Family Genealogist, Historian and Researcher

I’m Emma Cox and I love history.

Since studying the Tudors and Stuarts at school many years ago I’ve always had an interest in where I came from and who my ancestors were.

I’ve become the custodian of our family history and have thousands of photographs, family letters, family heirlooms and many different family trees on paper and online.

I have interviewed older members of the family (now no longer with us) to help identify some of the people and places in the photographs. I’ve visited Taunton in Somerset and handled 17th century wills and old paperwork in the Somerset Records Office and found plaques in the local churches with my Cox, Bennett and Edwards ancestors’ names upon them.

I have setup a personal website for our family to find out more about our ancestors with photos of significant ancestors and the properties they lived in and their achievements. 

I am doing a one name study on one particular line – Fonblanque. Originally Huguenots from France who settled in England in the 1740s and migrated across the world. 

My great grandfather, John Berkeley de Fonblanque, was a solicitor at Lincolns Inn in London and he kept press cuttings of his cases in the 1920s. I have 3 volumes of these and have digitised some of them. They make for fascinating reading.

There are lots of journalists, writers, publishers, lawyers, members of parliament and bishops, and even a female professor of music amongst my ancestors.

One of my great grandfathers, Oswald Cattley, was a mining merchant in St Petersburg in Russia and my great grandmother Dorothy was born there. 

Another ancestor, a botanist named William Cattley, was the first to identify the ‘Cattleya’ orchids which are named after him.

Ewan Christian, a distant connection, was the architect of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Another Scottish connection, Archibald Simpson, helped create Aberdeen as the granite city.

In 2019 I discovered some new distant cousins and we’ve met up and are exchanging information about the ancestors we have in common.

Following my appearance on BBC2 in February 2020 on Secrets of the Museum Episode 1 (about Pumpie the Elephant at the Victoria and Albert Museum), several new cousins have contacted me. 

DNA has also connected me with cousins in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

If you are looking for assistance with finding out more about your own family tree, I can help you. Please visit the Genealogy Research in the UK page to find more more.

To contact me please click here

Emma Cox - Genealogist and Researcher

Emma has traced her own family history back to:

  • William the Conqueror, King of England in 1066
  • Huguenots (Gentilhommes Verriers) in France in the 1600s
  • Cloth makers and Ironmongers in Somerset in the 1700s and 1800s
  • Members of Parliament, barristers and the clergy in the 1800s
  • Furniture makers in Scotland in the 1800s and farmers in the 1700s
  • And even to an Aunt of Fletcher Christian of Mutiny on the Bounty fame (her 6th great grandmother) and there is still more to discover!