by about January 2025.
Return to the Home Page of the
Farndale Family Website |
The story of one family’s journey
through two thousand years of British History |
The 84 family lines into which the
family is divided. Meet the whole family and how the wider family is related |
Members of the historical family
ordered by date of birth |
Links to other pages with historical
research and related material |
The story of the Bakers of
Highfields, the Chapmans, and other related families |
Return to the Farndale Family Website
A Journey
through time, following in the footsteps of one family.
The Time Traveller’s
Handbook
When you
first visit the Farndale Story, please read the Time Traveller’s Handbook
before using the Matrix for the first time.
Quick Key
I suggest
that you start by reading the
Orientation, top right of the matrix in a light green box.
The Numbered Stories
in thirty three Acts take you on the main journey into the past. You’re best to
read them in the numbered order, starting with the light blue shaded box.
However more rebellious readers can travel through time in a more random order
if that is what you prefer.
The Explainers
tell of places and historical events, and of historical factors which
influenced our family’s story. They provide a little more depth as you visit
different eras of time.
The Thirty
Objects and Places take you on a geographical tour, and
provide directions if you would like to visit our ancestral lands in person.
You will come into contact with places and objects that will put you in direct
contact with the family through time. If you have a chance to take a trip to
the ancestral lands of the Farndales, you might find the geographical guide helpful, which
will enable you to plan a route.
The Farndale Folk
are a few of our ancestors waiting to be introduced to you, to further enhance
your journey through time.
All these
pages are full of hyperlinks. These
will take you to the underlying research if you would like to explore in more
depth, or check the source material. Every member of the Farndale family has
his or her own webpage. The hyperlinks will take you to individual family
members’ records; to family trees; to further information within the wider
website; and sometimes to links outside the website or source material.
After
reading the Orientation, scroll down to the early thirteenth
century to find the
first Act of the story.
The Time Traveller’s Matrix
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The Guide to getting the best use of this matrix for future reference |
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A Time Machine to a different era of geological time in the heart of our ancestral home |
The start of the Victorian discovery of modern scientific method |
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An overview guide and introduction to the three distinct landscapes which defined our history |
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The
richest Mesolithic suite in Britain, a few miles south of Scarborough, on the
edge of the ancient Lake Pickering, only 30 km from Farndale |
Underground
caves, only 15 km from Farndale, which were the home of the Bronze Age Beaker
Folk |
A
massive Iron Age promontory Hill Fort only 20km from Farndale |
The Iron Age, Bronze Age, Neolithic, Mesolithic evidence of the people of the immediate vicinity to Farndale |
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A Journey through the ancestral lands Some help if you have a chance to go on a geographical tour of the family history |
An alphabetical list of words and terms which you might come across during your travels, which are explained here |
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Introduction
to Kirkdale and its Minster For those particularly interested in Kirkdale, this introductory page is the place to start |
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Isurium Brigantum (Aldborough) The Roman Regional Capital |
A Roman Villa on palatial
scale |
The lands which would become the lands of Kirkdale and Chirchebi in Roman and Pagan times, 71 CE to 580 CE |
A Roman Villa only 2km from
Kirkdale in the heart of our ancestral lands |
The Roman Capital of northern
England where Constantine was proclaimed Emperor |
A Roman arm purse which can be seen in the British Museum in London today, found in about the second century CE by a cairn overlooking Farndale, which will transport you back 2,000 years |
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A place of wild beasts and men who lived like wild beasts Bede’s description of the wilderness of Farndale as a place of dragons and wild beasts |
The
village and church of Lastingham, with its Norman crypt |
The momentous agreement at
Whitby, 30 km northeast of Farndale, which resolved the incompatibilities
between Roman and Celtic Christian traditions, and placed Britain onto the
European stage |
Kirkdale and the Chirchebi Estate in the Anglo Saxon Period, 580 CE to 793 CE |
Kirkdale from its founding in
about 685 CE to the beginning of the Scandinavian period in about 800 CE |
Deirian and Northumbrian York, a political, cultural and
educational Hub on the European stage The people who dominated our
ancestral lands |
Alcuin and the
birth of modern education The world of Ecgbert and
Aethelbert, successors to Bede, and their pupil Alcuin, who took York’s
powerhouse of knowledge to the court of Charlemagne to pioneer the European
educational system |
The burial ground of a Saxon
princess who lay for thirteenth centuries overlooking the Hill of Witches
where the Craggs line of Farndales would later make their home |
Ornate sarcophagus lids and Saxon artefacts to be found in Kirkdale Minster and embedded into its walls which will transport you to the Eighth century CE |
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A reconstructed Journey into Scandinavian Yorkshire and a glimpse of Scandinavian objects which tells its story |
The powerful figure at the heart of the aristocracy, who rebuilt Kirkdale and put our ancestral lands firmly onto the national political stage |
Kirkdale and the Chirchebi Estate in the Scandinavian Period, 793 CE to 1066 |
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian
Kirkdale Kirkdale in the
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian period from about 800 CE to 1066, with a brief
summary of its history through to 1500 |
The Scandinavian centre of
northern England |
A unique treasure whose secrets transport us into the world of the eleventh century upon which you can stare today, imagining direct ancestors who did the same a thousand years ago |
The poem which takes us into the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian mindset |
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The descendants of Nigel
D’Aubigny who defined our family’s lives in the twelfth century ‘Bending the knee’ |
The descendants of Robert de
Stuteville who defined out family’s lives in the eleventh and then from the
late twelfth century |
The People of the Kirkbymoorside (“Chirchebi”) Estate from 1066 to 1200 |
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The
breathtaking abbey ruins that must have been held in astonished awe by our
forebears when the abbey broke through the soil of Ryedale, adjacent to
Farndale, in only a couple of decades before it started to take control of
swathes of those lands |
The baronial Yorkshire family
from whom later Scottish Kings would derive and who dominated the early
history of our later Cleveland home |
The Royal Line and the Noble Houses The relationship between the Royal Dynasties of England and the Noble Houses who directly influenced our family history |
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Rural lifestyles from the Norman Conquest |
A
journey to places in Farndale which featured in a 1301 tax register, marking
out the geography of the place our ancestors settled |
A look
down into Farndale to take in its scale and landscape, from the place where
the Roman Purse was dropped Perhaps
also, a hike to Middle Head, the Lord of the Rings land of Midelhovet,
where Edmund the Hermit once dwelled |
Thirteenth Century Farndale Clearing the dale to build our new home Start Here |
c1230 to c1310 Perhaps the earliest identifiable individual member of our
family, who cleared and then settled in Farndale |
c1264 to c1335 The wealthiest tenant in Farndale in 1301 |
The story of the dale of Farndale to 1500, to accompany the family story |
A possible model which relies on extensive medieval evidence, to suggest the most likely family tree of our earliest ancestors |
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The Great Yorkshire Forest Drive A drive
through Dalby Forest, the modern Pickering Forest, where our forebears took
game in contravention of forest laws, or were caught and punished by the
verderers and regarders of the forest |
7 – Poachers of
Pickering Forest Tales of a surprisingly large number of our forebears who were poachers in Pickering Forest. Their archery skills would foretell the legends of Robin Hood and the English army at Agincourt |
Richard and Thomas
of Farndale Excommunicated for poaching and contempt of the authority of the
church in 1316 |
c1265 to c1340 Slew a soar in Pickering Forest in 1293 |
c1266 to c1340 Fined for poaching in Pickering Forest in 1293 and 1332 |
c1295 to c1370 Poacher of a hind and a calf in 1330 and repeat offender in 1336 |
c1365 to c1450 Involved in a significant cattle and horse rustling expedition in
1384 |
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Danby at the turn of the fourteenth century |
c1265 to c1335 A relatively wealthy tenant who had left Farndale for Danby in
the North York Moors but adopted its name |
Our Pioneer ancestors who left Farndale but took its name to settle in new places |
c1273 to c1345 A relatively wealthy tenant who had left Farndale for Egton and Rosedale |
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The street of the Medieval Butchers |
The Merchants of York A History of York after the Norman Conquest |
c1303 to c1372 A Saddler made freeman of York in 1363 |
c1334 to c1405 A freeman of York in 1397 through patrimony from his father |
c1352 to c1425 John Farndale, and his brothers Henry and William, were archers
and men at arms called to fight in Scotland in 1389 John was later a butcher made freeman of York in 1408 |
The
Church of St Helen and the Holy Cross and the Chapel of St Nicholas, the
heart of the Neville lands, and place of the alabaster effigy of the young
son of Richard III |
The
History of Sheriff Hutton to 1500 A history of Sheriff Hutton
which will take you to the lands of the Nevilles and Richard III during the
Wars of the Roses An Explainer of the dynastic
struggles of the Plantagenets leading to the Wars of the Roses for important
context This history of the family who
influenced the Wars of the Roses |
Tales
of archers and men at arms who fought with Henry V and an observation post in
the home of the Nevilles and Richard III from which to view the Wars of the
Roses |
c 1357 to 20 December 1435 A veteran soldier of the armies of Richard II and Henry V who
fought in the French and Scottish Wars. |
c 1332 to 1397 A chaplain, who was pardoned for killing John of Spaldington and later established his family in Sheriff
Hutton, where he was a person of some wealth. |
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St Mary Magdalene Church, Campsall The
church in Barnsdale forest of which the literary character of the Middle
Ages, Robin Hood, wrote I made a chapel in Bernysdale, That seemly is to se, It is of Mary Magdaleyne,
And therto would I be. Nearby sites associated with Robin Hood including Robin Hood’s Well at the side of the A1 |
Medieval Doncaster and its minster The Victorian Parish church (later Minster) of Doncaster rebuilt in 1853, but on the site of the earlier Parish church of which William Farndale was chaplain and later vicar in the years after the Black Death |
1332 To 1400 He paid the 4d Poll Tax of 1379 which led to the Peasant’s Revolt |
C1330 to c1415 The Chaplain and Vicar of Doncaster, who held lands at Loversall,
of whom we have significant records |
The Family of William Farndale, the Fourteenth Century Vicar of Doncaster |
The
History of Doncaster to 1500 The History of pre industrial
Doncaster from its Roman inception as Danum to the end of the sixteenth
century. |
The history of a small village
and church just south of Doncaster, where William Farndale held land |
The history of the village of
Campsall north of Doncaster, where we find our ancestors in the sixteenth
century |
The legend of Robin Hood
explored for its Yorkshire roots, and the Farndale connection with the
legends, first as the class of poachers who gave rise to the inspiration, and
later their fifteenth century descendants who lived in the place where the
stories emerged |
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The most likely paternal and maternal ancestors of modern
Farndales, who died in Kirkleatham having emigrated with their family into
Cleveland |
12 –
Arrival in the old Bruce lands around Skelton Castle The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Families of Kirkleatham, Skelton, Moorsholm and Liverton in Cleveland |
William and
Margaret (nee Atkinson) Farndale The couple who married at St Mary Magdalene Church in Campsall
north of Doncaster, and who emigrated to Cleveland and were buried in
Skelton. |
A history of Kirkleatham and Wilton, the place where our family first settled in Cleveland |
A history of Skelton and its own church. The Farndales arrived in Moorsholm in the Parish of Skelton in about 1588 and lived there through the tumultuous years of the Civil War |
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Took over the farming of Kilton Hall Farm where he farmed 577
acres |
Farmer of Kilton and a merchant of wood, rods, coals, salting
bacon. Farmer at Kilton Hall Farm of 600 acres The last of the Kilton Farmers |
Three
generations of Kilton Farndales in one place. A side
trip to nearby Boosbeck and Skelton take you to the
gravestones two later generations. Take in Wensley and you’ll find two more
recent generations. Seven
generations of the family in one short drive |
“Old Farndale of Kilton”, the patriarch of the Kilton Farndales, regaler of smuggler tales, alum merchant and farmer, of
whom the Squire once said “When you are gone, there will never be such
another Johnny Farndale” |
The story of the Kilton Farndales, a family who dominated a lost village over two centuries The
First Hub |
The story of the lost village
of Kilton and its sylvan landscape A
journey around modern Kilton, of farms, a ruined castle and a small village
of Kilton Thorpe to capture the essence of the two century home of our family |
Stories of smugglers, led by
my great x3 grandfather known as the King of the Smugglers, and the undoubted
involvement of our forebears |
The Smuggler Chief The grandfather of Martin Farndale’s wife Elizabeth Taylor, no doubt in league with the c17th Farndales. When the local folk whispered Andrew’s Cow has calved, everyone knew the goods had arrived. The wealthy John Andrew later became master of the Cleveland Hunt. |
Have
fish and chips in the Ship Inn, and you will be in the home of John Andrew’s
smuggling trade, once connected by an underground passage to the white house
on the hill where my great x3 grandfather lived |
14 – Spreading out from Brotton and Loftus The story of a substantial division of the family who spread widely across Cleveland and beyond from Kilton, Brotton and Loftus The Second Hub |
Press ganged into the Royal Navy, Giles served on HMS
Experiment in the Spanish Main during the War of Jenkins Ear where he
died and was buried at sea |
John Farndale served alongside James Cook, discoverer of the
Southern Continent, on colliers out of Whitby |
The association of James Cook
with Cleveland, Whitby, Great Ayton,
and the Farndale ancestral lands |
A history of Whitby at the
height of its maritime power in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, home
to several large Farndale families. A look back to the Anglo Saxon
history of Whitby in the time of Celtic and Roman Christianity |
The story of the Whitby Farndales who settled in the bustling port of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries The Third Hub |
The place of Dracula inspiration where many Farndales have been buried, provides a vantage point over Whitby, and its maritime activity |
The story of the merchant master mariners, John Christopher Farndale Senior and his sons William and John and their epic maritime adventures around the English coast, to the Baltic, Russia and Scandinavia and to Biscay, the site of a tragic disaster |
The
home from the early eighteenth century of a large section of our family |
16 –
Return to the Vale of York The Ampleforth Farndales who returned south of the North York Moors to Yearsley near Ampleforth The Fourth Hub |
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Self sufficiency and Sustainability before the Modern Age A step back to explore the self sufficient lifestyles of our forebears as an
inspiration to modern sustainability |
How agricultural practices
changed over time |
Our family history includes
experiences of high infant mortality in Victorian times, often extreme
poverty, and struggle The evolution of medical care |
A story of aspiration and
achievement The education of our forebears The life of children in
seventeenth century to Victorian Yorkshire |
17 – Transition to the Industrial Revolution John Farndale, my great x2 uncle, was a prolific writer who captured the essence of the late eighteenth century and its transition into the Industrial Revolution. The family’s history provides a direct pathway to experience these years of momentous change |
The Author A man of sphinxian complexity who wrote
extensively and has passed down stories of our family and of change in early
Victorian Yorkshire |
Saltburn
by the Sea, Victorian new town John Farndale focused much of
his writing on the new seaside town of Saltburn by the Sea, built beside the
Old Saltburn of smuggling repute. It was a place of Victorian optimism and
inspiration, driven by the arrival of the railways and the richness of Cleveland’s
ironstone deposits. |
The engine of Cleveland’s
Victorian development was its mineral supply, particularly its ironstone. Our
family would work in an extensive network of mines throughout the area. Opportunities for work as
servants in households |
Ou family was also directly
involved in the important alum trade. |
Huntcliff, Saltburn by the Sea Find a vantage point on the awesome Hunt Cliffs to look down over Saltburn and Cat Nab, and the alum mines of our ancestors. It was here, John tells us, that when a French Napoleonic ship threatened out to sea, a band of local women dressed in red along the cliffs to make the French believe that an army of redcoats was ready to welcome any attack. |
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The family story of mining, mainly for iron stone, the primary resource behind the industrial development of Cleveland |
The ruined site of the Kilton mine |
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The many families who lived in Leeds, Bradford, Coatham, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Stockton through the period of industrial transition |
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The story of the folk who left Yorkshire and travelled to London and elsewhere in the south of Britain |
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The Chief Constable of Bradford who pioneered the use of fingerprints, invented the police box, and played a key role in Bradford’s evolution at the start of the twentieth century |
The Chief Victorian Constable of Birmingham who foiled a Jack the Ripper Hoax and played a key role in uncovering the Ledsam Dynamite Conspiracy |
To
contrast with the medieval outlaw poachers of Pickering Forest, the story of
the law makers including two influential Chief Constables and the real
Inspector Foyle
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An inspector of crime during the Second World War ‘The real Inspector Foyle’. |
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The story of the large families of Great Ayton |
The father of a large Great Ayton family, who was a cartwright |
A visit to Great Ayton where many members of the family lived, and a side trip to the James Cook Monument |
Matthew and Hannah Farndale and their daughters Mary and Elizabeth
embarked on a 14 week voyage to Melbourne to establish a new lineage in
Australia |
The story of Matthew Farndale and his two daughters who emigrated to Melbourne during the Australian Gold Rush and settled at Birregurra, who have left a wealth of descendants, though none still bearing the Farndale name. Another Australian family of the 1960s |
Upon his return from the Crimean War, John George Farndale took his family to Ontario in 1870. At about the same time Samuel Kirk Farndale took his family to Ontario |
The pioneering spirit that
dominated the family’s story from the mid nineteenth century |
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The story of the Scottish Lindsays, Catherine Lindsay’s family |
The parents of a family of twelve born on a moorland farm, who spread across Britain and North America |
The story of the moorland farm of Tidkinhow |
25 – The Farndales of
Tidkinhow The remarkable story of the Farndales of Tidkinhow and the adventures of twelve siblings who lived in a house that wasn’t big enough for them all |
The
moorland farm of a large family |
The story of Matthew Farndale
and his family of Craggs Hall Farm |
The story of John Farndale and his family who moved to Loftus |
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The grocer who emigrated to Newfoundland |
In 1910 John Martin and Bessie Farndale emigrated to Newfoundland and established a grocery business in St John’s. His son joined the Artillery in World War 2 and lived to be the oldest Farndale |
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The Story of the Baker Family
of Highfields A portal into another family, the ancestors of Peggy Baker, who married Alfred Farndale |
Alfred Farndale
and Peggy (nee Baker) Farndale The World War 1 veteran, Alfred Farndale married the independently minded Peggy Baker in 1929 and embarked immediately for the Prairie of Alberta. Defeated by the Great Depression the family returned to Yorkshire where they built a new life from the 1930s |
Martin Farndale was the first of his family of 12 to emigrate to
Alberta and was soon joined by four brothers and two sisters who were
pioneers of the prairie |
The story of the Farndales of Tidkinhow who left Yorkshire for a new life on the Prairies |
Atlantic
crossings at the time of Titanic The story from the detailed diary kept by Jim Farndale of a crossing of the Atlantic the year before the Titanic sank in the same seas, and a train journey across Canada to establish a new life on the Prairie |
Life on the Prairie of Alberta |
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A remarkable pioneer who played an important role in the
construction of the Hoover Dam in Nevada and later became a US Senator |
The story of the Hoover Dam, with which Jim Farndale was associated |
The family of Jim Farndale, US Senator, who settled in Neveda and California; the descendants of George William Farndale who settled in Illinois and Wisconsin; and the family of John Alan Farndale, of California |
The New Zealand pioneers, descendants of Ronald Martin Farndale of Masterton, and of Wilf Farndale, of Gisborne |
Captured at the Battle of Sidi Rezegh in North Africa, Ronald emigrated to New Zealand where his descendants still live |
An aircraft engineer in Bristol, Wilf emigrated to New Zealand |
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30 - Newcastle and
South Shields The many members of the family who settled in South Shields and Jarrow |
John William
Farndale (“Newcastle Johnny”) The Youngest Jarrow Marcher |
The story of the Jarrow March
of 1936, of which Johnny Farndale, was the youngest member |
William Farndale was a railway porter who became a presbyterian missionary and his son, William became President of the Methodist Conference in 1947, leading a ‘back to the soil’ campaign |
Exploring the role of religions of various denominations and its influence on the family |
Rev Dr William
Edward Farndale The influential Primitive Presbyterian who became head of the
Presbyterian Church shortly after the Second World War |
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The story of the many soldiers from the family who took up arms in the First World War |
The context of the First World
War to our family’s history |
A remarkable person who provided us with an eye witness account
of the Crimean War before taking his family to a new life in Ontario |
The Crimean War through the
perspective of John Farndale, who took part in the long campaign |
An exploration of the many military members of the family, and their stories |
An airman shot down over Denmark after a bombing raid, and
secretly buried by the Danish resistance |
The story of the shooting down of Lancaster ME 718 |
General Sir Martin
Farndale KCB The original author of this genealogy who led the British Army
and Northern Command of NATO in the crucial years of the Cold War |
An explosive blend of Farndale firepower |
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Brewer and Northumberland Hussar of Rothbury, Northumberland |
A final chapter which explores the twentieth century family and reflects on how the family has spread its wings in the more recent years of the twenty first century |
The Bank Manager of Thirsk |
The family who worked in Sir Titus Salt’s Saltaire Mills
including a Sanitary Officer and Cricketer |
The member of the Yorkshire Mummers and the story of the Farndale
entertainers |
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Perspective Laying our
Ancestors Back in the sun The genealogist’s ambition Peering through chambers to
our ghostly beginnings The
depth of generational experience A long term perspective |
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The family history is remarkably complete. We explore here where it has been necessary to rely on the most probable narrative where certainty has been impossible |
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Telling the story of
Our Female Ancestors The historical record is not properly representative of our female ancestors. As a historian it is important to found our narrative on the evidence which exists. However by reflecting on the existing evidence, and applying a fresh analysis, we can recover the story of the Farndale women, even though the underlying evidence has not recorded everything they did |
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The 84 Family
Lines of the Farndale Family Meet the whole family. A matrix of the 84 family lines which make up the extended family
will introduce you to every individual member of this family who can trace
their origins to Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian England. |
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Inspiration from our back story What we can take from our
journey through two thousand years of history Finish Here |
The Story of the Farndale Story Building the story over two generations |
Some reflections on new
approaches to genealogy and historical research to allow families to come
into contact with their deep ancestral history |
Some notes on the sources and
methods used to compile and bring alive the lineage of a family |
A recognition of some
restrictions to genealogical research before 1500, but some ideas to help
overcome the constraints |
A reflection of the importance
of records of births, deaths and marriages, and census records, but some
ideas about how to build on that framework to create stories and pathways
through regional and national history |
Some thoughts on the
relationship between genealogical methods with historical research, to
uncover the full picture |
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The original index of our family, in alphabetical order by date of birth, which will enable you to find an individual person |
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Return to the Farndale Family
Website