About

Unlike the well-known giants of genealogy this web site is the work of one person, aimed at a small selection of families and contains plenty of unproven content.

Not the best opening introduction - but there is nothing to gain by spinning an attractive story set against some eye-candy graphics.

It all started around 1997 with a PC, a copy of Family Tree Maker and a few names of relatives from my parents. If I had known then what I know now I probably would not have started. But a simple search for grand-parents and their families soon moved to be an accumulation of anything and everything with a Townsley connection.

By 2025 the family history data was only getting a small number of changes and the need for it has a separate source of family records had greatly reduced. It was then decided that the Townsley Extended would no longer be hosted online. The data has not been lost but it is only available on my home PC.

So what you see here today is just the latest version of a Townsley scrap book that has changed to cope with volume increases and technological changes.

The same collection of records has been used to create three other web sites - one aimed at residents of the village of Brotherton in Yorkshire and the two covering linked surnames - Sheeky and Strangeway.

Finally there is a second database of records that link various famous families - including Strangways and Towneley - but in the main are not linked to the commoners covered here. It is also available online - but using web pages created by the Gedsite database to web page converter.