Posted in the Past Hands Across the Sea

By Helen Baggott

The teenager lashed to the side of Robert Stephenson’s yacht in a storm as she sailed with him to Egypt, and other true stories.

Georgina Ballantine, who landed a record-breaking salmon that was almost as long as she was tall… A family who ran a hotel in Southampton’s ‘Titanic Street’… Cornwall’s engineering genius who invented the Banbury Mixer – still a milestone in America’s tyre industry… Archer Baldwin, the British MP born in a cabin in Tennessee… The Thompson sisters who worked on the first Oxford English Dictionary… Poor Lizzie, who was almost swept overboard sailing to the Isle of Man… all are connected by postcards, sent more than a hundred years ago.

If you have researched your own family’s history or enjoyed watching programmes that explore our ancestry through genealogy and DNA, you’ll know how thrilling it is to discover an ancestor with a story. Using genealogy resources, this new collection of true stories begins with postcards sent by our ancestors as they travelled the world – some finding happiness, others only tragedy.