Welcome to Roots and Rabbitholes

    Roots and Rabbitholes is growing — new timelines, stories, and data added regularly
    ✦
    New: Robert Edward Butt's timeline now live
    ✦
    Roots and Rabbitholes is growing — new timelines, stories, and data added regularly
    ✦
    New: Robert Edward Butt life timeline now live
    ✦
  

Welcome to Roots and Rabbitholes, a place where my journey into family history comes to life. What began as a personal curiosity—piecing together names, dates, and stories from scattered records—quickly became a deep and ongoing exploration of the people and places that shaped my family.

With a background as a biochemist and scientist, I bring an analytical eye to genealogy, combining evidence-based research with a passion for uncovering human stories. I created this website as a central repository for my work, bringing together documents, photographs, maps, and narratives so they can be preserved, shared, and built upon. Here, you’ll find the threads of my ancestry woven into a broader tapestry of history, culture, and place—a record not only of where I come from, but of the connections that continue to shape who I am.

This is a living archive. The stories, data, and records on this site represent the best available evidence at the time of writing — but genealogical research is a continuous process. New documents surface, archives are digitised, and records are reinterpreted. Ancestor stories will be updated and expanded as research develops, and where conclusions are uncertain or preliminary, this is clearly noted. If you are related to any of the families here and have information, photographs, or documents to share, please get in touch via the Contact page.

Researching…

Ancestral Lines include:

Butt
Durrant
Pluck
Grimshaw
Jacobs
Birchall
Hilker

Stapleton
Burket
Hamblin
Wells
Pendred
Henderson
Gubbs

Whincup
Wright
Gorey
East
Worthington
Fleming
Williams

Grant
Odam
Rands
Tripp
Holmes
Welton
Steel

Exploring the Data

Beyond the individual stories, this site examines the family analytically — finding patterns in the records, mapping where ancestors lived and worked, and placing individual lives within the sweep of history.

Lives in Time

How did world events shape individual lives? Lives in Time places each ancestor on an interactive timeline alongside the historical events running concurrently with their life — wars, coronations, revolutions, and social change mapped alongside births, marriages, and deaths.

View the Timelines
Ancestral Occupations

What did they do for a living? The paternal and maternal occupational trees chart the working lives of the family across generations — from agricultural labourers and fishermen to naval engineers and seaside entrepreneurs.

Explore Ancestral Occupations
Ancestral Locations

Where did they come from, and where did they end up? Ancestral Locations maps the geographic spread of the family across the British Isles and beyond, from Suffolk fishing villages and Manchester back streets to the naval city of Portsmouth where so many lines converged.

See Ancestral Locations
Ancient Origins

Before the documentary record begins, DNA tells a different story. Ancient Origins traces the deep maternal and paternal genetic lineages behind the family lines, mapping haplogroups that connect these ancestors to population movements tens of thousands of years old.

Discover Ancient Origins
Death and Mortality

How long did they live, and what killed them? Death and Mortality charts lifespan and cause of death across generations, from the earliest recorded ancestors to the twentieth century, using data drawn from death certificates and census records.

Examine the Data

Lives Remembered

These stories are the beginning. This is a hobby pursued with care rather than speed — new stories, timelines, and data will be added as the research allows, but genealogical work takes time and each ancestor deserves to be done properly. Return visits are always rewarded.

If you recognise a name or have a family connection to any of the lines researched here, please get in touch via the Contact page — all contributions, corrections, and conversations are welcome.

Lives Remembered