Carl Sprake

Family History

View the latest family tree here.

Introduction

I've been researching my family history on and off for a couple of years now. It has usually been around Christmas time that I get the urge to make more progress, as getting family members together brings some more old stories to light.

My mum's parents died a number of years ago and I regret now, not asking them more questions about their life. With my dad's parents I also left it too late as by the time I started to ask questions they were both getting a bit forgetful and any information I could gleam was often confused.

I would therefore like to get as much information as I can from surviving members of the family, as well as archive material such as birth, marriage and death certificates. My interest in medieval re-enactment has taught me that while most of the history we learn about in schools is based on kings and queens and major events, it is the "normal" people who often have the most interesting stories to tell and how they lived their lives can give amazing insights to a certain period of history.

Families

My father is a Sprake and my mother's maiden name was Kerr, so it is these families that I am concentrating most of my efforts on.

The Sprake Side

The Kerr Side

I had an amazing success the year before last. I had heard about a guy who used Facebook to become friends with everyone with the same name as him. I thought this was a bit sad but was interested enough to find out how many Sprakes there are on facebook (485 as of 2009-02-08). I thought that was a bit many to send invites to, so I looked at how many Kerrs there are (lots). So I thought I would narrow it down and search for Roy Kerr. I knew that my mum had a cousing called Roy who she had not seen for many years. And that his father was also called Roy. So I searched for Roy Kerr and found 8 of them. I sent friend invites to all 8 and got a reply from one the next day. He was the son of my mum's cousin.

I had made contact with a branch of the family that we had lost touch with. Roy senior was a lancaster pilot during the war. I now have a copy of his log book and have made a model of his Lancaster.