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Every family tree must begin somewhere.
The most logical place to begin this one is here — with me.

I am the Rev. Robert Dennis Foreman Rodríguez.

You might reasonably wonder why my name is so long.

I was born on 27 January 1979 at Accrington Royal Infirmary to Stephen Foreman and Maria de las Mercedes Rodríguez Díaz-Mesones.

Under Spanish naming law, a child carries two surnames — the first paternal surname of each parent. Although I was born in England, I later applied for Spanish nationality under the principle of jus sanguinis — “by blood” — recognising my maternal Spanish heritage.

Following the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union in 2016, and shaped also by a lifelong connection to Spain and the hope of one day retiring there, I formalised that inheritance. The result is that, in Spain, my legal name reflects both paternal lines: Foreman and Rodríguez.

It is, in many ways, a name that tells the story of this archive before the story even begins — English and Spanish, Northern industrial roots and Iberian lineage, held together in one life.

After completing my ministerial training, I graduated from Durham University with a B.A. (Hons) in Theology, Ministry and Mission (2:1). On 8 November 2025, I was ordained at Nazareth Unitarian Chapel in Padiham.

That chapel carries particular significance for me. My great-great-great grandfather, Eli Whitehead, helped to found and erect it in 1872. Even earlier, my great-great-great-great grandfather, Smith Whitehead, was among the followers of Joseph Cooke — a Methodist preacher expelled from the Methodist Connexion whose movement evolved into what became the Unitarian cause in that region. Nonconformity, it seems, runs in the blood as surely as surnames do.

I was later honoured to be appointed by the Merseyside District Ministry Partnership as Minister of Park Lane Chapel in Bryn, Cairo Street Chapel in Warrington, and Chester Unitarians. That appointment felt quietly providential: I succeeded the Rev. Bob Janis — one of the first Unitarians I ever met — alongside his colleague, and now mine, the Rev. Phil Waldron, when I began the Worship Studies Foundation Course at Ullet Road Church in 2020.

So this archive begins not simply with dates and documents, but with a life shaped by heritage, dissent, faith, movement, and belonging.

From here, we trace backwards — and outward.