Our Story: Research and Writing
I have always had a passion for history, for as long as I can remember. You name a stately home, museum or archive and I've been there at some point in my childhood. But rather than go to university after leaving school, I knew I wanted to take a different route. So I joined the army, and then the police. I loved my time serving the country, but there came a point where I wanted to be my own boss, after having meticulously followed orders for so many years. So I founded The Heritage Map Co.
My passion was first sparked by my great-aunt. A woman who grew up in Brazil in an ex-pat community, surrounded by the sea and regularly travelling by ship to England and back. By the time I came along, she was settled in London and had an elegant apartment filled with dark-wood furniture from overseas, plates and trinkets from ancestors spanning generations, and thousands of sheets of family tree information filling her filing cabinets. We would trawl through her archives together and each time she would tell me a new tale of various great-great grandparents of mine, before walking me into her living room and handing me one of their possessions that she had kept. She would look at me and tell me that she saw her relatives in certain micro-expressions I would pull, or the curve of a cheekbone, or a movement of my eye, and my imagination would run wild imagining meeting my ancestors and chatting.
So I found a way to connect with them, and honour them. My Lineage Archives are researched. curated and beautifully designed by me to bring you one step closer to knowing your relatives and bringing their stories (almost) completely to life!
Emma Wilkinson
emma@theheritagemapco.com