WHEN his father James Gibson Stanhope died in 1985, local historian Peter Stanhope inherited a faded sepia photograph. It was a formal wedding portrait: but Peter had no real idea who the people pictured were, apart from a vague feeling they were related to his father’s family, the Gibsons.

A few years later, however, Peter - who had spent his working life in the photographic industry - was able to use the latest digital imaging technology to digitally restore the picture.

He was then able to recognise his own grandparents, William Stanhope and Annie Priscilla Gibson, standing to the right of the photograph - and realised this was a family wedding portrait of his paternal grandmother Annie’s family, the Gibsons.

It was a discovery that was ultimately to lead to Peter - a long-time member of the York & District Family History Society - being able to trace the Gibson family tree all the way back to the Wensleydale area... in 1673.

The wedding photograph, Peter later learned, was taken on July 15, 1905, following the marriage of Harriet Gibson, his grandmother Annie’s sister, to Tom Thrush, an insurance agent.

The wedding was held at St Margaret’s Church in Walmgate, but the photograph was taken in the courtyard behind one of the shops in Lawrence Street which was the Gibson family home.

The bride’s father (the bowler-hatted man to the right of the bride) was James Gibson, a self-made boot and shoe maker and dealer, who had started out in relative poverty in Malt Shovel Lane, Walmgate. James managed to ‘better himself’’ to the point he was able to open his own shoe shop at 33 Lawrence Street.

The Gibson family lived 'over the shop' and the picture shows the small courtyard and cottage behind, complete with communal water tap and the 'mangle' rollers to the bottom left of the picture.

James Gibson and his wife Mary had four daughters - Bessie, Annie (Peter's grandmother, who was to marry his grandfather William Stanhope), Harriett (the bride in this photograph) and Polly - as well as one son, James.

The photograph shows the Gibson girls in beautiful late-Victorian bridesmaids dresses and hats. "Clearly James Gibson 'had a few bob' to be able to afford all of this plus the cost of paying the photographer to take such a high quality picture of the wedding group!" says Peter.

Starting with this picture, Peter was able to begin to build up a history of the Gibson family.

He used family bibles to plot the generations of Gibsons and with the help of the York Cemetery Company, discovered their graves and headstones, which yielded more information. Parish records at the Borthwick Institute also provided information, as did the Census records from 1840 onwards.

Through a readers' letter to the Press, Peter was then able to link up with a distant cousin, who had a handwritten Gibson family tree, possibly drawn up by Mark Gibson, Peter's great-great grandfather. This traced the Gibsons as farmers right back to Wensleydale.

Then, at a Family History Fair in York, Peter came across a small booklet of "Hearth Taxes" for the Wensleydale area in the year 1673. Amazingly, on opening it, he discovered that a William Gibson was a 'husbandman' in the tiny hamlet of Sedbusk, near Hawes.

Peter was then able to find records at North Yorkshire County Records Office in Northallerton which confirmed that William Gibson had farmed cattle and livestock on the remote hill fields above Sedbusk.

Since then Peter and his wife have made many visits to Sedbusk, and have walked up the hill to the place where Peter's ancestors must have farmed hundreds of years ago.

It was a classic piece of family history detective work - one almost as dramatic as the piece of sleuthing by which York Family History Society members Pam Elliott and David Poole helped the BBC trace the descendants of an impoverished family who featured in a groundbreaking study of unemployment in York 100 years ago.

That family was the Nevinsons. Mr Nevinson, a silent man of nearly 50 with a large family, could 'neither read nor write', according to Rowntree's 1910 report, and had not been able to find regular employment for two years. He spent every day walking the city in search of a job.

The BBC was making a documentary tracing descendants of some of the families mentioned in Rowntree's study, and recruited the York Family History Society to help.

But they had no luck ... until it occurred to them that Rowntree may have changed the names of the families mentioned in his study.

A reference in the report about the Nevinsons to a youngest girl at 'the Blind School' led to a trawl through the details of York Blind School pupils in the 1911 census. Only one matched the details given in Rowntree's report on the 'Nevinsons' - a girl by the name of Ivy Addy.

Once they had got the 'Nevinson's' real family name, it was a comparatively straightforward job to trace the descendants, says David Poole - all the way to York's own Hollywood star Mark Addy. Needless to say, the BBC was thrilled.

If you're fascinated by historical detective work like this and would like to learn how to research your own family history, you'll have the perfect opportunity on Saturday (March 29), when the York & District Family History Society will be holding its annual 'family and local history fair' at Manor Academy from 10am to 4pm.

Several local history groups will be present (including the Acomb group, which has provided the two historic photographs of Acomb streets on these pages today), as well as the North Yorkshire and East Yorkshire records offices and, if you are hoping to find out more about relatives who may have fought in the 'Great War' 100 year ago, the City of York World War 1 Index.

The York cemetery genealogical service will also be there, with a database of information about those buried in the cemetery. These include plenty of former Lord Mayors of York and other local notables - plus 'unsung heroes' such as William Bentley.

The son of a local labourer, he rose to be a Troop Sergeant Major in the 11th Prince Albert's Own Hussars- and survived the famous 'Charge of the Light Brigade' during the Crimean war. He died in York aged 74 in 1891, and is buried in the cemetery.

Who knows, anyone reading this may just have an ancestor as extraordinary as Sgt Major Bentley.

So why not go along to the fair this Saturday to begin the business of finding out?

‘Whether you are just beginning to research your own ancestry or have been doing it for years and need a bit of help, this is the place to start," said Janice Wood, the chairman of the York & District family History Society.

York & District Family History Society annual fair, 10am-4pm Saturday March 29, Manor Academy, Millfield Lane, Nether Poppleton, York. Admission £1. More information from www.yorkfamilyhistory.org.uk/