The Fanthams of King's Norton

Welcome to our Web site  

This site was last updated on 08/08/08 Look at Site History for outline of 5 most recent changes.

If having browsed the site you need to contact us then please do so:- alf.fantham(AT)blueyonder.co.uk - replacing (AT) with @.

If you share any of the above names and think a link to your web site may be of benefit, pass it along and we will insert it if appropriate. For information on the conventions I have used on the family charts have a quick look at the Rules page.

In the course of pursuing our Fantham line, we have accumulated a lot of information about non family members. If you think this may be of help to you then please feel free to pass along your queries. Who knows maybe we will end up being related.

The Fantham name is not a common one.  Our youngest daughter takes great delight in asking the "produce a history of your name" salesman to do so and to date it has not cost her a penny.  Where and what its origins are we do not know, but within the UK there appears to have been two groups of families. One here in the West Midlands and the other in Buckinghamshire.  At least one family moved from the Midlands to Buckinghamshire in the early 1800's.  This web site deals with my family line here in the West Midlands together with the various ancestral lines that came together over the years to make up our present day Fanthams of Kings Norton.

Another factor is the various spellings of the name, probably as a result of what the rector/parson heard at the ceremony.  For convenience I have used the present day spelling of my name.  One variant that crops up regularly is FANTOM.  There is a great number of people in the archives with this name, predominantly to the north of Birmingham, but I have not found any direct linkage in my research to date.

I suppose the biggest shock of my 65+ years life was to be told by my sister in January 2006 that I had missed someone out of the family tree - my brother, first born of Alfred Edward & Lily, who sadly only survived one day. Myself I am a child of the second world war, I came into this world in Kingstanding Birmingham on June 14th 1941, the second son of Alfred Edward and Lily, and brother to Cynthia Lily and Audrey Miriam. My earliest recollections are of the American soldiers that were billeted on the Pheasey Estate in readiness for the invasion of Europe and the chocolate that resulted from the “got any gum chum” request. After education at Kingsland Road School and Handsworth Grammar School I joined Post Office Telecommunications as a trainee engineer. 1957 saw the Fantham household move across the city to King's Norton and in 1965 I married Sandra, setting up home in King's Norton. Three children completed the family, and whilst they have all flown the nest, we are still a close knit family living in King's Norton and Northfield with a growing list of grandchildren.

The quest to find our ancestors was started by our youngest daughter in the spring of 1998 and the following pages represent many visits to Birmingham Central Library and other archives.  Where assistance has been given with any of our lines, this is acknowledged on the appropriate pages.

Alf & Sandra FANTHAM.