When I started researching my family tree I first looked at how others research their families and the web sites available. The first group that hit me right in the face was those looking for legendary ancestors. I knew from talking with my parents there was little chance of any aristocrats in either side of my family, they were for generations poor struggling people from Ireland, Scotland, England and on my wife's side Germany, which meant that information about them would be harder to find, but their life stories should still be told. Some others just played the numbers game just a long list of names with not too many facts about how they lived. So I decided to try to find out as much as I can about each generation to best reconstruct their story with as little guessing thrown in as possible.
My wife and I did a DNA test through ancestry.com to see what that would tell us and it confirmed what I already thought that our family came out of Africa some forty thousand years ago around the Black Sea and down the Danube River valley. Some becoming the Celtic peoples others the Germanic peoples of Europe. Even if you think you know the answer it is good to confirm it as much as possible. I have a outline of where we came from, what I and hopefully future generations have to do is fill in the blanks.
