Blog to family trees

I have always been interested in my family tree, ever since I learnt about a family tree my mother had that went back to 1500. That amazed me that I had family links going back so far in Switzerland, a country on the other side of the world. In addition my father used to tell stories about his relatives that were blown out of context, still contain bits of the truth.

When I FINALLY got my own computer about 6 years ago, the first thing I did was to start a family tree and quickly made headway. I had pottered around with the tree since I was in my teens and had added bits here and there over the years but having a computer and an online tree was a different experience. I could add and delete easily.

When I think back to what I knew then and what I know now, I cringe. I was so eager to add as many names to my tree as I could - and I did. Some parts were easy. I love the Swiss and how they record everything and familysearch.org was great in helping me add more. Facebook stalking helps me with the more recent members of the tree and I have added a lot of people who I have come into contact with over the years with family in common.

Now my tree has over 20,000 names - all in 6 years or so! I have got side tracked with some parts with people not even related to me but it's online - so I take it or people have given me their trees and I add it or there is an interesting story to it, so I add it. Sometimes people have got families mixed up so I have increased a virtually non-related line in order to help sort things out. The more I add the more I have and the more hits I get from other trees and the more I add.

Recently I have been more interested in the family story and a few months ago had some success with a branch I had been trying to sort out for a while. The satisfaction I felt from that was really amazing and I am trying to verify where I can and find more about the social history to get a more rounded viewpoint rather than a name and some dates.

I would like to add stories in where I can which I have found interesting, tricky or just plain fun.