English Writer and TV personality Gregg Wallace is the latest celebrity to take part in the current series of Who Do You Think You Are? Using our newly updated and advanced website, www.TheGenealogist.co.uk, we take a look ourselves into his family history with its quick and easy search tools.

Gregg started his working life selling vegetables from a stand in Convent Garden before later opening what was to be the multi million pound business ‘George Allan’s Greengrocers’ in 1989.

The success of the Greengrocers business started Gregg’s media career when Radio 4 invited him to present ‘Veg talk’. Gregg has since fronted ‘Saturday Kitchen’, ‘Veg Out’, ‘Follow that Tomato’ and of course ‘MasterChef’, which is probably his most recognised role alongside John Torode and Michel Roux Jr.

Gregg’s episode is set to be an emotional one, with tragedy surrounding different branches of his maternal ancestry, plus a mystery to solve regarding his great grandfather.

Born in Peckham London in 1964, you can easily locate his birth entry on the England and Wales Index 1837-2005 via TheGenealogist.co.uk:

By clicking the married couple icon () the SmartSearch tool will jump to the parents’ marriage record within one simple click:

From this we can see that Gregg’s mother was Mary K Springett who married in 1961.

Using the SmartSearch tool you can easily progress with your research with only a few simple searches, and use this information to start building a Family Tree for Gregg Wallace on our free online facility TreeView  :

Click here to view Gregg Wallace’s family tree on TreeView

Looking further back into Gregg’s family history, we can start to use the Census material. Knowing that Gregg’s grandfather Wilfred Henry Springett was born in 1907, we can look for him on the 1911 census:

Interestingly, the Head of the Household (Gregg’s great grandfather Henry) has been crossed out. Although reading through the markings we can see under occupation it reads ‘Stoker Petty Officer Royal Navy’. Can this offer any clues to the mystery surrounding his great grandfather Henry Roland Springett?

The 1911 census is an essential part in your research and for the first time it includes additional details such as completed years of marriage, number of children born within that marriage, number of children still living and the number of children who have died.
Sadly the 1911 census above shows that Emily (Gregg’s great grandmother) had lost one of her children, and during the ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ episode Gregg discovers the tragic circumstances surrounding the loss of daughter Valerie Irene E Springett, aged just 2 years old.

Using the Master Search facility on TheGenealogist.co.uk you can easily find ancestors across all of the census and other available records. Searching for Gregg’s great grandfather Henry Springett shows census matches for him in the 1881, 1891 & 1901 with one simple search:

During the episode, Gregg discovers that his maternal 2x great grandmother Selina Leythorn spent time in a Devon Asylum, where she later died in 1901.

You can use the keyword facility on the Master Search to enter an Asylum name to view all of the patients within the institution:

Catch the full story of Gregg’s emotional journey this week, Wednesday 22nd August on BBC 1 at 9pm.

Use TheGenealogist to get a much deeper insight into your ancestors in a fraction of the time as we have shown looking into the family history of Gregg Wallace. You’ll be able to find everything you need to know about someone almost instantly with our single linked master search.

Using the Master Search facility on TheGenealogist you can find your ancestors quickly and effectively, particularly using our new All-In-One Search tool.

Take a look at how user friendly the website is and start tracing your family history!