My obsession with family history started in a little hamlet in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, sitting in my Granny’s living room, trying to work out how I was connected to what felt like hundreds of people I’d just met at a wedding of one what of Dad’s cousins.  I think I was about 11 or 12.

I remember feeling completely overwhelmed. There were so many of them! Many of them in highland dress – kilts, sgian dubhs, sporrans. There was fairly free flowing whisky and flat out ceilidh music. Very Scottish! Aunties, uncles, cousins. Some direct and lots of varying removedness! But all so interested to meet ‘wee Maxie’s wee bairns.’

The cousin was one of the son’s of one of my Granny’s siblings. She was the eldest of 10 and my Dad, wee Maxie, was the eldest of five and was also quite close in age to my Granny’s youngest siblings so they were more like siblings than aunts and uncles. Dad has something like 40 cousins on that side alone.

I remember stepping outside the hotel for air with my Mum and brother thinking what on earth?! We were related to most of the people in that room and I had no clue who they were! It was mind blowing! Plus they all had strong Highland accents which for a little Jersey girl like me was like being in a foreign country!

And so my interest was picqued. Who were these people with funny traditions, accents, clothing, food, drink, shared history? I needed to know more! We got home that night and sat round my Granny’s table drawing up a tree. The picture below is it! (My Dad’s handwriting.) I’ve kept it as a reminder and a source of where the info came from. (Already bearing in mind that sources are important!)

That mess of lines and names, explaining what felt like hundreds of people at that wedding has now grown to some 1600 hundred people across my family names including my husband’s and dating back to the 1600s.

I didn’t really like history at school but now I can tell stories of whisky distillers, cotton weavers during the industrial revolution, governors of the Bank of England, early members of the East India company, French ancestors living at the time of the revolution and so on….my family – each person is a stitch in the tapestry of my DNA. Sounds cheesy but true!