Welcome to the Danson Family History Website
For as long as I can remember, my mother, Susan, has always been interested in family history. Her interest began at a young age, when it was a treat to look at the shoebox of old photographs in her grandfather, William Danson's house.
My own interest was awakened in Primary 6, when we would all troop into the television room at 11am to watch the programme "How We Used To Live". The series was set during the Second World War and we were all given a workbook, part of which was to get memories from relatives of their wartime experiences. From that I learnt about my grandfather landing on Omaha beach a few days after D-Day, my great uncle being evacuated at Dunkirk, and another great uncle being a Japanese prisoner of war.
My father recalled childhood memories of land mines exploding in allotments opposite his home in South Shields. The family had an Anderson shelter in the back garden but on this occasion they were hiding under the dining room table. His father, a sign writer, had been working by the window preparing a cross for a gravestone. All the windows were blown out apart from the one behind the cross. A clock was blown off the mantelpiece and would not stop chiming, and the garden was full of bits of potato from the allotments.
I had just learnt my first lesson in family history - not everyone has to have done something spectacular, but it can nevertheless, be extremely interesting and very engrossing.
My mother has stacks of archives from the family - pictures, photographs, documentation, and other memorabilia and recently she put it all together into two volumes. However that can only reach so many people. Hence I decided to set up this website, in order to reach the millions that use the World Wide Web, and share my family with you all.
It is still a work in progress, as and when new information emerges, but I do hope that you find my website interesting and informative.
Happy reading.
And do get in touch if you think we share a common family link.
On This Month In History
I believe that part of family history is to show family history in a wider context of local, national and international events of the time.
