My Ancestral Footsteps weekend was a present from work colleagues and one of the best gifts I have ever received.
I had a lovely weekend tracing my paternal grandmother's family back in time and there were some great surprises. My grandmother and I got to know silversmiths and railway policemen and generations of screw makers with buildings still standing in picturesque villages from where they had lived and worked in the 1800s.
But the biggest revelation was finally discovering what happened to my grandmother's uncle and aunt who had died in a mysterious double murder/suicide, our guide had unearthed the original police report which contained not only my great great uncle's handwritten suicide note but also the very bullets that had gone through my ancestors' skulls! All very morbid, but on a positive note, the police report and newspaper accounts led us to finally understand my uncle's actions in the context of extreme trauma suffered from fighting in World War 1.
MICHELLE and BETTY, Oxfordshire, England
