But he could not have guessed that turning to a new hobby would reveal a scandal that subsequently shocked his family. One that had been buried in official records for decades.

When he retired after a career as a site manager building factories, spending years in America and Russia, he settled down to his wood-turning, gardening, doing up old cars and helping Gresford neighbours out with odd jobs.

Then he suffered a trapped nerve in his back that temporarily deprived him of full use of his right arm. It improved, but now he is waiting for an operation on a painful knee. Something sedentary was required.

He found it at Wrexham Library, where the helpful staff gave him two hours' tuition on how to work a computer. He was an absolute beginner.

Gradually his big, awkward fingers got the hang of the keyboard and his kindling interest in tracing family history took wings.

It was a connection typical of the Wrexham Learning Festival (September 7-8) which publicises local learning opportunities.

Tony was able to use ancestry.com, a genealogy website to which people have free access at the town's museums and libraries.

Tony told me: "My main project was to produce a family history for relatives in New Orleans. You know how Americans relish family history. I got back to 1585 using official records.

"I use the computer to compile a skeleton of information, but then you have to put meat on the bones, and there are some natural dead ends where the information peters out. Ideally, I like to visit family record centres, where if you ask a little you may get it free. Ask for too much and they are reluctant to deal with it. Wrexham and Mold are free and helpful, but in Canterbury they charge £35 an hour."

Tony now has his own computer and finds it to be an invaluable tool. However, he still handwrites his letters to families requesting information.

"It's more personal." he says, "more sensitive. And it can be embarrassing.

"My mother died when I was one and my father remarried when I was 14. Researching the family I found something he never talked about. His father had a wife and a mistress, and children by both of them. He married his mistress after his wife died. Half the family never knew about the other half and the extra grandmother.

"My grandfather's first wife had 12 children, nine surviving into adulthood, and the mistress had three children. I'm now waiting for electoral rolls from the family records centre in London to supply more information."

He gathers reams of pages and forms covered by his small, neat handwriting, and stores them in bulging ringbinder files. It appears history is a continuous tap.

Tony adds: "My discovery fits a typical scenario. Imagine the impact when you have such news. Some families just don't want to know, but I say you can't sweep it under the carpet. If it's true it has got to come out. I know everyone won't agree with that, but I see no point in constructing a fiction.

"Looking through the birth, marriage and death certificates I've been fascinated by the range of jobs listed. Many of them trades that no longer exist. Sixty per cent of those listed on a family tree will be ag-labs, agricultural workers. And through the jobs listed you can see the social changes at work, markedly the drift off the land into factories.

"When you follow an individual by his trade, if he changes employment, you can't always be sure you have got the right bloke. That's where the library staff in Wrexham are so helpful in getting me past blocks."

Probably Tony's most intriguing project took him to Exeter: "The best family history centre in the country, where they have newspapers going back to 1700. All I did was give them the name I was researching."

That name was Tryphena Sparks, a West Country beauty related to the Rew family – relatives of Tony's mother. Tryphena was Thomas Hardy's first cousin and the inspiration for many of the poet-novelist's tragic heroines – particularly Tess of the D'urbervilles.

Legend has it that Hardy fell in love with her when she was only 16. They each married other people, but Hardy certainly wrote a poem about her when Tryphena died young in her 30s.

Tony Pinder relishes his researches like a good detective novel, although he baulks at the present generation with its tangles of temporary relationships and the absence of informative marriage certificates.

He has traced one family tree back a 1,000 years.

"Well I would have," he says, "but for a 20-year missing link. And I won't cheat to fill it."

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