This family broke records to boast six living generations and the only great-great-great-granny
3-4 minute read
By Ellie Ayton | July 9, 2025
In 1980, news outlets went wild for the seemingly ordinary Lewis family. But they’d broken a Guinness World Record: they were identified as the first known family to have six generations living at once and the world’s only living great-great-great-grandmother. This is their story.
There’s something quite special about a multi-generational photograph. You may have one in your own family, perhaps when your first child was born, and you’re pictured with your parent and grandparent. It’s a landmark moment for your family, the meeting of the past, present, and future in a single second, preserved for generations to come.
If you can get three or even four generations together for that photo, that’s quite a feat. Five? Even better. But how many family trees can boast six generations living at once?
Well, the Lewis family of Southampton could.
In 1980, a boy named Phillip Boggins was born to parents Mandy and Perry, completely unaware of the incredible living lineage that had started almost a hundred years before him.
The story begins with a baby girl born in Southampton in 1885, while Queen Victoria still reigned over the British Empire. The girl, Violet Clara Kearslake, would marry Arthur Ernest Lewis in 1902. Corsets were still a thing, and women couldn’t vote.
Barely ten years later, Arthur, who had worked as a hotel manager in 1911, was a steward on board the most famous ship in history – the Titanic. Aged just 27, he survived the sinking on 14 April 1912 and made it home to Violet and their young family.
Arthur was still working with Cunard by the time the next census came around. He served in the Labour Corps during the First World War. He was away from home, serving in France from December 1914 until October 1918, his days filled with hard work, blood, mud, and death.
A snippet from Arthur’s military service record. You can view the full record here.
Afterwards, Arthur served in the Merchant Navy as a steward, sailing back and forth across the Atlantic from Southampton to New York aboard White Star Line’s RMS Homeric, a ship built by Germany but ceded to Great Britain after the war.
A photo of Arthur, Phillip’s 2x great-grandfather, in his Merchant Navy records. You can view the full record here.
Violet and Arthur had five sons: Archibald, Stanley, Leslie, Leonard, and Thomas. The couple and two of their sons were living with an aircraft fitter, John Queen, just as the Second World War began.
The Lewis family in the 1939 Register.
Archibald married Neiza Farmer in 1922, and their daughter, Edna, came along the following year, a girl born into a modern age where women’s rights were on the rise. Edna’s grandfather, Arthur, was still making waves across the Atlantic at this time.
As the war continued to wage its way across the world, the Lewis family watched as Edna married Arthur Charles Bastin, a soldier in the Royal Artillery, in 1942.
Edna’s future husband, Arthur, on his attestation in 1938. You can view the full record here.
Edna and Arthur had three daughters. One of them was Pauline, born in 1944, and she later married Peter Ward in 1960. Together, they had two girls and two boys.
This brings us to Mandy Ward, born in 1963, who married Perry Boggins. And that’s how we get to 1980, and the family boasting six living generations makes headlines across the country. Little Phillip Boggins, born on Cup Final Day, had no idea how special his birth truly was.
At the time, this was considered a first. And Violet made history too, as the first known living 2x great-grandmother.
Headline news in Daily Express, 23 May 1980.
The family also made a star appearance on Record Breakers on 19 November 1980 with Roy Castle.
You might have six generations from your family alive today, or you may not. But either way, it’s never been easier to trace your own family’s unique story. Even if you’ve never given a thought to building your family tree, you never know what you might find when you start, adding one generation at a time…
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