Before my dad died back in 1995, he had always maintained two things - that he was a 'Norfolk Dumpling' born in Diss and that he was an only child.

The only other things my dad ever told me about his family was that his mother was a heavy drinker and that his dad (he later learned) had a heart attack and died with my dad sat on his shoulders. My dad remembers falling forward and landing with a bump and never ever seeing his dad again.

In April 2019 we decided to investigate our family's history and after much research across the internet, we began to build our family tree. We started by adding our own details and then the details of our children and next we set about researching my side of the family, beginning with my dad. We thought that would be a good place to start, as it would also likely be the soonest completed.

But what discoveries we made! I obtained a copy of my dad's full birth certificate as my dad had only ever held the very basic version, and the first discovery we made was that he was in fact, born in London in 1919. His dad, my grandfather, we discovered, was from Norfolk, and had previously been married before he married my grandmother. After his first wife died he moved to London, married a London girl and that's when my dad appeared on the scene - in Plaistow.

My grandfather from his first marriage had also had five children from that marriage - so my dad had brothers and sisters he never knew about. We thought that was really quite a sad thing. I do recall my dad mentioning a half-sister named Sybil, but I had always understood that Sybil was his mum's before she married his father and I suspect that was how he understood it too, but in fact, Sybil was his Dad's first wife's child.

We eventually traced that side of the family all the way back to the mid 18th century where we found that my great, great, great, grandfather John Seaman, was married at St Andrew's Church, Congham by the Rector - who was no less than the first cousin of Admiral Lord Nelson's father!

It seems Admiral Lord Nelson's family all came from the Norfolk area too! If my dad were alive today, he would have been so surprised to learn all that we discovered. Our ancestry can turn out to be quite ordinary or sometimes, very extraordinary.

Having had a difficult childhood, he didn't delay in leaving home at the first opportunity. At age seventeen he was away, finding lodgings with a Mrs Ashdown in Stepney, where he fell in love with her daughter Jean. He enlisted in the Army and within a year of the commencement of WW2 whilst on leave, he married his sweetheart, my mum, at St Faith in Stepney.

Children came to them quickly - two before the end of the war and four more in short time after it. George had a number of jobs and latterly was employed by Havering Borough Council as a Refuse Disposal Officer (a dustman.) He was quite an austere man and very strict with his children, but by the time I was married, he seemed to mellow somewhat. My dad loved my mum and they went everywhere and did everything together. He loved his garden and the canaries that he kept in his homemade Avery and he and my mum loved their dog, a Border Collie named Bob.

In my mum's testimony, you will see that she loved to read the church Magazines that my wife and I produced for our church and I like to think that my dad had read a copy or two whenever he could, without my mum knowing - he never admitted to any faith, yet always declared on any form completed in his life that he was 'C of E.'

After my mum passed away he was a changed man. He seemed to become even more mellow and was much more approachable. Sadly only two years later he was on his deathbed at Oldchurch Hospital where my mum had also been before she died. He was always very pleased to see us and whenever I was with him alone I spoke to him about Jesus and our hope is that the hospital Chaplain would also have spoken to him during his time there. He most likely would have prayed with him too, knowing that he didn't have long to live. Jesus understands our weaknesses and Jesus understood my Dad.

The Lord is 'not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance'* - even up to their very last breath. *(2 Peter 3:9b)

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