findmypast blog

With Halloween just around the corner, findmypast.com has commissioned some spooky research to find out just how haunted Britain’s homes are. The results reveal that a staggering one in five Brits has felt some kind of ghostly or otherworldly presence in their home.

Spooky Scotland

Scotland seems to be Britain’s ghost capital – 23 per cent of those we spoke to admitted they’d felt a spooky presence in their home. London, it seems, is the safest place to spend Halloween, as just 17 per cent confessed to feeling a paranormal presence.

Discover who’s haunting your house

With ghosts apparently widespread in UK homes, more and more people are turning to the internet for an explanation. It’s estimated that two in five homes in England date back over 90 years. If your house was built before 1911, you can find out who lived there and perhaps uncover a skeleton or two with our 1841-1911 census collection.

If you’re staying in this weekend, why not get into the Halloween spirit and find out who could be haunting your home?

Find the root of your ghostly presence in the only complete online census collection (1841-1911).

Actor and comedian David Mitchell has always had a passion for the past. He studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge and one of his earliest projects after graduating was a show about the First World War. This makes him a relatively well-placed subject for hit genealogy series, Who Do You Think You Are?, on which he appears tonight at 9pm on BBC One.

David already knew he had paternal Scottish ancestry, and that the Mitchells were wealthy sheep farmers. Part of his quest on tonight’s show is to discover whether they were involved in the notorious Highland Clearances: one of the darkest chapters in Scottish history.

During the Clearances, which took place in the nineteenth and late-eighteenth century, wealthy land owners cast tens of thousands of men, women and children from their homes, so they could use the land for more profitable large-scale sheep farming. Tenants who refused to leave saw their houses burnt to the ground and were removed by force, at the point of a musket or sword. They were pushed out towards the coast, where they lived in barren plots of land (or crofts), and were expected to sustain their communities by fishing. The result was widespread destitution and starvation, and ultimately the destruction of the Highland people and their culture.

Some of those affected sought a better life across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. Details of their hopeful journeys towards strange new lands can be found in the earlier part of the official Passenger Lists. These late nineteenth-century migrants were the forebears of countless native citizens living in those countries today.

The Clearances, which occurred in several waves, are among the most contentious issues in Scottish history, and still divide opinion today. We’re eager to discover whether David Mitchell’s ancestors played a part, and we’ll be tuning in tonight to find out.

David’s Scottish ancestors

With the help of our sister-site ScotlandsPeople, we decided to do some pre-emptive research, and track down the Mitchells on the censuses.

David’s family owned the same farm, Ribigill in Tongue, Sutherland, for three generations. We found them living there on every available census (apart from in 1871, when they were living elsewhere). In 1901 the head of the household was William Mitchell, a widower living with four grown-up children and two servants:

If, like David, you have Scottish forebears, why not search for them online today?

We were saddened to hear of the death of the oldest surviving First World War veteran, 111 year-old Harry Patch. This follows the recent death of fellow war veteran Henry Allingham, 113, and leaves just one surviving British veteran of World War One; Claude Choules, 108.

As this event drifts further into the past, so too do the memories of these men, and of the horrors of this massive conflict. Harry Patch was a gunner in the Light Infantrymen who survived one of the bloodiest British offensives, the Third Battle of Ypres, while Henry was a mechanic in the Royal Naval Air Service who among other postings, was put to work on the Western Front neutralising the booby trapped bombs left by the Germans as they retreated.

For many years both men refused to talk about their experiences, preferring to shut out the traumatic memories. But in later life, when they did speak, both recalled the nightmarish conditions of the battlefield with their permanently waterlogged trenches (Allingham remembered working up to his armpits in water), the disease and plague of enormous rats, and the smell of death. After the war these men returned to their ordinary lives; Henry as a mechanic and Harry as a plumber.

There were 16 million deaths and 21 million casualties across the countries involved in WWI, and if you have ancestry that is British it is highly likely that a member of your extended family served in the conflict.

And perhaps what is so extraordinary about Henry and Harry is that their experiences, which pushed people to the limits of human endurance, were mirrored by millions of others involved in the fighting, including your ancestors.

Search for ancestors in the military records

Claude Choules in 1911

Britain’s last surviving Great War veteran, Claude Choules, is also the only living person, of any nationality, who has served in both World Wars. In 1911, three years before the start of the conflict, he was 10 years old and lived in Wyre, Pershore in Worcestershire. Here he is on the 1911 census with his father (a clerk to a market gardener), and his two elder brothers, who were labourers:

Search for First World War heroes on the 1911 census now