My own family history

This is an ongoing project.  I started out in January 2000 wanting to find out more about my paternal grandfather's Jewish roots.  Through painstaking research in the censuses of the East End of London (not then online)  I discovered that the family had originally been called Navloski, and arrived in the UK in the late 1860's from Poland - facts hitherto unknown to the rest of the Bloom descendants.  I have built up a family tree of all of the descendants of these original Blooms, and made contact with many of them both in England and in the USA and Canada.  I have not yet been able to identify whereabouts in Poland we came from - this is my current challenge for this branch of the family.  As part of this work I discovered that my great uncle Harry had been killed in WW1, and I have visited his grave in France. 

My mother's family came from Ireland, and I have traced the family back using records at the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin and the Irish General Registration Office in Roscommon.  To go further I will need to visit the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland - a trip I intend to make when I have time.

My paternal grandmother was a keen family historian, and I'm lucky enough to have inherited a wonderful photograph album belonging to her mother.  This side of the family came to Bristol from Devon and I have traced them back to the early 1700s.  Along the way I have discovered ancestors who were sent to debtor's prison, were governors of the workhouse, were paupers, and were - like so many of our ancestors - agricultural labourers.  Some emigrated to South Africa (as part of the original '1820 settlers', sent there by the parish), some later went to Canada and to Australia.  I have traced descendants of most of these foreign branches and am now in contact with distant cousins who share an interest in family history and have their own contributions to add.