A Family History Of... – Details, episodes & analysis

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A Family History Of...

Findmypast

History

Frequency: 1 episode/6d. Total Eps: 34

Join host Jen Baldwin and special guests to uncover hidden stories from the archives that reveal the human side of British and Irish history. Each month, follow one story across several gripping episodes, and experience history through the eyes of those who lived it.

Help us shape the future of A Family History Of... with your feedback:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PZXNW2Q

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
31/08/2026
#142
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#137
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
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#149
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#179
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
12/04/2026
#193
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
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#183
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
22/03/2026
#161
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
21/03/2026
#162
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
20/03/2026
#176
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
19/03/2026
#172
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https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PZXNW2Q
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Score global : 69%

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Riot and Ruin | The Irish Famine (Part 2)

Episode 6

Monday, April 6, 2026 • Duration 31:31

Hunger spreads. Tempers ignite One man swept into a riot.

It’s September 1845 in Coolderrihy, and hunger is beginning to bite. As fear and anger are on the rise, Archibald MacKenzie finds himself in the thick of a desperate riot. Join host and genealogist Jen Baldwin, and her guest, Irish genealogy expert Fiona Fitzsimons, as they unpick the records behind this moment. What drives an ordinary man to risk everything in this changing world?

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Guest: Fiona Fitzsimons

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Madeleine Gilbert, Daisy Goddard, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert, Ellie Ayton, and James Plumb

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Before the Hunger | The Irish Famine (Part 1)

Episode 5

Monday, March 30, 2026 • Duration 31:24

A boy at the edge of famine-era Ireland. A world about to break.

Archibald MacKenzie is 11 years old in Coolderrihy, County Cork, when the world he knows suddenly shifts. Joined by Irish genealogy expert Fiona Fitzsimons, host and genealogist Jen Baldwin traces the records that reveal what life looked like for a boy growing up in a land already restless with tension. How did a childhood shaped by loss prepare him for the catastrophe still to come?

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Guest: Fiona Fitzsimons

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Madeleine Gilbert, Daisy Goddard, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert, Ellie Ayton, and James Plumb

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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A Family History Of... The Irish Famine | Trailer

Thursday, March 26, 2026 • Duration 01:20

One family faces famine, fear and exile — and forges a future that spanned oceans.

The Great Famine cast a long shadow across Ireland, hollowing out towns, devastating families, and driving thousands to the brink. It’s a familiar tale, but one not often told. Follow the story of Archibald MacKenzie, a man whose life veered from riot to imprisonment, and then across the sea to smoke and furnaces. Across three episodes, host and genealogist Jen Baldwin — Archibald’s descendant — and Irish genealogy expert Fiona Fitzsimons piece together a life shaped by fear, migration and endurance. Through parish records, newspapers, court entries and census lines, they explore how hunger, displacement and survival reshaped one family — and how those pressures echoed through the generations that followed.

Part 1 drops on 31 March - follow and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Women Who Left No Trace| Wartime Women (Part 4 - Bonus Episode)

Episode 4

Tuesday, March 24, 2026 • Duration 17:20

Why do women rarely appear in WW2 records?

Many wartime women left no diaries or letters, only the sparse traces of addresses, occupations, and brief entries in civil records.

In this bonus episode, host and expert genealogist Jen Baldwin explores how those small clues — a line in the 1939 Register, a registrar‑office marriage, a maternity home address — can reveal the pressures shaping a woman’s life during war. By placing each detail within the world she lived in, Jen shows how context helps us hear stories that were never written down. What might you discover when you read the women in your family, not just for what’s recorded, but for what the records quietly imply?

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Daisy Goddard, Madeleine Gilbert, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert and Ellie Ayton

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Grief and Resilience in the Blitz (with Lucy Worsley) | Wartime Women (Part 3)

Episode 3

Tuesday, March 17, 2026 • Duration 35:11

Lucy Worsley returns to discover the next part of her grandmother's story - during the Birmingham Blitz.

In 1942, Edna Bourne becomes a mother during the Birmingham Blitz. Amid blackouts, bombing raids and disrupted maternity care, she endures grief with little space to rest or speak of it. Through death registers, wartime diaries and Mass Observation accounts, genealogist Jen Baldwin and her guest, historian Lucy Worsley, explore the burdens carried by mothers on the home front.

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Guest: Lucy Worsley

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Daisy Goddard, Madeleine Gilbert, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert and Ellie Ayton

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Love, Work and Wartime Secrets (with Lucy Worsley) | Wartime Women (Part 2)

Episode 2

Tuesday, March 10, 2026 • Duration 27:48

Lucy Worsley returns to discover her grandmother's dramatic Second World War secrets...

By 1939, Edna Bourne is a young working woman in a Britain preparing for war once again. Her days in a Birmingham boot shop unfold against air‑raid drills, rationing, and uncertainty. But behind the everyday routines lie private complexities: a whirlwind marriage, a pregnancy under the pressures of wartime morality, and a truth hidden in the marriage register that carries legal and emotional weight.

Join host and genealogist Jen Baldwin and her guest, historian Lucy Worsley, as they bring the records to life, revealing how women navigated respectability, secrecy and survival in a world where war upended everything.

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Guest: Lucy Worsley

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Daisy Goddard, Madeleine Gilbert, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert and Ellie Ayton

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Born Into a World at War (with Lucy Worsley) | Wartime Women (Part 1)

Episode 1

Tuesday, March 3, 2026 • Duration 32:10

Historian Lucy Worsley joins host and genealogist Jen Baldwin to discover how two world wars shaped one woman’s life – and the generations that followed.

Edna Bourne takes her first breath in Birmingham, 1911, as Europe braces for war. With her father working to feed the munitions machine and her mother navigating rationing queues and civic duty, Edna's earliest memories are shaped by a city under pressure.

Join Jen and Lucy - Edna's granddaughter - as they uncover the archival clues that reveal the bigger picture. What did childhood look like for a girl growing up in Britain’s industrial heart, as it transformed into a wartime powerhouse?

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Guest: Lucy Worsley

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Daisy Goddard, Madeleine Gilbert, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert and Ellie Ayton

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Trailer: A Family History Of...

Thursday, February 19, 2026 • Duration 00:47

Ordinary lives told through extraordinary moments.

Findmypast's genealogist and research specialist Jen Baldwin is joined by guests to unravel remarkable family tales uncovered in the archives.

Each month, one moment in history is explored through a single true family story, unfolding several interconnected episodes. Human, empathetic, and driven by real stories, A Family History Of.. reveals how defining British and Irish moments shaped, and were shaped by, the people who lived them.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Escape and Aftermath | The Irish Famine (Part 3)

Episode 7

Monday, April 13, 2026 • Duration 35:00

One Irish family fights to rebuild after the Famine.

By the mid‑1850s, Archibald MacKenzie has crossed the sea to Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, trading the barren fields of Cork for the roar of furnaces. The MacKenzie family rebuilds in a world thick with smoke and prejudice. Host and genealogist Jen Baldwin, and her guest, Irish genealogy expert Fiona Fitzsimons, trace his footsteps through the evidence. What does survival look like for an Irish family forging a future in the iron valleys of Wales?

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Guest: Fiona Fitzsimons

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Madeleine Gilbert, Daisy Goddard, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert, Ellie Ayton, and James Plumb

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Evidence, Absence, and Stories from Silence | The Irish Famine (Part 4 - Bonus Episode)

Episode 8

Monday, April 20, 2026 • Duration 16:25

When records are fractured, biased, or simply gone, how do you tell a true family story?

In this final part of A Family History of the Irish Famine, host and genealogist Jen Baldwin steps into the silences surrounding Archibald MacKenzie’s life. Through the archives, the missing lines, and the traces that remain, she asks what survival really meant, and what it cost the countless families who left no trail behind.

Host and Researcher: Jen Baldwin

Editor: CM87Edits

Script Editors: Niall Cullen, Madeleine Gilbert, Daisy Goddard, and Ellie Ayton

Producers: Madeleine Gilbert, Ellie Ayton, and James Plumb

Designer: Michael McCosh

Executive Producers: Helen Kaye and Steve James

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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A Family History Of... – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

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Apple Podcasts

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A Family History Of... – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other1

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other1

Apple Podcasts

Spotify