my genealogy life

Family stories are my buried treasure

Tracing ancestors in Canada, England, Scotland & Ireland

Sharing my love of digging through old documents, uncovering family stories, and sharing the real papers that bring our ancestors back to life.


Blog Posts

Tag: England

  • Profile of Thomas Lee Norton a Master Mariner

    Profile of Thomas Lee Norton a Master Mariner

    Lee Thomas Norton (often Thomas Lee Norton in records) was a mariner by trade, plying the seas around England. Thomas was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, baptized on September 18, 1816 to parents Jeremiah Norton a shipwright and his wife Elizabeth Sharpe. When Thomas was 15 years old he became an indentured servant to William…

  • Connection Made 126 Years Later

    Connection Made 126 Years Later

    It has been slow going for me to link a letter I found in my grandmother’s papers to living family members, but guess what? It has happened. Yesterday I logged onto Ancestry and on the home page, there is an interesting notification that shows up if someone edits a record you have saved to your…

  • Richard Lee Norton’s 200th Birthday

    Richard Lee Norton’s 200th Birthday

    Today marks the birth of Richard Lee Norton in Norfolk, England, my great great grandfather. His father Jeremiah Norton was a shipwright who likely was away from home for months at a time, and his mother Elizabeth Sharp kept the house running. The family lived in Kings Lyn, Norfolk but also seem to have connections…

  • Finding Margaret

    Finding Margaret

    You know when you first started doing your family tree and it seems that every time you hit the library you found something new? Well, that’s what my memory of first starting out researching my family tree was like. It probably was a bit more onerous than that, but it’s the discoveries that suck you…

  • The Brock Family of Hackney

    The Brock Family of Hackney

    My connection to the Brock family was not an obvious one. It all started with a four-page letter written by a niece to her uncle in 1883. This letter must have been important as it was passed down through my family until I rediscovered it in 1993, one hundred and ten years after it was written.…