The Family

My Grandad passed away in 2004 and shortly afterwards I began to get really interested in my family tree. The whole mystery of where we all come from and what sort of life our family led in the past fascinates me.

I have spent a great deal of time here researching my familys past. The actual records building is amazing!! On my first trip I was in the atrium, looking up at floors and floors of records, archived for the likes of me to search through located in a large, round, glass-domed room.

I hadn't really got much of a clue as to what I was doing so I started with ME! It is very interesting to see the amount of information that you can dig up about yourself from birth, marriage and death certificates and all of the previous census documents.

The initial information wasn't great! All of the family records showed that family members tended to die young. Jeezo!! That is until I came across my Great, Great Grandad who was almost 100 when he died.

It got me to wondering ..... was there money in the family? hahahaha Well, money is important! ... especially when you don't have it :o)

Well I was to be disappointed in one hand and proud in the other. No money, well, not any left over the years anyways. My folks on my fathers side were all hardworking land people. Crofters, farmers, forestry workers, stone masons etc etc. The family on my mums side had much of the same really. No money but they were all grafters - who didn't believe in small families!!!!! (13 children one of them had!!)

One disturbing fact reared its head. Why was my dads family surname on my mums family side? I know I have always thought I was Royalty in a previous life; was this the first sign ... inbreeding amongst the family 3 generations ago? hahahahaha

Thankfully in my searches I have found no link to the two families!

So far I have managed to go back to the 1700's on both my dad's side and mum's side of the family but need to go one more generation to see if the story about fighting with Bonnie Prince Charlie and being gifted land is true. I have written documentation that the Clan that my family were part of did fight with him, but I need to see if any of my actual ancestors did. That is my next quest!

I love genealogy so much that friends have asked me to do some research on their behalf. It did cause a wee bit of friction and embarrassement when I had to explain that their father WAS NOT who they thought it was and that their mother had actually been playing away :o) oops ... I had a lot of soal searching before I approached that subject! Luckily for me they did have a little clue that this was the case. I managed to track down the real father to the Canadian Airforce where he is/was an officer.