Inspired by the popular BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? Sandra Adams started researching her family history.

The results, as Gerry Brooke discovers, surprised her.

Sandra Adams, who has been researching her family history since she was ten, has discovered that her ancestors were Bristol Quakers.

The break-through came when The National Archives, in collaboration with TheGenealogist.co.uk, released some original Quaker records.

Sandra now lives in Canada which made it difficult for her to access the right documents.

The introduction of records online, then, came as a god-send.

Beginning her search with ancestor Mary Dickinson, born in Bristol in 1748, Sandra was astonished by the amount of detail to be found in the old Quaker records.

The marriage between Mary's great-grandparents, Richard Marchant and Elizabeth Frye, included the place and date of the wedding, the groom's profession, groom's parents, bride's father and even the bride's address.

Quaker marriage records also included transcripts of the vows that were made.

Sandra was particularly moved by those made between Richard and Elizabeth:

"… he the said Richard Marchant taking the said Elizabeth Fry by the Hand did openly Declare as followeth, Friends in the fear of the Lord God and in the presence of you his People I take this my friend Eliz. Fry to be my Wife, Promising to be her a loving and faithful Husband till it shall please the Lord by Death to separate us……"

Sandra also discovered that another ancestor, Richard Vickris, was a witness to the marriage of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvannia, and his second wife Hannah Callowhill which took place at Quakers Friars.

Richard, born in Bristol in 1656, was the son of Robert Vickris, a high flying Merchant Venturer, politician and an avid persecutor of the Quakers.

Much to his father's dismay, Richard became involved in the new religious movement sweeping the country.

And so, hoping that it would discourage his son's pacifist tendencies, he packed him off to fight in France.

But this had the opposite effect and on his return Richard married Elizabeth Bishop, the daughter of a prominent Quaker.

Like many other early Quakers, he was persecuted for his beliefs and was repeatedly detained and fined.

In 1684, Richard, tried and convicted for refusing either to renounce his beliefs or leave the country, was sentenced to death - the only Quaker so threatened for a refusal to conform.

But with Penn's support Richard's wife travelled to London to plead with the King's brother, James, Duke of York.

After his intervention the sentence was quashed and Richard freed.

After his father had died he and Elizabeth moved their large family out of Bristol to his father's estate in Chew Magna.

Here, away from the city authorities, they were able to freely hold Quaker meetings.

Richard continued to collaborate with George Fox, the founded of the movement, and William Penn in publishing Quaker tracts.

Elizabeth's father George Bishop, Sandra discovered, was an extremely important figure in the Quaker movement

Born in Bristol in 1615 George had become a captain in Oliver Cromwell's army during the Civil War.

From 1650 to 1653 he headed Cromwell's London intelligence gathering operations whose job was to counter royalist plots.

On returning to Bristol, however, he started to associate with the Quaker preachers, Audland and Camm, lending his organizational skills to the movement.

As a pacifist leader against the persecution of the city's Quakers he was imprisoned several times for attending religious meetings.

One of the most surprising things about all this is that, until she started looking into her family history, Sandra wasn't even aware of her Quaker past.

This estrangement from the movement began in 1710 with the marriage of Richard and Elizabeth Vickris' daughter Sarah to Caleb Dickinson.

Now Caleb, although a Quaker, derived his wealth from the profits of his slave run sugar plantations in Jamaica.

The couple had a son, Vickris Dickinson, and Sandra believes that he may have refused to free the slaves, as the Quaker meetings had decided, that he had inherited from his father.

This would, she thinks, have led to his expulsion from the Quaker meetings.

So although Sandra's ancestor Mary Dickinson was born a Quaker she married into the Church of England in 1775

The family's Quaker inheritance then began to disappear and, as generation followed generation, it was lost completely.

"Because of online records" explains Sandra, " I was able to flesh out Mary's line with images of the original Quaker records, going back to her ancestors in Bristol.

"The Quaker marriage images were particularly helpful, as they include the marriage vows

"Signed by all the attendees it's possible to see the signatures of all the family members"

Each Christmas Sandra writes a short account of her family line to give to her children and last year this turned into a several chapter story about their Quaker ancestors.

With records and images from The Genealogist, she has created a window into the past that future generations will be able to treasure and share.