Tracing Your Ancestors
Historic Pictures, Photos & Maps for your Family History Books
As we discover where your ancestors lived, we can purchase quality photos from the Francis Frith collection (watermark free), Watercolour prints from Lesley Olver and/or use our own photos, to bring your family history books to life. You might also like to consider buying accompanying Francis Frith framed prints to display in your home. The Francis Frith collection consists of over 100,000 photos and maps of over 70,000 towns, villages and counties. If you know where some of your ancestors came from, use the links below to see if their towns or villages are covered in this excellent collection, or view the beautiful illustrated maps of the counties in which they were born.
The Francis Frith Collection also provides a web-based community where visitors can read and share memories of their local town and village and contact old friends and acquaintances who lived in their area. The unique nature of the collection that depicts places where grandparents, great grandparents and other ancestors lived, evokes personal memories of a local area. The web-based community enables people to renew memories of places that have been important in their lives. It provides a wealth of information for family history researchers - enabling them to discover more about their local and family history.
We can also include photos, taken by us, of relevant locations such as inns/taverns, churches, streets and sometimes houses in the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Wiltshire and London town. For other areas/counties in England and Wales, we can arrange for local photographers to take photos of locations of your choice. These can be added to your books or reports in colour or black and white as shown by the examples below of a former shop, an inn, a church and a rectory.
A former grocery shop in the late 1800s/early 1900s in Tilehurst Road, Reading where Ernest Martin and wife, Caroline, were shopkeepers. Round to the side of the shop was the stable where the Martins used to keep their horse and cart. These were used for grocery deliveries to local customers living on the west side of Reading town. In 1891, Ernest, Caroline and children, Walter, James, Ada and Ethel, were shown living at this address.
North Moreton House, dating from the 1500s with later additions. Formerly the Rectory of All Saints Church, North Moreton House was used only by the rector until 1562, when it was leased out for several hundred years. In 1861, Henry W Ellicott, 14, scholar, born Baltimore, USA, was found to be living with other scholars including Ernault H Williams, 14, also born Baltimore, in the household of Reverend Albert Barff, Vicar of North Moreton.
The former Traveller’s Rest Inn, East Hagbourne, Oxfordshire, which landlord Benjamin Bosley ran with his wife, Mary, daughter, Elizabeth and grandchildren, Joseph, Elizabeth and Matilda.
The Norman church of All Saints in North Moreton, Oxfordshire, built mid 1200s, where Reverend Albert Banff was vicar in the mid 1800s.
Watercolour Paintings and Prints by Lesley Olver
Lesley specialises in watercolour landscapes and prints of locations in England - in particular the Southern Counties. She regularly works on a commission basis and will paint any landscape - usually working from photographs. Landscapes can include houses, villages or towns where ancestors were born or lived, churches where they married, or places where they worked. For further information contact us at enquiries@tracingyourancestors.com
Books & Maps from Francis Frith
The Francis Frith Collection has many books covering different counties and towns of England as well as maps. Prints of county maps include scenes of towns, villages or historic buildings and monuments.
Use the Francis Frith search engine to locate photos/prints, books and maps of locations throughout England
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