A revolution shook the historical world from the 1970s, and the academic historians hardly noticed. Many thousands of people, often new to historical research, discovered the names of their ancestors and compiled their family trees from census records, wills and parish registers. The local record offices that housed many of these documents reorganised themselves to cope with the surge of interest. David Hey, who has died aged 77, was unusual among professional historians in responding to a development that colleagues tended to regard with indifference or even disdain.
He explained the flourishing of family history partly in practical terms, because people had time to do research and the records had become more readily available. Above all, family historians gained pleasure from satisfying their curiosity and engaging in detective work. As Hey revealed in his first book on the subject, Family History and Local History in England (1987), he had hunted his own ancestors mostly in the vicinity of his childhood home near Penistone in the then West Riding of Yorkshire. He could share with the enthusiasts the frustrations involved in following the clues to find a lost relative.
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