About

Welcome to my family history pages. The purpose of this site is to share my family history research and hopefully connect with others out there who are looking for the same people. My original research was focussed on my Houghton line who, for the most part confined themselves to the south Lancashire region of England (i.e. the Newton-le-Willows and Widnes areas) although I have gradually branched out to discover as much as possible about all my grandparents’ lines, namely the Gibsons, Waltons and Connors/O’Connors. Please check the Surnames pages for details of my current findings.

For those who have asked about how the name Houghton is pronounced, my experience is that it varies from region to region; In and around Lancashire, Houghton tends to be pronounced Hor-ton but where I live in Leicestershire the name is pronounced How-ton (a Bedfordshire Houghton I know also uses this form too). When I was a student in Scotland, people would call me Hoo-ton or Huff-ton (amongst other things :))

During the course of my research I have been very fortunate to have discovered connections to long lost family who have kindly shared their research findings with me. Without their determination, several brick walls would have remained unscaled and I’d like to thank Lynn Russell, John Maddock, Liz Grieve and Pat Gregory for their contributions to the work presented on this site, principally, but not exclusively, in solving the HOUGHTON-MADDOCK-BOYLE-CUMMINGS mystery which has subsequently led back to our CUMMINGS/COMMON(S) ancestors from Berwickshire.

© John Houghton 2021, All Rights Reserved. The images and documents reproduced on this site are either my own or, to the best of my knowledge, have been obtained from out-of-copyright sources. Additional material is credited and reproduced with permission where appropriate.