My childhood holidays were spent at a variety of seaside resorts in England with an occasional trip to London. I remember that my father would always look in the phone book in the hotel room to check if there were any Mackmans. I recollect that there were Mackmans only in the London phone books and that there were not many of them. In 1988 I thought it would be a good idea to see just how many Mackmans there were in all the phone books in the United Kingdom. Helped by my daughter and one of her friends I spent a couple of hours at the Central Library in York were we found just 99 Mackmans including myself. We subsequently wrote to all the Mackmans we had found and asked if they would be willing to complete a questionnaire. The Mackmans who returned our questionnaire gave us the building blocks that enabled us to build up a picture of how all Mackmans are related to each other and from whom they are descended. The thrust of our research has been to try to establish if there is just one Common Ancestor from whom all Mackmans are descended.

In 1989, when checking Mackmans in the IGI, I came across the record of a John Joseph Sumner Mackman (JJSM) who was christened at the Church of St Benet, Paul'€™s Wharf, in the City of London on 19 March 1797.

John was married twice. By his first wife, Frances Anna Taylor, he had four children and by his second, Amelia Hodder Dore, he had eight. None of the children had Mackman descendants. They were all Mackmins.

In 1989, as I didn'€™t appreciate that there would be no Mackmans down the line, I kept on collecting Mackmin details until I had tied all living Mackmins back to JJSM. There are two cases where someone was adopted by a Mackmin and had Mackmin offspring. I have yet to find a living Mackmin who is not connected to JJSM.