I had always enjoyed history at school but I decided to follow my passion for sports science into university and then my early working life. However, one day I took up a family history membership on ancestry.co.uk to try and confirm something my Grandmother had mentioned and from that day on, I was completely hooked. It brings my interest in history and my want for detailed analysis into one package and it is something that has brought me a lot of joy in recent years.

Having gone further and further, confirming family accounts and discovering new interesting facts about my heritage led me to help others trace their ancestry. I find there is nothing better than tracing a story and set of individuals to reveal the truth about what happened in the past.

A number that has been mentioned when it comes to the chances of an individual being born and having the characteristics they have is 1/400,000,000,000,000 (1 in 400 Trillion). This is an incredible statistic but it can be hard to comprehend. When you think that the odds would be the same for all of our ancestors going back to all sixteen 2x Great Grandparents and beyond, there are times when you discover some of the hardships, bits of luck, and complete random chance that occurred in your ancestry that led to you being here and you can really understand how lucky we are to exist as we do.

My main aim as the Ancestry Detective is to help people find out the truth about their past and be able to pass it on to future generations to enjoy.