Your Researcher

My name is Geoff Greenwood. I have been a genealogist and historical investigator researching my own projects since 2009, but the recent global pandemic has presented the opportunity for a career change from accountancy to follow my love for investigation, data analysis and history.

I have entered formal study with the IHGS to attain a degree-level qualification in genealogy to back up the testimonials, casework and articles that you can find on this website.

I am based in the Midlands of the UK, which is a great central location for access to local archives, libraries, churchyards and historical sites across England and Wales.

Mission

For every Sir Francis Drake, John Sainsbury, or James Watt, there are thousands of British people who's lives did not impact the nation with such far-reaching accomplishments. Many of these lives were simple enough that they merely formed the chains linking those of us here today with those who are buried so far in the past that they have become little more than concepts.

But there are plenty who lived very interesting lives indeed; who's stories bear rediscovering. Uncovering and piecing together these lives, that were never chronicled and survive only as movements and events in official records, would be a vast undertaking for a society.

A personal connection can do wonders for motivation, but more than that, it's a pathway to the story, which a student of regional or topical history might overlook.

Finding and describing these stories is my mission. Encouraging and supporting others to share this mission is a goal.

Vision

There seems to be a preoccupation with proving familial ancestry links with royalty or nobility and 'claiming' heraldry on an attractive wall scroll. Whether empirically evidenced or involving great leaps of faith, these people have long been documented and researched due to their status. There are very few, if any, untold stories about such historical figures.

But take a look at those agricultural labourers and factory workers. Read newspapers and find mentions of them. Search the parish chest. Were they dab hands at catching hedgehogs? Did they knock out a century against a nearby village's cricket team? Is that why your family vocation has so often been a vet? Or pest exterminator? Is that why it's implicit that you, and your children after you, will pick up a bat on a Sunday morning? Or why your great-grandfather was able to so effectively deploy his unit's Mills bombs at the Somme in 1916?

When we look at an ancestor, we should put ourselves in their shoes. Civil and Parish records are the start, but understanding who lived on their street, where they worked, what was going on in the area at the time and seeing how that influenced your entire family line creates stories, nay histories, that are much more rewarding than a coloured shield hanging in the hallway.