Thoughts on family history

My lovely grandmother Hattie 1900-1975

I don't know whether any of you are researching your family history but if you are you will know how time consuming it can be.  I have spent hours on the internet searching for long lost relatives and made contact with a few people I didn't know about!  I feel quite close to these long dead ancestors, especially when something like the death of of a 19 year old in France during World War II crops up.  This young man was a cousin of my grandmother's and I have seen his name on the memorial at the place he lived and have found records of the days leading up to his death.  I didn't know about him...my grandmother never mentioned him as far as I can remember, yet I felt very tearful when all this came to light.

Some relatives on two sides of my family emigrated from Suffolk and Norfolk to Australia and one to Canada.  It's strange but I see all these ancestors through rather rose tinted glasses! I don't know why because I have't a clue about their lives other than what I can glean from census records and the like, and I know my great grandfather was very hard on my grandmother and her sister when they were growing up (they were left without a mother when my grandmother was just five years old and their father brought them up alone).  There were aunts living nearby and I'm sure they did their bit, but my grandmother left home at 14 to go into service in London where eventually she met and married my granddad (according to my brother they met in a chip shop!).

I love learning about my family and have visited the locations where they were born, grew up, married and died; took pictures of houses they lived in and looked into the local history, searched parish records and the like.

There are still relatives I can't find what happened to and those who knew are now dead.  I hope one day to write it all down for my kids (who this bores at the moment but one day they might want to know). Thing is when I'm gone there will be no one left who will remember.

Should there be any readers of my blog from Canada I could do with help tracing that branch that went there.  I have found details of the marriage and the deaths but I haven't a clue whether there were  any children.  I cannot find later census records later than about 1901 or 1910.