Susie Douglas
This is our first FT column of 2018, so Happy New Year to everyone from the team at #AncestryHour. We are very much looking forward to hearing your news and helping with your queries throughout the coming year. As 2018 is *European Year of Cultural Heritage, it may be a good time to reflect on our commonality rather than our differences, after all Britain is preparing to leave the European Union, not Europe itself! Take our annual festivals such as Christmas and Easter as examples. How many countries, cultures and religions have contributed to what we now embrace as our own? How did they come to be here, and what role did our ancestors have to play in what have become ‘our’ cultural traditions? As 2018 is also the year that marks 100 years of the political emancipation of women, it affords an excellent opportunity for our family history research to be more female-focused, and to examine the maternal contribution to our personal ancestral heritage.