Sue was the granddaughter of Arthur Bancks Prowse (1856 – 1925) who was one of the first members of the family to collect and document information on our family history. Sue had a keen interest in history from a young age, but it was when her children were set a school project to research their family history that she became fascinated by genealogy. She wrote to her sister, Anne, and her cousin Roger Prowse who had inherited ABP’s papers and received a mass of information, which together with her own research resulted in her first book ‘Prowse Family History’ which eventually ran to three editions

 

Over the next 30 years she went on to write 10 more books on Family History which she generously sent around the world to anyone who was interested. She continued to write to her many contacts and in her last few years wrote Monthly Family History Newsletters which were a great source of information.

Sue attended the Prowse family reunions: in Chagford and Gidleigh in 1990 (where she gave a speech ‘Prowse Predicaments’, in Colchester in 1997, in Plymouth in 2004 (where she gave a speech ‘Connections’ standing by the Armada Memorial on the Hoe), in Salt Lake City in 2006 (where she gave a speech ‘A Parade of Prowses Through the Ages’), in the New Forest in 2011 (where she gave a wonderful speech entitled ‘A Romp Through Eleven Centuries of Prowse/Prouse Ancestry) and finally in Tiverton in 2018. She made many contacts at these reunions and kept in touch with them all through letters and emails, always replying promptly and sharing her latest findings with everybody. Her
enthusiasm and ability to communicate encouraged many members of the family to carry out their own research, which they then shared with her and so she contributed hugely to our understanding of the connections between the different branches of the family.