A NEW HOBBY

I've found a new hobby.

Just over a week ago my eldest daughter came up to me while I was working on my computer and stated that she was interested in doing some family history research.
I had dabbled with this a couple of years ago but I couldn't find any of the information I originally had.
I knew that Ian's Dad had been working on the Winter side and after talking to him we found that he's managed to get back to the mid 1700's so far. He's sending us the info he has so we can add to our own tree.

Anyway, I got intrigued and started to do some digging again.
I started by talking to my 88 year old grandmother. She managed to fill us in on info about her parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents and aunts and uncles.
This was a great springboard and when her sister in law's daughter Jean found out what we were doing she found some birth, death and marriage certificates on Grandad's side of the family.

Ian decided to get in on this with me and for the last week we have been like a couple of detectives and it's actually been quite addictive so far!.
We started putting the family tree together on Genesreunited and we have already hooked up with a couple of other trees and made contact with some distant cousins.
We are back to the 1700's on both sides and are getting to a point now where we need to start visiting places and checking records to confirm everything. I also want to start putting faces and stories to the names and dates.

I already have one story I want to get a hold of from newspaper archives.
Apparantly my Great Grandfather was the head gardener at the Priory in Hitchin.
In 1910 when he was asked to quit his job and the tied cottage that came with it he committed suicide.
It was big news at the time.

This hobby is going to go on for a long time.