The picture on the front page is that of my son Simon and his bride Jenelle on their wedding day 26th April 2002. The wedding took place in Seattle USA where Simon is a football ( soccer to them ) coach.

The author of this site and father of Simon is Kevin Robinson. On the Robinson side this makes me the 6th generation from George the oldest name I can trace.

I always find it interesting to understand what started people on researching their family history, you don’t have a choice because I am going to tell you. Whilst I remember having an interest in my early 20’s about the family tree, I even started writing it out, it was not until a chance remark by my father about 6 years ago that really got me going. I had just visited a WW1 cemetery in Northern France when he told me that his second name, Horace and his brothers first name, Harold, had both been after Uncles that had died in WW1. He knew no more than that and I therefore started asking questions both of him and his cousin Jean who had carried out some family research.

No one knew anything more about the brothers so I really wanted to find out what had happened to them. To cut a long story short, my family will say that rarely happens, I did find their regiment history and where and when they were both killed. I was also lucky enough to be able to visit their graves as both had died of their wounds in field hospitals, unlike so many of their colleagues who disappeared without trace.

With regard to the rest of the family it seems to centre around the folklore of one Andrew Robinson. The story was that in about 1861 he went to Russia as an engineer for one year but did not return for 20 years. In the meantime his wife remarried having had him declared dead. I have been able to establish that Andrew married in 1857, having already had one child by his wife, with ages both stated of 21. Edith, his wife was only 18 so Andrew could have been anything. No other family witnessed the ceremony.

He was described on various documents as one sort of engineer or another, however, he was never a member of the two engineering bodies but this was not unusual at the time as he probably just worked on engines. For a reason I cannot yet find the family were not on the London 1861 census but I did find that an Andrew Robinson obtained a passport to Cronstadt Russia in June 1861. Despite using a Russian research agent I have been unable to find anything on him in Russia.

I did find his wife and children in the 1871 census and his wife as a widow remarrying in 1875 who went on to have more children and was in the 1881 census. I cannot find his return or death, despite obtaining all of the death entries for Andrew Robinson’s, fortunately a rather uncommon first name, although I continue to work on this.

Being unable to find Andrew on the census means that I do not know what part of the country he was born and therefore unable to trace his family. I have tried any number of ideas and will continue to do so but it is something I fear I will never find.

The next generation threw up another event which led me to the TV screen and had I not carried the research I had we would never had know about it. Andrew had two son’s Henry, my Great Grandfather and Andrew. In trying to find the other Andrew I saw from my list of dead Andrews that in 1900 an Andrew died in Woolwich, the area they had lived, who was of the age of the son Andrew. So I obtained the certificate which gave the cause of death as " shot in the head by his wife". Still not knowing if this had anything to do with us I went to the papers and there was a report of the inquest stating that his brother Henry of Kentish Town had attended the inquest. Bingo!! The follow up articles said that in fact it was not his wife but they had lived together as man and wife and were bringing up his son by his previous marriage. Was this why my Grandfather, who was 12 when this happen, never spoke of it and told my father don’t look back, you never know what you will not want to find!!

The TV bit is because of the program that recreated a family life in the 1900’s. Know as the 1900’s house. The family lived for 3 months as a family of the time would had done and I realised that it was in the house opposite the one in which Andrew was shot, right in the time period they were portraying. I contacted the makers and got a slot on the Christmas special which repeated most of the series and added bits on the family afterwards. Who said genealogy was boring?

There are small stories about other parts of the Robinson family but I am sure you will contact me if you want more.