Researching my family history has been an ongoing project for the past fifteen years. Parish records, census data, and birth, marriage, and death records have helped create a picture of my ancestors’ lives. My earliest ancestors’ wills have also been invaluable, confirming family relationships and offering insights into their lives and priorities.
I am fortunate to have traced my Gregory lineage back to the early 1500s. Uncovering details about the human stories behind the names, dates, and sparse facts of even my great-grandparents remains challenging.
While portraits, documents, letters, or biographies of famous, wealthy, or educated ancestors can provide a more complete picture, few of my ancestors fall into these categories.
Historically, the rules of common-law inheritance, or primogeniture, meant that the eldest son often inherited his father’s estate in the absence of a valid will before 1925. In 1799, my 4th great-grandfather, Lemuel Gregory, the fourth son of his father, received only a modest inheritance and no land. From the early 16th to the early 19th century, my Gregory ancestors were small landowning farmers in Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Lemuel was the last of my direct male ancestors to farm in Peckleton or Desford.
Primogeniture was abolished by the British Parliament in 1925. It had been standard practice in England since the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Despite limited details, researching my ancestors’ lives has been both challenging and rewarding. I have focused on the available facts about each generation, with personal observations saved for later in each chapter. To respect privacy, I have excluded comments about living Gregory family members except myself.
Proving continuous links to working-class ancestors from the time of Henry VIII’s reign onwards has been a lengthy process. I have taken great care to verify the facts I have, although a greater availability of digitised data may reveal some errors.
I am grateful for the support of fellow family history enthusiasts. Thank you to everyone who contributed, and I apologise to anyone I may have overlooked.
The responsibility for this work and its possible errors lies entirely with me.
David Gregory 2025
