When participants first started out on the journey to discover their heritage, many didn't realise just how addictive searching their past could be and didnt believe they had the skills (or the family memories) to be able to uncover much information.
Everyone was suprised at just how much they would find out !
Background Info
The Manor of Stockton on Tees dates back to Anglo Saxon Times - around the 1100s and Stockton Castle was first seen in the records as early as 1376 with Stockton Market origins dating back to 1310, so you can see that the town has a strong historical background.
Apart from the project looking into family trees, all participants looked at why their families came to live in the area.
Pre-concieved ideas of 'my family has always lived here' soon went out of the window!
Many of our participants found that they had Irish ancestry and on looking into online archives they found that the 1880s was a major time of migration into the UK - sparked by the Irish Potato Famine which hit with devastating results to the country.
Migrants moved into the rural areas in the UK looking for work, only to find when the Industrial Revolution came about that farm labourers were thrown out of work and had to move into the more 'industrial areas' to find a home. Stockton had a population of 2,000 in the early 1700s, 10,000 in 1851. Shipbuilding grew on the Tees along with other industries and started the great influx of people to the area so by 1901 this had grown to 51,000.
