Geneally.com's Andrew Chapman

Here's more information on the new genealogy and family history search engine Geneally.com, that Tracing the Tribe posted on the other day. I received an answer from the man behind the site, UK genealogy journalist Andrew Chapman.

I created the site a while back - I'm a genealogy journalist in the UK; I was coming across so many different genealogy sites that I wanted to try and bring them together in an easily used way. There are other genealogy search sites, but each has different strengths and weaknesses, and they are not always simple to use in the way e.g. Google is.

Andrew has plans for adding much more data - right now at about 20,000 links - and he'd like to get that into the millions.

I also asked Andrew about his own genealogy and research.

I haven't had much time for pursuing my own genealogy in recent years as I'm constantly busy with work, but there's a long-standing family mystery about my great-grandfather's birth I hope to clear up some day - he's almost certainly descended from a family in York which ran a comb-manufacturing business (clients included royalty) for 150 years,and is believed to have been a Huguenot family originally (the name is Rougier, very rare in Britain). All of my other ancestors were very humble as far as I know!

Andrew, who lives in Oxford UK, is a professional writer/editor/designer and publishing/Internet consultant. He writes news, features and reviews for Your Family Tree magazine (UK), and has authored The A-Z of Genealogy Websites and 101 Family History Tips.

I found Andrew's possible Huguenot connection very interesting, as there is much information on Huguenot families who were really Conversos, descended from Jewish families forcibly converted during the Inquisition. Pere Bonnin's book, Sangre Judia, indicates such names as ROGET, ROGER, RAGUEL.

Don't you just love a mystery of history?