Genes Reunited Blog

Last night was episode three of Who Do You Think You Are? and focused on one of Britain's most successful athletes, Sebastian Cole. Sebastian won Olympic medals in 1980 and 1984 and today is best known for his role on the 2012 Olympic committee. Sebastian was keen to uncover more information on his mother's side of the family as he admitted that his knowledge only went back as far his grandmother. He grew up in Sheffield so in the opening of the programme he travels to the North of England where he meets a local historian who tells him the romantic story of how his grandparents met and even shows him a portrait of her.

The third episode of Who Do You Think You Are? will delve into the family history of Sebastian Coe, famous for his successful athletics career. This week we have some interesting findings from the experienced family historian Roy Stockdill...

J.K. Rowling, or Jo, is the multi-millionaire writer of the infamous Harry Potter books. For a long time she was a single mother working as a teacher, before she changed her life when she put pen to paper and brought Harry Potter to life.

Series eight of Who Do You Think You Are? started last week by looking at the fascinating family history of June Brown. We will be delving into the past of each celebrity to see what interesting finds we can make and we will ask you to rise to the challenge and see what else you can discover! This week we are looking into the family tree of J.K. Rowling and our resident genealogist, Anthony Adolph, has found some interesting discoveries. Can you uncover any more of J.K. Rowling's ancestors?

June Brown was born in 1927 in Suffolk making her the oldest person to have taken part in Who Do You Think You Are. The first episode of this series starts with June and her family before she embarks on her journey to discover her ancestors. She knows she has East End Jewish roots through her mother's side and is keen to find out more.

Hi I'm Nikki, Marketing and Product Executive at Genes Reunited. The BBC Who Do You Think You Are? Show have announced that the first celebrity appearing on this year's show will be June Brown, better known as the chain-smoking gossip Dot Cotton in EastEnders. Before the start of the new series I thought I'd do a little of my own research to see what I can uncover about June's family history.

At Genes Reunited we recently analysed our 750 million records and discovered that celebrities are not as original as they make think when it comes to naming their offspring! Our research showed that unusual baby names such as Suri, Cruz and Apple have been recorded for over 150 years.

On Friday 24th June three members of the Genes Reunited Team set off to York from London Kings Cross station. We were really looking forward to attending the Yorkshire Family History Fair for the first time. We arrived at York racecourse late afternoon and started setting up our stand. We were situated on the Mezzanine along with The National Archives and local county record offices. We had a fantastic view over the entire race course! Once we were all happy with the stand and had checked that all the computers were working we set off to explore York by night. We had a lovely walk through the city, down the Shambles, a beautiful medieval street and to the Minster, York’s Gothic Cathedral. The Minster was founded in 627 and apparently is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The full title of the Minster is, The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York. At night it is completely lit up with spot lights making it look even more striking.

From today members can now view passenger lists which include those who departed British ports for long-distance voyages across the world from 1890 to 1960.

This week's Long Lost Family focused on two women born to unmarried mothers in the 1960's. Back then having a child out of wedlock was perceived as a "dirty secret". Sarah Gayle and Laura McCarthy have both spent a lifetime searching for their mothers and the Long Lost Family team helped them with their search.