Thomas Finch was my direct ancestor, my eighth great-grandfather. He was a city boy, born in London, on 11 October 1655. His baptism was registered a year later in the old Anglican chapel of St Mary in Whitechapel. His siblings Sarah, Anthony and Dorothy were all...
Thomas Finch and Ann Summers On 26 July 1681 Thomas Finch, a 26-year-old barber living in the village of Great Hadham in rural Hertfordshire took a night walk with his friend and associate William Cristy. It was a balmy summer night but there was a full moon. Loping...
What’s in a name? After 1066, when the Normans invaded England from France, English families were forced to adopt hereditary surnames, replacing the old custom in which people were known by a personal name or nickname. By 1400 most English families had surnames but...
While I'm waiting to hear from publishers to whom I've submitted the proposal for Syd's biography I've been working on a series of geneological stories. This was a little vignette I wrote about Christiana Link, the mother of ... well, you'll have to read the book to...
We are the biological and cultural blend of our ancestors and we somehow think that we know what that means. I knew my grandparents extremely well and adored them all. On my father’s side, most of us had Finch eyes. Some of us talked and laughed like Grandma, who was...