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How I first became hooked on my family history.
When I first became interested in finding out about my Family History I believe I would have been contented just to find out a few facts back to the mid 1800’s. I knew my grandparents, Alfred Henry Hammond and Rose Delia KERSLEY. They died when I was in my twenties and I had never asked them anything about our family roots. Alfred had worked for Huntley and Palmers, in Reading, as there was a clock commemorating this on his mantelpiece. I had seen his birth certificate. Alfred Henry HAMMOND’s parents were a Alfred HAMMOND and Eliza CHAMPION. But where had they come from?
There is a family story that one of my ancestors was a gardener and had worked on the grape vine at Hampton Court Palace.
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From Reading to Windlesham,
In The autumn of 1986 I visited an open meeting of the Berkshire family History Society held in the Central Library of Reading. One of their members introduced me to the International Genealogical Index (IGI) and suggested that, as there were so many HAMMONDS mentioned in the Surrey part of the IGI, maybe my family came from Surrey.
Starting at St. Catherines House in London (All documents now moved to the FRC), I soon found my Great Grandfather’s marriage and then birth certificate. Alfred HAMMOND was born at Bracknell, Berkshire in 1849. His father was Henry HAMMOND and his mother Mary Ann WICKENS I next looked for them in the 1851 census record for Bracknell in the Central Library at Reading, and found them living at Clay Lane, Bracknell in the Parish of Warfield. When Alfred was aged two he was living with his Father Henry, who was a gardener, his mother Mary Ann, two brothers Henry and Frederick and one sister Ellen.
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