When I first moved to Oxford 20 years ago, practically all I knew of my family background was that my father was about as Welsh as they come, and that my mother’s recent forebears were of mainly Scottish and South African origin.

So it was a considerable surprise to discover recently a significant element of Indian ancestry. Never had there been the slightest hint, not so much as a whisper, of a family connection with India.

It was only through the discovery of a single revelatory word in an 1881 census record that this exciting, evocative, and exotic branch of the family tree has emerged. That word, the 1861 birthplace of my mother’s grandfather, Edward Hind Wood, was ‘Calcutta’.

Yet that was not all. Another previously unsuspected line of descent led straight from the English girl who Edward married to Oxfordshire – and indeed, somewhat spookily, to parts of Oxford which have had especial significance for me during my time here.

By the end of 2008, my Indian research, mainly at the Bodleian and British Libraries, had established four connected lines of Anglo-Indian descent over four generations, all beginning with late 18th-century unions between British-born East India Company officials and unnamed Indian women.

I decided to visit India to follow in the footsteps of these four great-grandfathers of Edward Hindwood (as the name came to be written).

One, called Matthew Leslie (c1755-1804), struck me as especially interesting, and in particular his period as the Collector of a remote and challenging upland area (in the modern state of Jharkhand) in the 1780s and 1790s.

My journey of discovery had its moments: two attempts to reach Leslieganj (a place named after Matthew Leslie) which were thwarted due to Maoist insurgency; a tense moment or two at a makeshift roadblock deep in the jungles of Jharkhand; chance discoveries blessed with serendipity; and enthusiastically prominent newspaper coverage of my quest.

I returned with less new information than I might have hoped, but with considerably greater understanding of just how difficult life became for children of Anglo-Indian mixed blood, as Georgian acceptance gave way to Victorian stigma.

And it is this sense of impropriety which presumably led to the family secret.

Despite the giveaway middle name of ‘Hind’, probably derived from ‘Hindustan’, my great-grandfather Edward seems to have been able to conceal his origins on arrival in Britain.

As far as anyone knew, he was only ever an unremarkable Surrey stockbroker — possibly even to his own wife, Kate Elizabeth Deeley (1861-1925), who he married in Lambeth in 1884.

Her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been London brewers. The first of these was Richard Deeley, and again it was a single word in a census record, and again a birthplace, which revealed the curious coincidence of his Oxfordshire origins.

The tiny hamlet of Arncott, near Bicester, was the place, and sure enough, on checking the registers of Ambrosden church, his baptism was recorded January 5, 1774, and his parents’ residence given as Arncott.

According to his will, he still owned freehold land, a cowhouse, and other premises at Arncott, and a freehold messuage (meaning a dwelling house with land and outbuildings) and two cottages at Upper Arncott in 1853.

The Deeley family had lived in Arncott for at least two previous generations, the earliest reference being at the marriage in April 1736 of Richard’s grandparents.

For some reason, although both were stated as being from Arncott, Samuel Dealy (c1713-1764) and Mary Pangbourn (c1715–1781) married at St Mary Magdalen in Oxford, as had Mary’s parents, also both residing at Arncott at the time, in December 1719.

The church records show that the distinctively named Pangbourne (spellings inevitably vary) family were present in Arncott as early as early as 1660, and still earlier, back into the 16th century, at nearby Charlton-on-Otmoor.

Yet the name of Deeley in the Bicester/Launton/Merton area is of an even greater identifiable antiquity. The earliest recorded occurrence in Launton was in 1474, but there seems little doubt that the family’s presence in the area goes back to the all-powerful first Norman rulers of the county, the d’Oilly family.

This descent cannot be proved, generation by generation, but the evidence is endorsed by 19th-century historians aplenty. And the idea that the Arncott Deeleys are scions of the Oxford d’Oillys is given particular credence by two main considerations.

The first is that the Domesday Book (1086) attributes to Robert d’Oilly, the first constable or governor of Oxford Castle, the two manors of Bicester and a stake in rather less valuable land at Arncott.

Secondly, the d’Oilly family actually came from the Norman town of Ouilly-le-Vicomte. The original inclusion of the ‘u’ in the name makes d’Ouilly rather closer in pronunciation to Deeley.

As early as the 13th century, there was a strong feeling in England against the marriages of needy but well-connected Normans to English heiresses, and this may have hastened the change, to disguise the Norman derivation.

Over the centuries, many other corruptions have also occurred, so that anyone with names such as Dolley, Dailey, or Doyle — to name but three — are also likely to be so descended.

So it is thought-provoking to learn that when I had mentioned the second Robert d’Oilly (died c.1150) in my 2005 book, Stories of Oxford Castle, I had unwittingly made reference to a probable ancestor; and likewise, when I had related in illustrated talks the tale of the founding of Osney Abbey in 1129, at the inspiration of Editha, Robert’s English wife.

It is also a little odd that chance should dictate that the nearest parish church to the narrowboat which by sheer chance has been my home in Oxford for nearly two decades should be one where those 18th-century Pangbourne and Deeley ancestors pledged their troths.

Yet there is another Oxford coincidence too. At the same time that Richard Deeley was growing up in Arncott prior to his move to London, Matthew Leslie was serving the East India Company in various parts of Bengal until his death in 1804.

An uncle, Colonel Matthew Leslie (?-1778), who also served in India, left his entire estate to his namesake nephew. Only one actual property was involved, according to his will of 1768: ‘all my real estates with the appurtenances ... in the Parish of St Thomas alias St Nicholas in the suburbs of the city of Oxford . . . which I purchased of Mr Lucas’.

At that time St Thomas’s parish encompassed that part of Oxford in which my boat is moored, and because of its intimate association with the boating families of Oxford, and my own fascination with this aspect of Oxford’s local history, this is the Oxford parish which has more meaning for me than any other.

Nonetheless, why the Colonel bought property here, when his documented life had been spent in Ireland, Canada, and India, is a mystery.

However, it may be of passing interest to note that Colonel Matthew Leslie unwittingly had a hand in introducing to Britain some features which affect each and every one of us even today.

Serving under him in Bengal in 1769 and 1770 was an Indian boy called Dean Mahomet (1759-1851). In 1784 Mahomet made his way to Cork, where he became the first Indian to publish a book written in English. Later, this remarkable individual opened Britain’s first genuine Indian restaurant, and he was also responsible for introducing to Britain the concept of shampoo.

It can surely be no coincidence that Mahomet’s point of entry into Britain was his commanding officer’s hometown of Cork, where the Leslie family were amongst its most prominent citizens. So prominent indeed that the lineage is traceable in Burke’s Landed Gentry to the 12th-century first Scottish Laird of Leslie, to Scottish royalty, and even, unlikely though it may seem, back to the Hungarian nobility of the Dark Ages!

So what a revelation that one word ‘Calcutta’ has been. We may still know little more about Edward Hind Wood himself — we have no letters, no memoirs, nor even a photo or date of death, so he still remains a largely ill-defined Surrey stockbroker — yet that one word in a census return has revealed a rich and influential vein of Indian ancestry, an Indian town forever associated with an ancestral name, several Indian ‘cousins’ in the UK and Australia, a totally unsuspected Irish ancestry, a Scottish lineage of well-defined antiquity, and an equally ancient Oxfordshire genealogy.

Oh, and it has also enabled my mother to understand, in her 92nd year, why her parents chose for her a middle name of ‘Leslie’!

Mark Davies is a freelance writer, publisher, historian, speaker, and walking-guide specialising in non-University Oxford. Visit the website: www.oxfordwaterwalks.co.uk