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- falcon heights, minnesota
i have to admit it, the genealogy bug has bitten me again. my nephew wanted the tree on his laptop, so i bought him the latest version of family tree maker. well, we got to looking around ancestry.com, where i have a subscription, and found that things have changed, for the better! when this started, the oldest date on an ancestor was 1551, with all the records, and family trees, and such now available, i followed one family line past the big zero. it was funny at first, 1700's, not too bad, 1600's, better, 1500's cool, 1400's whoa!, 1300's goodness, 1200's, 1100's, down to triple digits (by this time we've gone from minor nobles in france, to kings in england), and it just kept going. well, by now morbid curiosity kicked in, and i wanted to see how far this line really went. it got down to double digits, and then made the big hop across the zero. it finally ground to a halt at an ancestor who was born in 380 bc, yep, that's bc. my 84th great grandfather. needless to say, i was suspicious, and called the ancestry people. they said that the records they have are checked 6 ways from sunday, and wouldn't be published if inaccurate. i was going to attach the pdf file for this, but it's too big. in short, this line went from canada, slid over to france, scooted over to england, slipped back to the south of france, over to italy, skidded sidways to the balkans, and up into the part of poland known as galicia. one other line ran on me like that, and stopped at 50, but instead of going to england, it went a little north to scotland, and then wales. seems i'm related to a scottish poet talesen debourgogne merlin, 534-599. not only a poet, but a master druid to boot. in his biography, it is mentioned that he is either the inspiration for, or is, that merlin, with being a master druid, knowing a lot of stuff that others didn't, could have been considered a wizard. so, now you know what surprises that have been sprung upon me, and now i've been busy filling in all the other lines, in a pedigree report that is 248 pages long, and is getting bigger by the minute. i can't wait for steady, good, nice weather, and back to woodworking..... lol