Newbiggin-by-the-Sea Genealogy Project believed to have created the world's largest family tree featuring 39,000 people

Newbiggin-by-the-Sea Genealogy Project has created a family tree on family history website MyHeritage.com featuring almost 39,000 individuals with connections to the town that stretches back as far as the thirteenth century.

The project was started in 2012 by Newbiggin man Hilton Dawson when he inherited his mother’s family history research, and now has a team of volunteers and has had thousands of contributions.

Hilton, a former Labour Party MP, said: “It is something that came out of a public meeting when a group of us who were collecting our own family trees realised the truth of the saying that everybody in Newbiggin is related to everybody else.

“We started to create an online record of everybody who ever lived in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.”

The project has had contributions from as far afield as Canada, the USA, and Italy.

Hilton said: “It has been the most incredible experience of people coming together to share their stories.

“Everyone has a story. Everyone is an expert in their own family.”

The growth of the project has necessitated a permanent family history centre on Front Street.

Hilton said: “People come in and we project their history onto the wall, and they are just fascinated, overwhelmed sometimes, by how far back it goes, but how far across it goes as well.

“You can find out that people that you know quite well, you went to school with, people who you live among, people who you meet every day are actually your second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth cousin.

“People are very related in Newbiggin, even now.”

Hilton said the stories they have uncovered show “we do not need to seek our inspiration very far,” and reflect how Newbiggin has changed.

He said: “You can trace how it went from being a tiny fishing village to a much bigger community with the arrival of coal mine people from all over the country.

“You see the great events of history, the world wars and the huge social change, reflected in the lives of the relatives that you are studying.

“It is very engaging and powerful and humbling.”

As well as historians, Hilton hopes genetics researchers may be able to make use of their database.

Creative projects such as books, exhibitions, and a musical have already been inspired by the family tree.

A five-day exhibition of the work to date, held last week, shows how much good the project is doing.

Hilton said: “It is not only the most fantastic historic record which is available to everybody online right across the world. I think we have got a major stimulus to tourism.

“We are working on the homecoming of the thousands of former Newbiggin people who are now distributed across the country and across the globe in 2027.

“It is very clear from the recent fiesta that it brings in people, it brings in newcomers, it brings people back to Newbiggin who formerly lived there, and it engages people in a very visceral and fundamental way.”