Hello, I'm Kelly and I was introduced to this forum by Carol (another forum member).
I've been researching my family history on and off for the last 8 years. I currently have a tree holding 822 names with the oldest name in the tree going back to 1270c. I've tended to go up with my tree rather than out, as you can get a bit bogged down and carried away with cousins, second cousins etc and the tree expands out of control!
My maiden name is Channon and I've researched this surname back as far as Thomas Channon, father of Nicholas Channon (b.1773c), from Honiton Devon. I'm now stuck as I've run out of online records to trace any more information on Thomas and his wife Jane.
My mothers maiden name is Doubtfire, which is a nice unusual name to research (or at least until the film was released, you know the one I mean!). However, I've found it a real challenge to locate census returns for this branch of the family. Possibly due to the fact that branch of the family was very poor (living in Shoreditch) and illiterate, so potentially their names are spelt differently or incorrectly on the census returns? I've only traced the family here back to Richard Doubtfire (b.1821c St Lukes Middlesex) and his wife Sarah Earl (b.1831c Shoreditch). I have no further information on either of them or their ancestors. So very interested to hear from anyone who could shed light on where the Doubtfire's came from. It's a mystery to us. When the website that a university did plotting surname concentration from census returns in certain areas was released a few years back (I'm sorry I forget the link). It showed that the surname Doubtfire only appeared in London and Lincolnshire in 1901 and only in small numbers, in 1881 there were even fewer Doubtfire families and still only in those two areas. That leads me to think that the surname isn't of British origin (or they just didn't travel much!).
Anyway, I'm looking to expand my tree as far back as I can and uncover more details on my Channon and Doubtfire lines.
I also have a vested interest in the surnames Clarke, Challis, Roylance, King, Moxley, Davis and Cox for my family.
My husband has the surname Perryman, and he knows very little about his fathers family history as his grandparents died before he was born. So this is also an area of interest to us.