Find My Past road trip ballot

Find My Past are offering the chance to have a remarkable UK road trip. If you have a family history mystery to solve or a brick wall you need help smashing down, apply now.

Applications to be their next genealogy star are now open. They are looking for a UK resident to take on a family history adventure of a lifetime. Someone passionate about their family tree, whether they’ve started to research it or not.

If you’d like to be the star of your own family history road trip, apply now here. The closing date is the 28th January 2024.

Here is my application:

My family history mystery

I started researching my family history as a school project and got hooked. My mum has always told me stories about her side of the family but unfortunately my Dad did not know much about his. He died when I was 20 and as he was an only child there was no-one left to ask.

I researched his parents and grand-parents and soon stumbled upon his uncle, Alfred Mansel Young, who died in the First World War. He was born in May 1895 and lived in Portsmouth. For some reason at the time of the 1911 census he was living and working in Bridgend, Wales, far away from his father and younger brother who lived in Portsmouth.

Sadly he was killed in action at Ypres in 1916, his name inscribed on the Thiepval Memorial. When my Dad died I inherited a box of letters which my paternal Grandmother had received after her husband died in 1959. One of these letters was from Tom Underhill which mentioned he was the adopted brother of Tom Underhill, the family my great uncle was staying with on the night of the 1911 census.

I haven’t managed to find a connection between the Underhill family of Bridgend and my Young family even though my great uncle is listed as nephew to John and Annie Underhill on the census. This is my mystery and I would love some help to understand what caused my uncle to move to Wales and live with this family until he enlisted with the South Wales Borderers in 1914. Was there a family connection?

I have my uncles’ First World War medals, a couple of photographs of him in uniform, and I believe a photo of John and Annie Underhill, and that is all.