I began researching my family history in 1995, prompted by many questions about where the name "Armitstead" came from. I fairly quickly traced the Armitstead line back to my great-great-great-grandfather Richard Armitstead, who was born in about 1782 and lived in Bentham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The line stopped there for several years, until I made contact with a distant cousin in the USA who had letters written by a Thomas Armitstead in the 1840s. The information in these letters has enabled me to trace back a further three generations.

I have researched other branches as well, and the chart below shows the surnames of my eight sets of great-great-grandparents and the areas (all in England) where the families lived. The names link to pages giving detailed information.

If you have an Ancestry.com account (not necessarily a paid subscription) you can see more details on my public tree

If you think you may have a family connection, I would be pleased to hear from you: