The inspiration for offering Discover Your Roots as a service came from its founder’s search for his own ancestry.
I have lived in South Yorkshire all of my life. My dad, like his father before him, was a coal miner. Sadly he died very young when I was only nine and I don’t even remember him. Mum was left to bring up four young children alone. We lost contact with my father’s family for some unknown reason and I remember nothing at all about them. Curiosity got the better of me and I realised the only way to find the answers was to go looking for myself.
Alvin’s initial curiosity developed into a fully-fledged passion for genealogy that outgrew his own past, as over the years he began researching family trees for his friends.
After serving his ‘apprenticeship’ in the work for such a long period, in March 2011 Alvin was encouraged to develop his expertise into a business and Discover Your Roots was born.
Alongside work on researching private family trees for his customers, his professional services are now called upon by solicitors to undertake complex research for their probate cases.
Alvin is now also teaching ‘Family History Workshops’ for the library service, a rewarding opportunity to provide people with the pointers they need to discover more about their family. There is only one thing more satisfying than discovering something about my ancestors that I never knew……….seeing the expression on someone else’s face when I can tell them something that they didn’t know about their ancestors, especially when that is something that they have been trying to find out for years.
As Discover Your Roots has developed from a hobby to a fully fledged business, we have enlisted the help of a few key suppliers whom we would like to thank:
https://flairdigital.co.uk/ for building and hosting our website.
Manifest Marketing for help with strategic marketing advice, copywriting for our website and PR work.
My History for printing our charts.
Springback Binders for providing wonderful presentation of our work including gold personalisation.