ancestry.com is valued at $4.7 billion.
It seems that a whole lot of people want to know where they come from.
25 million subscribers.
My upbringing left me with no familial feelings and as such I have no interest in my long ago past.
Yes Im interested in my family History , and have gone back to middle 1700s , im interested in the Social History , How they lived ,jobs they had ,countries they came from .And News worthy stories , Ages they lived to , those that didnt make it to adulthood .
Ive found out so much .
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So you have a subscription with Ancestry?
not at the moment it ran out in December , but I can still get result, Matches to my DNA and view them
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I am interested although I haven’t personally used any of the ancestry pay websites.
One of my ancestors, Thomas Bowyer was a Thames Waterman. He was 5ft3 with a swarthy complexion and dark hair. Born 1766 - 1813, average life expectancy wasn’t so great in those days. He lived in Southwark and became a Sunday Ferryman in 1802 which excused him service in The Royal Navy.
The Thames would have been filthy in those days, virtually an open sewer!
I sometimes think about him when I’m on The Thames or exploring the foreshore.
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This information was passed down through family?
Yes, at least partially. A relative who passed away about twenty years ago was fairly affluent. He travelled to Canada to research our ancestry for example. He did his homework thouraghly and visited The Company of Water men And Lightermen in The City of London to consult their records. He may well have used one of the very early ancestry sites, I shall never know.
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All this tracing ancestry, its hard to Adam & Eve it 
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Yes I’m interested.
Maternal . French Huguenot silk weavers migrated to England 17c .
Paternal Irish .
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Did your Huguenot ancestors set up shop in the east end of London as many of them did?
I believe they favoured attic lodgings as the skylights offered them daylight which would have been essential in their skilled work.
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Yes East End of London
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Yes, I am. I was the first in my family to take an interest in our ancestry and wrote it all up in my memories. I mainly used family documents and the internet but didn’t want to pay just for a name from old church records. I managed to get as far back as the mid-19th century. My oldest ancestors were weavers, pub-owners, carriage drivers, locksmiths. I was kind of moved when I actually saw the names of the family of my grandfather’s brother on the passenger-list of a ship leaving for America and then again on a census for Illinois with their names already anglicised. Sadly, I couldn’t show that to my mother nor what I had found out about her brother.
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I was surprised by how much information you have access to once you join the premium membership. Great for snooping on who married, who had children and who died.
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I’m going to check that out Annie, I think these sites must have become far more useful and comprehensive since I last took a look.
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I belong to the Family Search one, it’s owned by the Mormons .
They have the biggest register in the world reportedly.
I’ve been able to get back to 1500s.
It’s FREE!
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I’m interested yes but one of my sisters is really into it. She sent me a link into the family tree so I can look at things if/when I want. We are all Highlanders back through the ages, some fought at the dreadful Battle of Culloden with the Jacobites , On 16 April 1746.
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I could be tempted to have a delve into my families history, but I expect they are all a bunch of rouges and pirates…
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Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!
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No, not interested. It’s the here and now that matters (exception is researching ancestry for medical reasons if they would even have that information). I would rather focus on today, how to live my life better etc. than dig into musty records of people I never knew.
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I agree with you completely, Heatherbelle. My mother wanted to look into a couple of generations of her side of the family a number of years ago, so I helped her with that until she found what she wanted. We both dropped the matter after that. I felt no connection to any of the family, personally, and I fail to see how a few names and dates in a Census was supposed to be so exciting or even useful. I was, and still am, completely disinterested in genealogy. .
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