This is my first time attempting 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks. I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle the first one. I decided to start with how I got started with my family history journey.

I was first bitten by the genealogy bug in high school. We were given a project where we had to construct our own family trees. Unsure how I was going to complete this project, my parents suggested I ask my grandparents. So I badgered both sets of grandparents for names, dates of birth, marriage and death. I wanted as many names and dates they could remember, this included names of great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, aunts and uncles.

I ended up with a lot of scraps of paper with names and dates. They all helped to bring together my tree. I wrote out the family trees for both sides of my family on A4 pieces of paper sellotaped together, not my finest work.

Since then I have continued adding to my tree, collecting stories, proving some to be true and disproving others.

Throughout this challenge, I aim to introduce you to some interesting characters in my family tree. I will try not to bore you too much!