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Introduction
I started researching my family tree three years ago. We found my Grandmother's old Family Bible with details of her siblings and grandparents written inside the front cover. I still have the torn back of an envelope with these details on and it is amazing to think that these few sketchy details have led to the family tree I have today.
Some family lines go back 18 generations but so far I have managed to get back about 5 or 6 generations for most families and I am still researching and probably will be for some time. On this website I will attempt to recreate the lives of some of these members of my family taking details from census returns, old letters and other documents. For me the joy has not just been about finding that my family goes back to the 15th century and wondering where my family fortune has gone or if I am related to royalty, but about trying to find out about the sorts of lives that my ancestors lived, most of them in various parts of rural Sussex, not far from where I currently live. Most of them appear to have been Agricultural Labourers and Farmers, a hard but honest living and most of the others worked in some capacity connected with the landscape such as wood fellers and brickmakers. I hope you will be interested in these biographies as they appear.
My family tree includes the surnames of Baldwin, Harmer, Pilbeam, Terry, Payne Winchester, Funnell, Simmons, Rusbridge, Roffey, Vigar, Vincent, Message and many more and covers a geographical area of Sussex, Surrey, Lincolnshire, Middlesex and Ireland.
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