Our Genealogical Forebears

In the autumn of 1895 Colonel William Shipway engaged a young man, Herbert Davies, to trace his pedigree. Colonel Shipway had always been interested in his family roots, which he believed lay in Gloucestershire. A few years earlier another man with rather humbler ancestry, Edwin Lyne, headmaster of a Dublin art school, had begun to trace his family tree spurred on by rumours that a Mary Lyne of Reading had left £500 unclaimed on her death. Neither succeeded in his quest, but both cases illustrate the state of Victorian genealogy. Dr Davies proved to be a forger, while the difficulty of tracking down his ancestors stymied Edwin Lyne.

There was considerable growth of interest in genealogy during the Victorian period. Yet it remained very much an interest indulged by the landed gentry and professional families, or those who felt, or could be persuaded, that their families came from that social class. One such researcher was Miss Louise Bazalgette Lucas, who during the 1880s wrote two handsome albums containing her family tree. In an introduction to the albums, now with the Society of Genealogists, she wrote: