About

My name is Jessica Feinstein, and I’m a qualified genealogist with a passion for helping others research their family trees. My professional website is here. I live in Oxfordshire in the UK. Please contact me if you’d like help or to arrange research, tuition or talks.

I wanted to start a blog about all of the direct ancestors of my grandson Ari (b. 10 Feb 2017). His birth has given me an opportunity to focus on part of the family tree, looking again at all the records I have and searching for new ones. I am already amazed at how focusing on individuals in this way has made me notice things I hadn’t noticed before – small details as well as gaps and inconsistencies.

I know at least a little bit about 586 of his direct ancestors (this figure was 370 when I started the blog!). They lived in places as far afield as: Memel (now Klaipeda) in Lithuania; Grafton Flyford in Worcestershire; Middleton by Wirksworth in Derbyshire; Corfe Castle in Dorset; Barrowden in Rutland; Kalisz in Poland; Svencionys in Lithuania; Johannesburg, South Africa; Gritsev in Ukraine; Parichi in Belarus; Fonthill Bishop in Wiltshire; and Hurstbourne Tarrant in Hampshire.

I will post about all of these people if I can, to try to bring them to life for Ari.

The information and stories are just from the documents in my possession or from records I have found while compiling the family tree. If you are also descended from Ari’s ancestors, please feel free to comment on the blog or contact me directly to share your memories.

To see the full family tree, please go to https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/tree/112909262/family or https://www.myheritage.com/site-30266351/feinsteinsims-family

And you can follow me @genealogy_edu

Photos of locations are my own unless indicated otherwise.

If you have come to this page while searching for Feinsteins, please see my one-name-study at http://one-name.org/name_profile/Feinstein/