David Bowie's family tree and how you can trace your own

Note: I actually started drafting this blog post some time ago. Like many others, I was shocked and saddened at the unexpected news of David Bowie's passing. I therefore decided to wait for a while before finally publishing this article in its complete form today (18 July).

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It's no secret among those who know me that genealogy is a major passion of mine. When I was a child, my grandmother would often tell me stories about how she'd grown up in rural Wales, evoking images of a way of life that no longer exists.

I always had it in the back of my mind to draw up a family tree. Sadly, I never managed to do so during my grandmother's lifetime, mainly because I wasn't sure how to go about it.

Building a family tree!

That changed in around 2009, when I became aware of the BBC series "Who Do You Think You Are?". The premise of it is that they take famous people and trace back their roots, using historical documents and records to reconstruct their forebears' lives. In many cases, they uncover remarkable stories. If you have time, do check out a few episodes online. My favourites include the programmes on Stephen Fry, J. K. Rowling, and Boris Johnson (who actually has an enthralling, tragic, and multi-cultural family history - whatever you think of his politics). 

To cut a long story short, I quickly became hooked. In addition to my own family tree, I've since gone on to research the ancestries of friends, colleagues, and - believe it or not - celebrities. I've found it all utterly fascinating and the most rewarding part of it is when I've been able to give others information about their relatives that they didn't know before. On two occasions, I have even able to reunite people with long-lost relations.

Anyway, today I'll show you how to go about building a family tree of your own as well as give you a few tips I've learned along the way.

Ideally, you should start out by asking your parents (and/or grandparents) as much as possible about their family background. However, if that is not feasible, you can still trace your roots. Begin by signing up to a genealogy website. There are several of them available on the Internet - including Find My Past, Genes Reunited, and Ancestry.

Some examples of typical genealogy websites

Of all of them, I like Ancestry the best due to the sheer volume of documents that they possess. The company has its critics, but I have honestly never had a problem with the service. They do require you pay money to view their records (as do most other genealogy sites), but they also offer a free two-week trial period when you initially sign up. You have the option to pay by month or sign up for a whole year. I personally prefer to pay on a monthly basis because I can then cancel my subscription when I don't actively make use of the site. I can also take advantage of Ancestry's special offers when it allows free access for short periods on certain occasions.

If you don't wish to pay any money at all, then I have also found the Free BMD website to be very useful, although its transcription of all births, deaths and marriages in England/Wales only extends from 1837-1983 and is not exhaustive.

Nevertheless, it can serve well enough as a starting point. To illustrate this, let's take a well-known British personality - in this case, the music icon, David Bowie.

Bowie with his talented film director son, Duncan Jones. You can follow Duncan on Twitter @ManMadeMoon

Bowie's Wikipedia profile indicates that he was born in Brixton, London on 8 January 1947 as 'David Robert Jones', the son of 'Margaret Mary Burns' and 'Haywood Stenton Jones'. 'Jones' can be one of the worst surnames to research because of how common it is. Fortunately, in this case, we have enough information to narrow down the field of possibilities. By putting those few details into the search engine - we come up with the following:

Birth records for David R Jones, mother's maiden name 'Burns' born during the first quarter of 1947. It's my guess that Bowie is the second one as Brixton is part of Lambeth.

Marriage record for Bowie's parents.

The volume and the page reference numbers are needed if you wish to order copies of the actual birth or marriage certificates. These certificates will contain extra information such as the exact date and place that a birth/marriage took place. In the case of marriage certificates, they also contain the names and professions of the spouses' respective fathers. This can be invaluable in cases where the registers contain too many people with the same names to successfully distinguish who was who. The certificates can be ordered here from the General Register Office at a cost of £9.25 each (including postage), although, for data protection reasons, you may have to provide extra details if a birth or marriage took place more recently than 50 years ago.

However, since we already know who Bowie's parents were, we can now go back another generation. I intend to focus on his father's side of the family as that seems to be the most interesting. By entering his father's name into the birth register, we therefore come up with this:

Birth record for Bowie's father, Haywood Stenton Jones

Here we have a slight problem where it comes to tracing who Haywood's parents were. Unfortunately, before 1912, the marriage registers were not indexed to include the surname of the spouse. We could, of course, solve this problem by ordering a copy of Haywood's birth certificate from the General Register Office, as referred to above, but a more inexpensive option that I have found extremely helpful is to simply put his name into Google.

Luckily, the Bowie Wonderworld fan site appears to have already done some research into this area:     

Extract from the 'Bowie Wonderworld' website

And now we have enough information to look up Bowie's grandparents in one of my favourite historical documents - the 1911 census. Censuses are taken every ten years and provide a fascinating snapshot of what everyone in the UK was doing.  You can find people as diverse as a young Laurence Olivier living with his clergyman father and family in Notting Hill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle holidaying at the Royal Bath Hotel in Bournemouth, future murderer John Reginald Halliday Christie as an 11-year-old schoolboy in Halifax, and Alexander Fleming practising as a physician in St Marylebone.

As for Bowie's grandparents, the 1911 census reveals the following:

1911 census for Robert Haywood Jones and family. Click on the image for higher resolution.

The census shows a young married couple, Robert Haywood Jones and Zillah Hannah (née Blackburn), living in Doncaster with their one-year-old daughter, Roma. They actually appear to be fairly well-off. Note that the house that they're living in has no fewer than nine rooms! This would have been pretty unusual back in 1911, given that a large percentage of the British population still lived in absolute poverty. You can frequently find other families in the census sharing only one or two rooms between them.

Robert appears to have had a pretty good profession, as a dealer (partner) at a boot company. As the Bowie Wonderworld snapshot mentions, '41 St Sepulchre Gate' (the same address as given on the census) was also originally the premises of the 'Public Benefit Boot Company'. At this time, footwear was not mass produced at low prices in the Far East and imported into Britain, so it's likely that this would have been a fairly lucrative business.

Under these circumstances, you would usually expect a steady future for the Jones family. Further research, however, reveals that this was not quite the case. Robert died in 1916 at the age of just 34. Sadly, when you find a record of a young man's death at that time, you can usually attribute it to one cause - the First World War.

It is my opinion that World War I is the prime contender for the worst event to have taken place in the last century. Not just because of the horrific casualty rate, but also because of how its consequences changed the course of history. Indeed, it could be said that the current problems in the Middle East can be traced back to how the Ottoman Empire was carved up by Mr Sykes and Monsieur Picot.

Unfortunately, around 70% of the personal WWI service files for non-commissioned soldiers were destroyed when the records office was bombed during the Second World War. But luckily, in Robert's case, a few (other) sources have survived. Through browsing online, I found that the Imperial War Museum actually has a photograph of him.

Pte. Robert Haywood Jones, grandfather of Bowie

I was a bit puzzled as to why the notes on the IWM site simply described Robert as the "son of Mr and Mrs Joseph Jones of Bramley, Leeds". Ordinarily, you would expect the spouse of a married man to be listed instead. However, De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour provided a possible tragic answer as to why this was not the case:

Short biographical piece on Robert, taken from 'De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour' 

The 9th Marquis of Ruvigny was deeply interested in genealogy and had intended to compile a record of all the soldiers killed in the First World War. When it became clear that the war was going to last far longer and be more devastating than anyone anticipated, this task became impossible to fully accomplish. Nevertheless, his work does include the biographies of over 26,000 men - of which Robert was one.

Robert's entry gives us several valuable pieces of information. In addition to providing the names and dates of birth of various family members, it lets us know that Robert enlisted on 5 July 1916. This is significant as 1916 was the year that the British government introduced conscription when they started running out of victims.....er, volunteers. By May, the act that authorised this was extended to include married men between the ages of 18-41.

Under normal circumstances, Robert wouldn't have been a prime candidate for the Army as he was already in his mid-30s. Furthermore, the fact that he was ranked as a "Private" indicates that he had no previous experience in the Forces. This, in turn, also supports the notion that he did not voluntarily sign up.

Robert spent barely four months with his battalion before he was "reported as wounded and missing after the fighting at Beaumont Hamel." As far as I can ascertain, this would have been during the third phase of the Battle of the Somme - one of the worst and bloodiest offensives in human history. What makes this extra poignant is that 18 November (the date that Robert is believed to have been killed) was also the day that the battle officially ended. Robert's body was never recovered, and thus he has no known grave. His name is listed on the Thiepval Memorial which commemorates the 72,246 missing British Empire servicemen who died at the Somme.

Death record for Zillah Hannah Jones, Bowie's grandmother

The other tragic twist is that Robert's wife Zillah also died within months of her husband at only 30 years old. I have not been able to find out the cause of her death - although unlike other members of her family, (who went down the cremation route), she does actually appear to have a grave. According to this article, she is buried at Hyde Park Cemetery in Doncaster.  

Zillah's passing effectively left two children as orphans aged just seven and four. It is known that Bowie's father Haywood didn't have the most settled of lives. Raised by relatives and the State, he eventually moved down to London. He married twice and tried out various ventures before becoming a promotions officer for the 'Barnardo's' children's charity. He died in 1969 when he was only in his mid-50s - reportedly after a short illness.

Bowie's parents, Haywood Stenton Jones and Margaret Mary Jones (née Burns). Haywood's unusual first/second names actually come from old family surnames which passed down the generations.

This was in marked contrast to Haywood's sister, Roma. A Google search brought me to this article from 2014, where - unbelievably enough - Roma was celebrating her 104th birthday!

Bowie's Aunt Roma, aged 104!

Sadly, Roma passed away a few months after giving this interview. But thankfully for the most part (as her obituary states), she seems to have led a very long and happy life. Apparently, she lived with her grandparents until she married in 1933, and then became a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. And just imagine the events she must have lived through - from two world wars, the sinking of the Titanic, to technological marvels such as the creation of the Internet.

For those who are interested, a fuller picture of the Bowie/Jones family tree (the work of other genealogy enthusiasts) can be found here - although I cannot guarantee that it is 100% accurate.

Finally, anyone who would like advice on how to undertake research into their own roots can find help in the Facebook group 'The Brickwall Club', which I also visit from time to time.