Even as a child I think I was interested, drawing trees with branches and putting names on them. My mother was very forthcoming about the ancestors but Dad wasn’t too interested. He didn’t even tell my Mum much really.
Mum is now 98 and living in Colne, Lancashire, England and we’ve talked about the family - who’s who and who married who. She mostly wanted to know where her father was born. She remembered something about St Albans, Suffolk or Bury St Edmunds Hertfordshire, but didn’t know for sure. So when I got an email with a trial membership to Ancestry.com I jumped in with both feet. That was November 2008 and now (end of January 2009) I have 2,000 leaves (names) on that tree. Yes, you heard right 2,000!
When you start putting family names into the search engine at Ancestry.com it looks at other people’s trees too. So several of my ancestors showed up as ancestors of other people. All of a sudden I had a huge number of relatives - not just the “coat tail” ones (the distant ones by marriage) but great uncles and aunts, and third cousins. People who’s names I’d never known before. Most stayed in England but there were some who came to the US also - to Mass. and Utah.
The search becomes an addiction - when was that person born? Is that person his wife do you think? What happened to the children that were in the census taken 10 years ago? I have spent a lot of hours doing the looking and the trial membership became a paid one. I did get a copy of Family Tree Maker 2009 for Christmas and that helps keep it all in one place.
Why did I want to post a blog of my research? I think it was so that I could write down the family connections, get a real picture of each of the families involved. Where they lived, what they did. What the connections were. So more for myself really. But anyone who might be interested is welcome to read it.