The seventh and final episode of Series One of The Family Histories Podcast, The Activist, is now live across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and all the other usual platforms.

In this episode we’re joined by guest Pam Smith – a North Yorkshire-based researcher, who began researching her family history as a hobby, before turning professional, and then turning towards local history and One-Place Studies and co-founding Name&Place. Andrew discovers how she got hooked on tracing family history and how she came to have such a research journey.

Listen to the episode

Also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and others…

The Life Story:
Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin

Pam chose her Great Great Uncle, Albert Ginger Goodwin for her Relatively Speaking life story.

Pam began to discover Albert’s story as ‘Ginger’ after a chance meeting with a distant relative who asked if she knew about his life in Canada. This took Pam by surprise, and she soon found herself on the trail of an incredible story of a man who departs the mining industry where his family had worked for years, and decides to set off to Canada, where he ends up becoming a figurehead of socialism.

It’s not a happy ending for him, but his memory and legacy still lives on strong in the communities that he fought for, more than 100 years after his death.

Pam was fortunate to travel to Canada to walk in a re-enactment of Ginger Goodwin’s funeral procession, and made a speech, as his blood relative, at his graveside.

The Brick Wall:
Sir Richard Etherington

Everyone hits a blocker in their family history research, and here Pam picked out the case of Sir Richard Etherington, a landowner in North Riding of Yorkshire, who was Knighted at Whitehall, London in 1603. Sir Richard is not one of Pam’s relatives, but one of the people she is researching in her One-Place Study for Rillington.

Can you help Pam identify his origins? Does his family connect with the other known Etherington families in the area?

If you think you have information that might help Pam to progress this case then you can reach out to her via our contact form, remembering to select her episode in the drop-down list.

Andrew tries to help Pam track down Sir Richard, but something is about to go horribly wrong….

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Episode Credits:
Series One, Episode Seven

• Andrew Martin: Host & Producer
• Pam Smith: Guest
• John Spike: Sándor Petőfi
• Meg Spencer-Thomas: Queen Anne Boleyn
• Eliot Lees: Foley Artist