Rummaging round in our archives

Now that it's November, Family Tree has just begun its 30th year (we can't believe it either!) and a lot has happened since that kitchen-table brainstorming session back in the autumn of 1984.

Over the years since, we've gathered together an awful lot of articles on every sort of family history topic under the sun, and one of the joys of family history is that it's always fascinating to take a peek back at the past. So when Lynn Betlock of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, USA, got in touch the other day, enquiring about an article we'd published by Diane Brook called 'Mother Tongue' in 2011, I thought that I'd share it here. While this article is about the languages (yes, languages - it wasn't just English!) that our ancestors in the British Isles would have spoken over the past five centuries, of course our family history 'family' spreads much more widely. It includes both our distant ancestors who traipsed the globe in search of a good place to live and work, and our fellow family history researchers today. So to our cousins in America, those in Britain, and wherever else you may be, I hope you enjoy the read...

Just click on the images of the pages, and they should enlarge to a legible size.