Genealogy research by Alan Morris.

Genealogy is also known as family history & is the study of families & the tracing of their lineages & history. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, & other records to obtain information about a family & to demonstrate kinship & pedigrees of its members. The results are often displayed in charts or written as narratives.

The pursuit of family history & origins tends to be shaped by several motives, including the desire to carve out a place for one's family in the larger historical picture, a sense of responsibility to preserve the past for future generations, & a sense of self-satisfaction in accurate storytelling.

My interest in my Family Tree.

My interest in Genealogy & my family tree started when I was young with the tales my dad told me about his family. I really enjoyed going to Wales & meeting family that I had never met before & listened to stories & tales of relatives both past & present. My interest was further ignited after we discovered that my grandfather on my maternal line was in fact from an Italian family, but had hidden this fact from his wife & children until he was old & in failing health.

It amazes me how addictive genealogy is & I quite often find myself spending hours & sometimes days glued to my research searching out new relatives. I have been lucky enough to discover cousins living in many different countries around the world & thanks to having my DNA tested have been able to prove links to cousins that paper records could not prove.

I was born in London in England but have grandparents of English, Welsh & Italian heritage. Therefore the sporting teams I follow are England for football, Wales for rugby & Italy when either of the others isn't playing. This is great in international tournaments as I can normally support a team in all of the big sporting events.

Surnames I am interested in tracing in my family tree.

I will trace my tree sideways as well as back as I find it interesting to discover where members of my family tree have lived & settled. These are the surnames of my parents & great grandparents going back to my 3rd great grandparents. I have gone back further than this on some lines & will add to it in the future. I intend to add information about each surname in this list soon, describing what the surname means or where it may have come from.

Please let me know if you have any information that you think I might be interested in.