Publisher's Synopsis
Ancestors lost at sea, an unclaimed fortune and a family catastrophe which resulted in a family migration from one end of England to the other, were just a few of the unsolved mysteries faced by Beverley Hansford when he commenced researching his family history.
Armed with just a few names on a piece of paper, he set out to fulfil a lifetime ambition to find out more about his family and hopefully in the process provide answers to the questions which had puzzled him for so long.
Throughout a ten year period of research, he painstakingly researched his family's roots and revealed a completely different family history to the one he had envisaged at the start. Along the way he discovered that his ancestors had served in the Royal Navy at the time of Nelson and that the roots of his family lay not in industrial Lancashire as he had always thought, but instead in the rural countryside of Dorset. The peak of his success was to discover that he had relatives living in Australia and unite the family after a gap of nearly 150 years.
Roots In Three Counties is a vivid and descriptive account of unravelling the mysteries surrounding a family and probing deep into the legends which are handed down from one generation to the next. It presents the highs and lows of family history research and clearly indicates the dedication which the family historian must have to succeed. Most of all it shows what can be achieved by determination and perseverance.
