Leave it to me to replace one addiction with another.

Shortly after I took a break from Facebook, I received an offer for two free weeks of Ancestry.com.

Hahaha. Haha. Ha. Ha.

Well a week later, here I am. I’ve traced both sides of my family (parentage only…the whole tree will take me probably the rest of my life) as far as I can go. But wow, the places I went…

Our two family names are Pierce (father) and Martin (mother). Here’s what I found.

I mapped my paternal heritage back to circa 1770, when my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Seth John Pierce, came over from Ireland and fought in the Revolutionary War, living out his life afterwards in Georgia. Fortunately, Seth’s wife, Millie Askew, had a much longer published ancestry, almost exclusively from England. William Askew is my 11th great grandfather.

On the Martin side, we go waaay back. As luck would have it, Scottish and Irish aristocracy kept careful birth and death records, and I hit the jackpot all the way back to the 15th century. Fascinating.

I find myself wondering what they looked like, how they lived, what their personalities were. They obviously had station and land. Why was this not passed down to me? I ask you. I ask Grandpa Martin, and the 14 Grandpa Martins who came before him.

As I read the forums and comments on the Ancestry site, I see that many families have an official genealogist/archivist. I am far from that, but now that I’ve got us mapped with parent sets, I’m looking forward to branching out on the tree and seeing who else we might be tied up with.

Terrific. Another obsession to get up at 4:30 a.m. to satisfy. Psh.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

Lady Rat of Fink