My Ancestral Trail

This book is a personal history of the lives of the author's ancestors. Through parish records, medieval court records, and newspaper articles, it traces the family line back to the sixteenth century. It gives detailed accounts of the lives of the author's Victorian and later ancestors. During the Victorian and Edwardian periods, drunkenness and minor crime such as poaching were widespread amongst the poor at that time and the Chatters families were often in trouble with the authorities. Many of the stories are not untypical of many working class families living in rural England. Life in the villages only began to improve with the introduction of compulsory education and, fortunately, the author's recent ancestors were better behaved!