Even if you’ve been researching your family history for several decades, there are still the unlikeliest of surprises to be found if you follow the right leads, as one reader of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine from Stoke-onTrent, Staffordshire, discovered.
Before retiring, Gary Cooper worked at Stoke’s Gladstone Pottery Museum as a demonstration thrower, making pots on the wheel. “I’ve always been a history anorak, and local history is a real passion of mine. More than anything, I wanted to see how my family fitted into the story of Stoke-on-Trent. So I started properly researching my family tree in 1987 with visits to the General Register Office at St Catherine’s House in London.”
I had to diskpel a lot of family myths when I started doing my researach
Much of the little Gary knew about his family history was thanks to his dad. “My father was a real raconteur. He was very
