Simeon begat Heyman begat...

I blame it all on my mother-in-law. Not the begetting business above: even she wasn't that old. But it all started with her.

Way, way back I mentioned a couple of old sketch books (you can read about them here and here and here and see examples from them here. It was the thrill of the chase that got me. I might not have caught anything that time, but, hey!, let's try again.

This time it was my mother who started things. She told me that one of my uncles (or was it one of hers? Not that it matters.) had undertaken some research which showed she, and therefore I, was descended from the captain of one of Nelson's ships at the battle of Trafalgar, albeit on the wrong side of the blanket. That was enough to get me going again. What I found was that there had indeed been a distant relative at the battle of Trafalgar. Very distant. In fact, he was my first cousin six times removed and served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Marines aboard HMS Leviathan.

By then I rather had the bit between my teeth and I started researching my family tree in some earnest. I now have over 5,000 names on my database. The problem was that I didn't know when to stop. If I found a 6 x great uncle, I had to follow down all the strands of his children and his children's children as far as I could reasonably do so. Eventually I managed to call a halt.

I have now set myself something of a challenge. It's all very well having this magnificent database full of names and dates, even other information like addresses and occupations where I have managed to trace them, but it is a trifle cumbersome and difficult to follow when trying to see how the different strands link up. It also needs rather more meat on the bones. So I have decided to write it out in narrative format together with explanations of how people lived and worked at various points along the time-line. This, of course, means doing a lot of research. I hope the internet will prove up to it - and that I will not get half-way through and decide to junk it all.