My sister-in-law encouraged me ....

My husband's sister told me about their great-great grandfather who was an accordion maker in London in the 1800s, that his daughter had run away with one of their employees and that eventually they were brought back and were forced to marry! She showed me an article about George Smith Jones and his factory that she'd obtained on the internet and... voila! I was hooked!

I very soon signed up to Ancestry and started our own family tree and was amazed to be able to read about family members on the census returns from so many years ago... amazing... there were my paternal great grandparents born mid-1800s ... living in Shrewsbury, my maternal great-grandparents born somewhat later living in Lancashire!! This was manna from heaven!

Seeing names come and go... oh no, some son or daughter had died! Oh yes, some son or daughter was now married! And so the tree grew like Topsy. It was like a drug and I'm still addicted.

That addiction isn't going to go away, either, because with new resources on line and links made with others via other researchers or Lost Cousins... my family is becoming larger and more interesting to me as time goes by.

Some lines go back to the 1500s... some only until the mid-1800s... the old 'brick walls'... but it's a constant challenge to find more depth and breadth... wonderful!