My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Boliver, and some years after she passed away, my mum was given a remarkable gift—a copy of the Boliver family tree, compiled by a fourth cousin. It was no ordinary chart: a sprawling scroll, over 500 names strong, stretching all the way back to 1620.
I lost count of how many times I unrolled it on the floor, reading the fascinating notes he’d added from years of dedicated research. The tree began with Hugh ap Oliver, born around 1620 and buried on 9 April 1671 in Selattyn, Shropshire.
What truly captured my imagination weren’t just the names and dates—it was the stories. Little handwritten notes brought each ancestor to life:
William Bowen Boliver, born 1908, served in World War II and was accidentally killed in Germany in 1946. Accidentally? How?
Richard Edward Boliver, born 1874, married Elizabeth Taylor (not that one!), had three children—then abandoned them and fled to Bolivia to claim the estate of the late Simón Bolívar, believing they must be related. There’s no evidence they were!
Two separate branches of the Boliver family even emigrated to Australia. I knew then that I wanted to dig deeper.
Eventually, I spent months building the tree on Ancestry.co.uk, carefully transferring every name and note from the original scroll. But I quickly noticed something: whenever a female Boliver married, the tree stopped. The husband’s name and marriage date were listed—but no children, no continuation of their line.
That meant my grandmother’s story ended when she married my grandfather, John Lee Hinton, in 1937. No mention of their children—including my mum. So together, my mum and I made our first foray into genealogy, filling in the gaps and tracing the descendants of every Boliver daughter. We were hooked—and we still are.
From there, we turned to the Hinton side of the family, tracing my maternal grandfather’s line back to my 7th great-grandfather, Richard Hinton, born in the late 1600s. The tree has grown and grown. While we include spouses, we mainly focus on direct bloodlines and their descendants. Along the way, we’ve uncovered stories both joyful and tragic—and visited more graveyards than we can count.
In time, we realized we needed more than just an online tree and a stack of notes and photos. We had too much to share—too many discoveries, too many questions still unanswered. That’s why we created Eyeonthepast.com a place to tell the stories of our ancestors, connect with distant relatives, and celebrate the long, winding path that brought us here.
We hope you enjoy exploring our family history with us. There’s still so much more to uncover.
Linda EYE on the PAST
[…] Emma Boliver was born in Liverpool in 1869, the daughter of David Boliver and his wife Emma, née Smith. Her name might not be found in history books, but her life reflects the quiet complexities faced by many women in Victorian England—stories of love, loss, and starting over that ripple through generations. […]