What if my Ancestor was a Gypsy?
Recently the headlines on the Yahoo.co.uk website have highlighted a few stories depicting the plight of certain groups of “English and Irish Gypsies”, or “Travellers” as they are otherwise known. The Travellers live outside of the realms of normal society, shunning what they deem to be an oppressive, conformist regime, and rather preferring to remain free from the shackles of permanent settlement and governmental red tape. As such, finding records for Traveller ancestors may be a bit more difficult than usual, as many don’t register, and often records of births, deaths and marriages are kept among themselves, and histories often passed orally from generation to generation. In order to understand the particular difficulties in tracking down a Traveller relative, a brief overview of their history and lifestyle might be helpful.
