These are the family names of my four Grandparents.
My father John Segar Peel started the task of making a family tree and I am building on that very useful start. Thus I began with the SEGARS as there is a lot of information on them because they were a close-knit family and kept in touch by letter, as well as there being many offspring! The "Segar Book", written by Simon Segar in 1674 and lodged in a bank for safekeeping, goes back to 200AD but I imagine some of the earlier records are only partially accurate. I have not had time to enter Segars before 1700 but have scanned all the photos of the book, a few of which are in the album. There is also a Segar Bible.
Back in the mid 19th century my Great Great Grandfather's brother,Edward Segar, changed his name to Seager and I have been in contact with that branch of the family too.
A lot of the SEGAR information about the individuals comes from "My Life Story" written by
my Great Great Grandmother, Catherine Boutflower, for her daughter-in-law, Elisabeth Langford Rowley, my Great Grandmother. I am indebted to her for this information and to Martyn Segar who has the original and to his daughter, Clarissa, who typed it out, and to Michael Brothers who enhanced my scanned pages. I have converted these pages back to Word to use here. Amazing what modern technology can do! Not only is this life story a valuable source of family information but also a fascinating insight into the social history of that time. Quotations from Catherine's story are in inverted commas. I have the pdf file of the story or the Word document which can be sent by e-mail if you contact me.
There is a detailed printed tree for the PEEL family but there seems to be little to include in the way of interesting information. I hope I may come up with some later.
The BELL and the PERCY families I find fascinating but records are difficult to find for various reasons: many Irish records of the Percy family were lost in 1916 in the destruction of the Post Office in Dublin and few records have been kept by either family; and although my grandparents started researching, there still is only a fragmentary record and this will be something I will try to remedy when time permits! However, there was a Bell Family Bible together with some very interesting letters.
As I have room on this website for lots of photos, those of you appearing on this tree may have up to 5 photos for each person; so please help me to build up a picture gallery.
If you are included and have not already been in contact with me, please e-mail me so that I have your e-mail address in case I need to change the Access Code (which is necessary to view living members' details and photos).
To view photos in order in the albums click the 'sort by photo date' box. The most recent date will appear at the beginning. This is, in my view, the weakest part of this site as there is no easy way to put photos of the same year date in the desired order, and it is obvious that the 'dates' are fictitious! I have not finished setting this up yet and am looking for a better way.
Besides continuing to fill in the family tree, I am still working on scanning, uploading and labelling photos, plus transferring a lot of the information from Catherine's story into the appropriate places, all of which takes a long time!
I also have a 10-day diary of a Tour in Switzerland and Baden, written in 1866 by Catherine's son,my great grandfather, Halsall Segar (1849-1929), when he would have been seventeen years old. I have scanned some pages of this and you can see it in the Album, Halsall's Diary. This diary makes fascinating reading and I have typed it so that it can be e-mailed.
I am really enjoying compiling this tree with all its associated detail and the contacts I have made all over the world. I hope you
find the site interesting too and, maybe, useful.
If there are any errors to be corrected/additions to be made/omissions to be rectified please do contact me.
