Ancestral Footsteps combines advanced research techniques with unrivalled international contacts and first class travel arrangements, in order to create a memorable and moving experience for you.
The company was founded by Sue Hills, a veteran producer and director on hit BBC TV series, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, broadcasting in the UK, Australia and Canada, with an American version pending. She developed the Ancestral Footsteps concept while providing celebrities a fascinating insight into their past.
For the programme, Sue took American chat show host Jerry Springer back to trace ancestors in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, while British actress Barbara Windsor, travelled to Ireland and to idyllic English countryside, where she discovered a surprisingly grand connection to one of England's most famous landscape artists, John Constable. Meanwhile, comedian Alistair McGowan journeyed to Calcutta where he was astounded and delighted to discover his ‘Scottish’ ancestors were actually Anglo-Indian. TV presenter Griff Rhys Jones stayed nearer to home and went back to Wales to investigate the ignominious truth masked by a romantic family legend.
In parallel to her role behind the camera, Sue started conducting ancestry research for private clients and found this work equally rewarding and compelling. Her recent investigations included proving to a lady in her nineties that her ‘German silversmith’ great great grandfather was in fact a goldsmith from Switzerland and helping a client solve the longstanding mystery of exactly where and when his uncle was killed in the Second World War. These projects led her to the full Ancestral Footsteps concept.
Sue's own favourite ancestor is Henry Hay (1828 to 1882) who ran the Crooked Billet pub in the East End of London and then migrated to North London. Henry's life was completely representative of the move that thousands made from working class respectability to middle class acceptance in the mid-nineteenth century.
