We had a suitcase too, plus "the black bag" which was full of treasures - old photographs, my grandmother's clocking in card from the WW1 munitions factory etc. I loved it and always knew that one day I would get to grips with my family history.
My parents started researching their trees many years ago, in the days before the internet, when they would wait for weeks for an answer to a query and all letters were hand written. They managed to travel to the Essex Records Office where they found a fair amount of information, some of which has turned out to be incorrect but which still gave them quite a bit to work on. They did the same in Nairn so began both the main lines on my father's side. My mother knew nothing except for what she had from the black bag and her own memory.
After my father died, my mother gave up researching and it was only after my own children had grown up and we joined the internet generation that I took up where they left off. I have done pretty much all that is possible online, though more and more stuff keeps being made available, which is wonderful. I can't manage to get to many of the records offices throughout the UK which hold details of very spread out ancestry but with the help of this site, Scotland's People, Talking Scots, Genes Reunited and the Upper Dales FHS and others, I have made huge progress. One of the most amazing things is that I have discovered that in spite of the fact that I always believed that I was half Scottish and half Yorkshire ( what a wonderful combination) it turns out that I also come from Surrey, Essex, Hampshire, Staffordshire, Durham and best of all Westmorland, which is where I chose to make my home, long before all this started.
I became so hooked on the whole thing that I insisted on doing my partner's family too. At the moment, I have five or six different families on the go!
Today I have an unexpected day at home because of the severe road conditions in the North West of England. The choices are - housework or genealogy, long dead grannies or the ironing? Now which do I choose?
Jen
