Montagu Denis Wyatt Don was born in Iserlohn, Germany to Denis Don and Janet Wyatt. His birth entry can be found in the Overseas Birth Marriage and Death Indexes available at TheGenealogist.co.uk  .

Monty is well known for presenting ‘Gardeners World’ on the BBC and was brought up in a small Hampshire village in a house designed by his maternal great grandfather Matthew Wyatt.

Through his mother Janet, Monty is descended from the well know Wyatt dynasty of Architects, which spans across the 18th and 19th centuries. Monty’s great grandfather Matthew Wyatt is recorded in the London 1869 Post Office Street Directory at 77 Bloomsbury Square with his father Thomas Henry, listed as an architect (right).

You can also locate Matthew Wyatt and his wife Charlotte Hodge on the London 1871 Census which shows Matthew’s occupation as an architect & landowner (below).

Monty’s great grandmother Charlotte Hodge was one of 11 children born to Rev Charles Hodge and his wife Anne. Sadly two of the children died in their early years, and Anne left for New Zealand in the 1850’s leaving Charles and the 9 children behind. Charlotte was just 3 years old and the youngest less than a year old. The couple were reunited when Charles and four of the sons joined her several years later.

Charles was returning to Liverpool onboard the Royal Charter in 1859, when the ship got caught in a storm off the coast of Wales and sank, killing many onboard, including Charles. The death is registered in the BT158 records, part of the Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial collection on TheGenealogist.co.uk. BT158 contains registers compiled from ships’ official logs of births, deaths and marriages of passengers at sea from 1854 to 1908 (below).

Monty’s maternal grandmother Ethel Goldring was the daughter of a solicitor, grand-daughter and great grand-daughter of an Attorney of Law. The London 1869 Post Office Law Directory shows Monty’s great great grandfather Thomas Goldring and his law firm ‘Mackeson & Goldring’ at 59 Lincoln’s Inn Fields (below).

There are more discoveries for Monty on his father’s side in Dundee Scotland, when his great great grandmother Janet Keiller saw an opportunity derived from a shipload of oranges, and founded a famous marmalade empire. She handed the business over to her son James and the company ‘James Keiller & Sons’ was founded with grandsons Alexander and William.

View Monty Don’s Family Tree in TreeView, the free online family tree builder.