Some years ago now I began to collect together in boxes bits and pieces related to my family The GOSNALL'S. In later years this grew into a large loose-leaf folder with a page in it for each member of the family that I could remember, and many that I could not. It contained basic facts about each individual, when and where they were born, who their parents were, who their brothers and sisters were, if they were married when and where and to whom. Finally where and when they died.

In the latter part of the 1970’s and early 1980’s encouragement from my maternal Aunt {Jeanette Kathleen Buttell mothers youngest sister} aided me in filling in many of the blanks. Also, during the last months of her life my mother Hilda Hannah Knight formerly Gosnall nee Buttell helped me to tie up some loose ends and pick up some new leads many of which, I am still following.

Following the death of my Mother in January 1991 at the age of Ninetyyears and four months my life became disrupted with chronic clinical depression which slowly began to destroy me. By 1995, whilst apparent to others that all was not well, it was not to me. Then on the 13 October 1995 matters came to ahead and my brain blew a fuse so to speak. With counselling, psychiatric care and medication I have by the Grace of God slowly made my way back into the world of reality.

My boxes of bits and pieces and the family record book took on a whole new meaning and gave me a purpose to live and something to work at. With this new interest and with the help of my first computer I began to acquire new skills. The early record book now had become a Computer Data Base for the History of Gosnall Family, the Buttell Family, the Newton Family, the Winter Family and the Winsor Family covering some nine hundred individuals. It also extends into other related branches of these families, though as yet not in quite as much detail, to name just a few there are The Braisteads, The Knights, The Glovers, The Gilmours, The Packhams, The Osborns, and The Granthams.

As I have become more accomplished I have began to jot down more and more of the things that I recall. What our home was like as a boy, how I grew up. The friends I made and the places we went and the things we did. Whether these ever become a book or not are a long way off but they are a beginning.

Go now to my history page

YOU ARE MY VISITOR