🌏 One Ancestor at a Time

Hello — and welcome. If this is the first email you’ve received from me, I’m glad you’re here. My name is Simon, and I run One Ancestor at a Time — a project where I explore family history, identity, and how the past continues to shape the present. Most of this work happens on YouTube, through weekly live conversations, and then gets distilled into writing like this. This week’s piece comes from Waitangi Day, New Zealand’s national day. (Watch the latest YouTube live video here) It marks the...

The Search for Samuel: How My Great-Great-Grandfather Brought the World to Whanganui “Most people come to Whanganui for the three A’s: the awa, the art, and the architecture. I came searching for one man. But there was just one problem: he died 125 years ago.” Whanganui viewed from the Durie Hill Memorial Tower. Worth a trip up the elevator! Whanganui is a city that proudly wears its history on its sleeve—evident in its Edwardian buildings, its winding river, and its vibrant creative scene....

110 years ago this week - 18th March, 1915 - my great-grandfather Charles Lind Lamont Young stood on the deck of the HMS Irresistible in the beautiful waters of the Dardanelles. The Irresistible was part of an attack force there to smash their way through to the Turkish capital, Constantinople. But at 4:15pm a deafening blast ripped through the hull, throwing Charles and crew to the deck as smoke poured through the corridors. Was Charles going to survive? To understand what brought him to...

If you’ve ever tried to piece together your family history, you know it’s part detective work, part treasure hunt. The thrill of discovery is real, but raw research alone isn’t enough—you need to turn those findings into a story people will actually want to hear. The good news? You don’t need a degree in history to do this well. You just need the right tools. Here are eight essentials for bringing your ancestors’ stories to life, based on the toolkit I used for my last episode, How Far Would...

Hi Reader! It’s the start of a new year, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead. If you’ve been following One Ancestor at a Time, you know it’s all about uncovering the stories of the past to enrich our lives today. But there’s something I haven’t told you—until now. Some of you may have already guessed, while for others, this will come as a surprise: One Ancestor at a Time is evolving into something even bigger. It’s not just a blog, not just a YouTube channel, not just a resource...