When my father started researching his ancestry I was not really interested. I knew the names of my grandparents and I really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Why would anyone want to go traipsing around the country looking at old papers to find out the names of dead people?

Then my dad came back from one of his trips and said “Benjamin GIBBON is on the Muster Roll of the Pembrokeshire Militia in 1807″. This might not seem like the sort of phrase that would ignite any flames of passion but one of the subjects I have become more interested in since leaving school (way back in the last century) is history. I don’t mean the boring details of how many soldiers were in each army at a paticular battle, or even who won. I like to learn about the ordinary people who hid their livestock when the soldiers marched through; who picked up their children and ran for the hills, praying that they would have a home to come back to.

I had just read a book that mentioned the last invasion of Britain when some French troops under the command of an Irish/American landed in Pembrokeshire thinking that they could raise a rebel army and invade England by the back door. I was keen to know if Benjamin GIBBON had been in the militia when this had happened in 1797.

Dad couldn’t tell me because he hadn’t seen any militia lists for the years before 1807 but he did casually mention that Benjamin had married Elizabeth Cunnick. “How do you know?” I asked. “We looked at the parish registers,” he said, “They have microfilm of them.”

This was the hook that caught me. For some reason I really wanted to look at parish registers. I think it was because I wanted to see who else was on the page, were they connected? Did they live near? were they involved in the defeat of the French? I wanted to do research too!

Pretty soon after this I had an operation that prevented me from lifting things like rolls of fabric and sewing machines so this reduced the amount of work I could do - I had to wait for my husband to be there to lift and move and carry stuff. I needed something to occupy my time and I thought that family history might be interesting and I could do that for a while. Dad was still researching his ancestors my Mum was doing her lot so my husband said “do my family, I don’t have many relatives.” He did not know how wrong he was!