Published 27th Nov 2023, 06:00 BST

Her namesake, it emerged, was quite unusually a female captain on the canal boats she now lives nearby. And as she delved deeper into history, shocking elements came to light as a truly heart wrenching tale unfolded before her.

"I've been quite dumbfounded by it all," she said. "There were so many coincidences. I was never one for going right back in history, but as soon as I found Janet's story that's what was important to me."

Skipton grandmother Ms Pogson, 79, was the winner of a competition for a Who Do You Think You Are?-style family history experience with Findmypast. Her interest was piqued by a photograph, gifted 30 years ago, of her two-times great-grandmother, also named Janet.

Born 1830, Janet's first marriage in Liverpool at the age of 19 was to canal boatman John Bootle, researchers discovered. It was he who introduced her to life on the canals.

This was the height of Industrial Revolution and by now the Leeds & Liverpool Canal had been open for 60 years, transporting coal the length of its 127 miles.

But by 1871, Ms Pogson discovered, her ancestor had been widowed - for a second time - and was quite unusually listed on the Census as captain of the Fire King.

A decade later Janet was on the Queen of Liverpool, moored on the Skipton basin of the canal – just a stone’s throw from Ms Pogson's own home today.

Researchers discovered that Janet Pogson's ancestor - also named Janet - she was one of a handful of female Captains on a barge on the Liverpool & Leeds Canal at the height of the Industrial Revolution. This image was handed down from generation to generation, and is believed to have been taken on Janet's wedding day, 1st December 1868.This was the day she married Henry Smith, her second husband. She was 38 years old.

Then came the saddest of news. A child, Richard, who died aged one year nine months, killed by a wagon as he played on the towpath.

Experts then found historical newspaper reports recording the death of Janet’s older son, Joseph Bootle, who fell in and drowned on a cold, dark and foggy Christmas Eve at Ince in 1914. A third son, also called Richard, died at the age of eight, the research suggests.

Janet died with bronchitis in 1888 aged 58. Her daughter Elizabeth was with her, and she was later buried at Sefton St Helen.

To Ms Pogson, this was the information she had sought to find. In the parish records a Janet Smith is listed, under her second husband's name, with the youngest boy Richard Henry Smith.

"An aunt of mine, years ago, said there was a child that died," she said. "It struck me then that this was 150 years ago, but that story has passed down," she added. "It is still there. We are all a product of our past."

Every other generation of Ms Pogson's family, for seven generations now, has carried the name Janet. It is her own granddaughter's middle name.

To walk in the original Janet's footsteps, along the same towpath, has been an emotional experience she said.

"She has always been a mystery but stood out as the most ‘alive’ character in my family tree – perhaps because of the connection with our names," she said.

Family history: Following one woman's journey through time to a tragic discovery along Yorkshire's canals