Joy of tracing next chapter in my colourful family history

THIS Tuesday brought something of an early Christmas present for amateur genealogists like myself, with the publication of the 1921 census.

Over the past year or so I have become fascinated by my family history, particularly my mother’s. Her relatives were an amazing band of travelling show people, actors and troubadours whose colourful lives I have been piecing together.

The 1921 census, then, felt like the next chapter in the story. Was my Great Aunt Violet, who died when I was a baby, still travelling with the circus, as she had been in 1911?

The documents reveal that the answer is no, the war putting paid to her dreams of being a trapeze artist, and she was instead working as a domestic servant.

There was an address, too, a place we had never known they had lived but which in 1921 housed four women: Violet, my great grandmother, who had been an actress in her day, another great aunt, and my own grandmother. Born Anabella, known always in the family as Belle, and yet here a teenager apparently experimenting with the name Bella.

We are so lucky to have this lens – thanks to the wonderful Scotland’s People website – down which we can gaze upon our family history. I highly recommend you give it a try.