Welcome to the Graham and Emerson family history website! Here you will find people who have been identified as part of (or associated with) the Graham/Walker and Emerson/Brayer families from whom the researcher Lindsay Graham and his wife Penny Graham (née Emerson-Elliott) are descended.

I use The Master Genealogist (TMG) software to collate family history data and the genealogy website builder Second Site to convert those TMG data into the website you see here. To protect privacy, living people are excluded (although you may see an occasional side reference to people who are still alive or they may sometimes be included in a group photo) and some other information deemed sensitive or private has been suppressed or excluded. However, my underlying TMG database does include living people and I regularly add births, marriages, deaths and other information to keep the data up to date. Much information comes from cousins and other family members, and I'm always happy to share information with anyone who has an interest in people on this site.

The site is still being tested and developed. As with any family history project, it is a work in progress that is regularly updated as additional information is acquired or corrections are made to existing data. By definition, it can never be complete, so the information you see is a compromise between completeness and publication before I die!! In particular, many photos and other images are yet to be added and this will be done progressively over time.

The data on the site have been obtained from various sources of varying degrees of reliability. While I have tried to ensure that all entries are as accurate as possible, there are bound to be errors and omissions. If you are able to add to or correct any of the data, I'd be delighted to hear from you -- simply click on my name in the footer below to send me an email. Similarly, if you would like an indication of the likely degree of accuracy or reliability applying to any individual data items, please email me using the link below.

You are free to incorporate any of these data in your own family history records, but please:

  • acknowledge this website and the researcher as the source of the data; and
  • do not include information on living persons in any publication of these data (including on the Internet).

This site is primarily a collection of facts or events for each of the people included. Please read carefully the Interpretation and Icons & Abbreviations pages first to get an understanding of the terminology. Then use the Surname Index to find people you are interested in and use the links in that Index or in the Person Pages to jump to any other people in whom you may be interested. Or you can use the Search box to find, for example, a person whose surname is unknown but who you think was born around 1850 with a mother called Emily. Or to find all those born in 1900 or someone with a spouse called Trevor. Lots of possibilities!

This site is not a story, so you cannot read it like a book.  However, if you would like to read the story of our (ultimately successful) search for Penny's real family, you could read her book Whatever Remains: A true story of secret lives and hidden families published by Big Sky Publishing in 2015.

At the beginning of the Surname Index, you will find surnames (each in brackets) for what I have called 'pseudo persons'. These include Cemetery, Church, Hospital, Location, School and Ship. The Person Page for each pseudo person may include a brief historical note and will include links to real people associated with that pseudo person -- for example, people who were born in or worked at a Hospital, lived at a Location, attended or worked at a School, were married in a Church or lived in its rectory, travelled in a Ship or were buried in a Cemetery. I hope you find these links useful.

This page current at 7 Apr 2022.