I’ve always been interested in my family history. I know my paternal grandmother has been researching the family tree for the past 15 years; I’d seen the book she’d produced when I visited, and she’d share her discoveries with me from time to time, but I never really had the time to just sit down and pore through the book when I’d visit.
That changed this Christmas. My grandmother made copies of the book and gave them out as Christmas gifts. I don’t know how my relatives felt about this, as I haven’t spoken to any of them aside from my siblings, but my brother, sister and I were all justifiably excited by this treasure trove of genealogical gold we’d received.
I registered an account with ancestry.com and began inputting the information into the site. It quickly began to give me even more invaluable data, even providing me with names of other relatives who matched up with those I’d typed in. Before long, I was making new connections and discoveries even my grandmother hadn’t made yet. But the biggest one came last night.
On my grandfather’s side, through his mother, we’d already traced the family line to the Stewarts of Scotland. If you know history (and, as a history major, I do), you’ll know that the Stewarts were a major, famous dynasty of kings. I made one extra connection beyond my grandmother’s research… And turned up a name I recognized instantly: Robert Bruce, aka Robert I, more famously known as Robert the Bruce, perhaps the single most well-known and revered of Scottish heroes. And he’s my ancestor. And I can prove it.
I was stunned. Speechless. And I have to wonder… What other secrets does my family tree hold, just waiting to be discovered?
Note: The image of a hand drawing a family tree is from the page How to Draw a Family Tree on wikiHow, released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Non-Commercial Share-Alike Attribution (BY NC SA) license.