(For the present family click here or on the 'New' button)
(Stories are listed here in roughly chronological order. Click on the year on the left to read the story)
1020 A Skinner family legend about William the Conqueror's mother, and a much more likely sequel.
1100 The Pyne family came from Upton Pyne, near Exeter, c.1100
1616 Celebration in Whitehall for the new Prince of Wales, later Charles I.
1641 Bishop Skinner in the Tower of London - he came out alive!
1649 Remembering the beheading of Charles I in 1649, and the rebellion of 1745
1810 A sea battle, the Log of it copied by cousin George Chaplin Holroyd, a cadet.
1842 Capt. James Skinner hid in a harem in Cabul (Kabul), but an Afghan killed him in the end. He was buried in a ruined fort above the river of Jugdulluk.
1944 Uncle Jack was a Captain in the Eighth Army during the Second World War, and invaded Italy with the Americans. He reached Florence, where lived an English cousin, Gwendoline, who has married an Italian aristocrat many years before the war started.
1982 Cousin Gwendoline Strozzi's son Uberto died without heir, leaving a fortune of £18 million, which a forger attempted to embezzle. He was prevented from doing so largely by another Italian cousin, Maurizio Burlamacchi.
1989 Uncle Edward Holroyd Pearce bought a statue for his garden for £7 and sold it about 40 years later for £6.82 million.