I’ve been interested in my family tree for as long as I can remember. I grew up with a small family and always longed for more relatives, some cousins to play with. 

When I was pregnant with my youngest daughter 12 years ago I started looking into my family tree, and got stuck on one great grandfather Sydney Ambury. I couldn’t find where he was born. 

Fast forward a few years to 2011. I found an article linking Sydney Ambury to Solomon Hamburg, son of Benjamin and Flora Hamburg. Benjamin and Flora had come to London from Amsterdam in the 1800s, lived in Spitalfields, got married in the Great Synagogue in London and had 10 children. I found out that I’m one eighth Jewish. I’d had absolutely no idea about that, and I have probably hundreds of Jewish cousins 😃  

Here’s the blogpost I wrote about meeting up with the first of many of my Jewish cousins Jon and Phil Marx. Jon has put together a massive chart detailing all of our relatives going back for generations He also organised a wonderful reunion at Sandy’s Row synagogue in Spitalfields where 3 of our ancestors were married. 

Today I thanks to my friend Kristie Wells I received a DNA testing kit from Ancestry.com.  

I spat in the plastic tube added the stabilising fluid, sealed and packaged it up ready to send for analysis.   

I’m very excited to find out what the results are. Just 2 weeks and I’ll find out where my ancestors lived 500 to 1200 years ago and get connected to lots of 1st to 5th cousins. I’m so excited! Watch this space for the results…