For 50 years of my life I had no idea that I was anything other than English. Which County I was from interested me and remember I once asked my Father which County cricket team I should support. He didn't tell me but I knew it must be Surrey, Kent or Sussex. There was no way I wasn't the quintessential Englishman. How wrong could I be !
I started looking at my parents tree about 10 years ago when the TV programme 'Who do you think you are' began and family tree software became available. When I say "parents", I mean Mum and Dad, my parents. I always knew I was adopted but wasn't everyone ? The fact there might be other relations somewhere out there had no real interest to me. I was very happy and I was pure English.
My Dad's tree included a number of Wareham's emigrating to Australia and New Zealand. Why did they decide to leave Blighty ? It also included a Benson who walked out on his wife and children to emigrate to South Africa, to be followed by his son many years later. Just to spice up the tree, I found a distant Scotsman as well.
Until her sister emigrated to Canada, my Mum's tree was pretty much all English, although they did tend to be Northerners which is almost foreign !
It was after I started researching my birth parents that it became diverse and scarily Scottish.
My birth Mother turned out to be 50% Scottish with a hint of Irish thrown in. This was added to a few years later when I discovered my birth Father was 100% Scottish. I was a Highlander, och aye the noo !
From believing myself to be 100% English for the first 50 years of my life, I now found I was mostly Scot with an armful of Irish and only a leg of English.
As an addendum to this is the death of an important ancestor in Italy, the emigration of some Spence's to America and a tentative link to Ceylon, so you will see my trees are diverse and international. All of their stories will be told over the next 52 weeks.
I started looking at my parents tree about 10 years ago when the TV programme 'Who do you think you are' began and family tree software became available. When I say "parents", I mean Mum and Dad, my parents. I always knew I was adopted but wasn't everyone ? The fact there might be other relations somewhere out there had no real interest to me. I was very happy and I was pure English.
My Dad's tree included a number of Wareham's emigrating to Australia and New Zealand. Why did they decide to leave Blighty ? It also included a Benson who walked out on his wife and children to emigrate to South Africa, to be followed by his son many years later. Just to spice up the tree, I found a distant Scotsman as well.
Until her sister emigrated to Canada, my Mum's tree was pretty much all English, although they did tend to be Northerners which is almost foreign !
It was after I started researching my birth parents that it became diverse and scarily Scottish.
My birth Mother turned out to be 50% Scottish with a hint of Irish thrown in. This was added to a few years later when I discovered my birth Father was 100% Scottish. I was a Highlander, och aye the noo !
From believing myself to be 100% English for the first 50 years of my life, I now found I was mostly Scot with an armful of Irish and only a leg of English.
As an addendum to this is the death of an important ancestor in Italy, the emigration of some Spence's to America and a tentative link to Ceylon, so you will see my trees are diverse and international. All of their stories will be told over the next 52 weeks.
