This website is a window into our family history, starting with us and reaching back through our direct ancestors. We’ve created this website for anyone interested, with due consideration to privacy – details of living individuals or those recently deceased aren’t shared here.

My interest in genealogy began back in 1986, a school project that quickly turned into a personal passion. I teamed up with my maternal uncle Jeff who had started looking into our family history back in 1970, and together we delved deeper into the Chambers and Hall families. We found some intriguing stories and puzzles plus many dead ends and brick walls as is so often the case. During this time Jeff kept a detailed log of our research in a series of diaries, a habit I adopted and continue today. As life often does, it got busy. I moved to university, started a career and a family while Jeff was busy with his own young family.

Come 2005, I was back. This time, my wife joined the quest, following her Alcock and Tew ancestry. The rise of the internet, especially the digitisation of genealogical records such as the UK censuses, was transformative. It was like having a magnifying glass, helping spot people in places we hadn’t considered before. Our fathers caught the genealogy bug too. After another break of a few years, in 2013, I felt the need to organise our work more formally and chose Gramps as our platform, shifting from my previous note system. It was an exercise in refining and consolidating our gathered information to improve the quality of our research.

After another break I returned to genealogy research in 2021 inspired by the possibilities of DNA testing. I shifted my research to Ancestry for the added benefit of connecting with fellow researchers. Both our fathers had also been maintaining their trees using Ancestry tools.

And here’s the highlight: DNA testing led to my biggest discovery. After 78 years of mystery, I managed to trace my paternal grandfather. My brother has put together a dedicated website chronicling his remarkable yet tragic wartime story.

This site generated is from GEDCOM I regularly export from Ancestry using an application I wrote called genster.

We’re aware our research isn’t perfect, and it keeps evolving. If you spot errors or have additional insights, please share. Every bit of information, photo or document that can paint a fuller picture of someone’s life is valuable. We’re deeply thankful to all of our family members who have contributed their time and energy into this project.

~ Ian and Steph
(you can contact us at history@cozy.ac)