In this second episode of Series Six, host Andrew Martin meets Rick Glanvill - a family historian, author, and tour guide, who is also the official historian of Chelsea Football Club. Andrew will be finding out how Rick got hooked on researching his family tree, how his work as a tour guide is affected by this, and how he ended up being the expert of a football club's history.
THE LIFE STORY - WILLIAM URMSTON SEARLE GLANVILLE RICHARDS
Rick has chosen to tell the life story of his third cousin, three times removed - William Urmston Searle Glanville Richards.
William, like Rick, spent countless hours researching family history, but unlike Rick, William began taking on the rich and well-to-do Victorian clients for whom he would be paid to research and write up their family history, having already written up his own Glanville family.
This all sounds impressive, but then Rick started to spot cracks in his research. Upon further analysis, he found a case of William taking a creative route to his family history work involving the defacing of records in the British Library and the Bodleian Library. This landed him in big trouble.
THE BRICK WALL - ELLEN TAYLOR
Rick needs your help to solve a mystery that's been causing him problems for years - he's trying to find his 3x Gt Grandmother, Ellen Taylor, who appears to have married Henry David Linsell... However, Rick can't find their marriage, and she can't find a correct registered birth for Ellen either.
He has a few theories of why he can't locate her; maybe Taylor was a surname from a previous marriage, maybe Ellen was a middle name, maybe Ellen or Eleanor wasn't her first name.
Fascinatingly, there is a cousin noted at the time of Ellen's death in 1890, called Harriet Copping - but where does she fit in the tree? Was she a first cousin? A second cousin? Or not even Ellen's cousin but her husband's cousin instead? All this remains a mystery.
If you think that you can help Rick solve his brick wall with a research idea or clue, then you can send him a message via his Twitter account @RickGlanvill or via the email address he gives in the episode. Alternatively, you can send a message and we'll pass it straight on.
In the meantime, Rick accepts Andrew and Sándor's offer of help, but will there be penalties?
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Episode Credits:
Andrew Martin - Host and Producer
Rick Glanvill - Guest
John Spike - Sándor Petőfi
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