Going back to my roots

I've been delving into the world of geneology this week, sparked off by an email from a 2nd cousin or something or other. I listed my family tree on http://www.genesreunited.co.uk, a family tree site which was set-up after the success of the infamous http://friendsreunited.co.uk. aside - [i still kick myself that in the early days of the internet I had started a site that should have given me the idea of friendsreunited - 3 years before they even started. I could have retired by now - the rich buggers]

So anyway, 3 years later and i have had almost 20 responses to my tree; all not matches. But 2 days ago a relative who had perfect matches (his granfather being my grandfather's brother) emails me and ke-bang. It works. So i relighted the fire of interest and contacted my dad, brother (who has researched it more than me). None of my family knew of this person's existance , even though his mother lives in my home town. But there again my grandad was one of 15 children. My Greatgrandfather had obviously not heard of the concept of conreceptives!.

So after a phonecall to my brother who has been beavering away very secretively on our family history, he tells me he can send me all he know about our family in a '.gedcom file'. How convenient that you can package almost 200 years of history up in a file extension. And after downloading a family tree software from http://www.rootsmagic.com/ I had the fruits of his labour in front of me.

The shocking part was, looking at a 'pedigree view' as they call it you can see in almost an FA Cup style table where your blood comes from. Obviously I knew my mum and dad, but most shocking i didn't know the names of my Mother's parents, nor their parents. My 'bro' had managed to find all 8 of my great-grandparents of whom i knew the name of 2. And 11 of my great-great-grandparents of whom i knew 2 also.

So what now ........ Is this something i want to pursue. Yes definitely, especially on my mother's side of which I knew little. Apparently their was Scottish blood there 3 generations back and that can't be bad for those pissed conversations with Scots in bars. "Hey laddie don't call me an english twat!, I'm half Scottish me!"

So now i have to update my tree on genes-reunited and hope that more relatives come to the fore. Already 2 in one week, I'm sure i will soon find I'm related to the Queen or Les Dawson or maybe even someone special like Sean Connery.

So here I am the produce of the "Wades", "Plummers", "Ludleys","Dawsons","Patersons","Campbells","Bryans" and the "Langhams". Just who do I think I am?.