Motivation for research?

[Wharfrat]

When I was a child, we had a copy of Burkes Landed Gentry, which has my parents in it, and that always fascinated me.  We're neither landed nor gentry now though but we did sometimes visit people in large houses...
The invention of genealogy software and the internet kicked me into finding out about it all...

[Murrell]

My motivation is that I'm nosey

[Michelle79]

I've been researching my mums side of the family for just over 4 years now and every small piece of information I find makes me feel like I'm understanding where my family came from more and more. 

I know it may sound a little silly but I only started researching to feel closer to my mum after she died, I'm so glad that I did as what I've already found it amazing, I do wish I'd started before she passed away so i could share what I've found but thankfully my dad likes to hear about my discoveries and also the remaining aunts (mums sisters) I have left.

I spent 2 months just trying to track down my great granfathers birth, my aunt had been wondering about it for years and even tried to locate it herself.  When I finally put the pieces of the puzzle together and was able to give her a copy of the birth certificate it was amazing.  I still have plenty of lose ends to tie up which is going to keep me busy for many years to come.  I'm kinda glad though as if I didn't I'd have to find another hobby. 

Michelle

[stonechat]

The kick starter was two television programs
First one had Gordon Honeycombe the newsreader looking into his own family

I did a bit at this time
Family went over to a church where an ancestor was curate
We found his gravestone
I got my  granmother's file/scrapbook

Both grandmothers were still around

But without the internet progress was too slow

Then Who do you think you are came on

Within a couple of months I made contact with a cousin I have never met

Psychologically I too am a crossword solver and like uncovering mysteries
I hated history at school but I can relate to family history.

Always thinking when I can get another archive visit in , guess I am a bit of an obsessive!

[kevinf2349]

In my case it was really prompted with a desire to learn more about my dad's side of the family. My mother's side was pretty well present throughout my childhood. Lots of aunties and uncles etc. Lots of intrigue and 'scandal'. But my father's side was pretty much an unknown. My paternal grandfather died when my father was only 6 and the family story was that he (my grandad) was ..."a wrong 'un"  So I set out to find out more. My dad was very little help as he didn't even know his mother's birth day! So you can bet he didn't know his father's! Anyway that got me started and before my dad passed away I not only told my father about his mother and her family back to 1803 but did the same for his father too.

I also discovered that his father was a decorated Great war soldier who was fighting on the front in France with the DLI before being medicially discharged. There is no telling what that poor man had to witness and what he went through. I actually feel pride rather than shame in "the wrong 'un" and belive that the PTSD he must have gone through was the real issue. No wonder he did time in the asylum and ended up taking his own life. I think  I brought a whole new slant on him for my dad before he died.....and that fills me with a great deal of satisfaction.

Oh and I was warned by a couple of different family members to not dig too deep as there were a lot of skeletons in the tangled roots....boy were they right, but mostly it involved shotgun weddings and 'mystery fathers'...nothing too shocking.

Kevin

[kateblogs]

I started because my mum wanted to know more about her great grandmother's family. I didn't get too far with that at the time - the great grandmother was Irish but living in Liverpool, as a beginner I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew - so I put that to one side for a while.

However, that research had piqued my curiosity, and I decided to find out about my paternal grandfather's family mostly because I didn't know much about them at all. And I'm glad I did! For a beginner they were much easier to research - they were the kind of people who left a long paper trail - and were also quite interesting. Not necessarily for anything notable, just discovering I had a great, great grandfather from Edinburgh was a  thrill, I had no idea I had any Scots heritage at all.

Now, seven years later I've done research into the family trees of all four grandparents, although of course this is ongoing  I've always loved history and it's fascinating to be able to see where my family fit into it. I also love a good mystery, and I think we all know that research can often answer one question, but then raise half a dozen more.

[coombs]

Sometimes finding out things gives you more motivation to research.

I found out by chance that I am a distant relation to Patsy Kensit. Her ancestor was Mary Cracknell born in 1978 in Finchingfield, Essex. Her grandfather Alexander Cracknell born 1727 was the son of William Cracknell and Martha Sparks and Martha Sparks was the sister of my ancestor Samuel Sparks.