Quite some years ago, I was mooching about in WH Smiths and with nothing better to do, I bought some family tree software that was sitting on the shelves.

And so started a quest to see how far I could go with tracing my ancestry.

I started questioning family members and a couple of times was told “Oh, you need to speak to  your Aunt So and so, she’s being doing that for years” or “Have a word with Cousin Thingy, he has a lot of that stuff already”.

And so I spoke with Aunt So and so and Cousin Thingy and managed to acquire a wealth of data… not all of which matched up.

The further back you go, the more obscure the data becomes.

But, the furthest I have managed to get back to, is my Great-Great-Great Grandfather on my dad’s side: Samuel. He was married to Susannah and he died in 1810, three years after my Great-Great Grandfather, Charles, was born.

I’m sure that with some concerted effort and associated costs I could go back further, and maybe I will, someday. But for now, I am happy with what I have managed to find.

Nowadays, my Family Tree software only gets fired up when I need to amend it, because someone has been born or has died.

Or sometimes before a big family event, like a wedding or funeral (back in the days when we had big family events), I would run through it to remind me as to who is who… because I am rubbish at remembering names.

And this week, I fired it up, following a discussion on our family What Is App group, as to who are the oldest and youngest cousins in our particular generation – ie, the children of my father and his siblings.

Turns out, there are 21 of us (2 deceased) and both the eldest and the youngest are living in the antipodes.

No need for for me to try and remember their names, then.  🙂