GENEALOGY Home Page
I have been engaged in the pastime of researching my,
and friends, family history for over 40 years. It all started, when I was about
14, with a family tree written out on a large piece of wallpaper that my mother
had. It basically followed a line from a John Boniface who was buried in
Walberton in West Sussex in 1639 to my mother Sylvia Duncan. It followed the
male line till Emily Boniface married a Souter in 1837; their daughter married
a Toop and their daughter married a Duncan.
My first task was to go to the West Sussex Record
Office and verify the whole thing, which turned out to be fairly straightforward.
I corrected a few errors but basically it was sound. Then over the next 20
years I sporadically worked my way back down the different lines, the majority
of which were in West Sussex, though one large chunk of records came from
Worcestershire.
My father at around the same time was dealing with the
Watts side of affairs and all the resulting lines and I inherited his work in
1993 after he died.
So the majority of the Watts’ tree and most of the
Toop / Souter / Boniface trees have been taken from original documents as they
were done pre Internet. If I have found anything from the Internet or the IGI I
have always tried my best to check out the original as I have over the years
found numerous errors especially with the IGI and the 1881 census CDs.
I have also worked on my sons’ mother’s tree - Randall
and my wife’s tree -Layton. I have also included my cousin’s tree - Coombs and
also that of a friend of mine – Heaver.
So please click on the links below.
