Living in Scotland as I do, there is one ancestor who stays with me, in the sense of it's hard to get away from him. I am one of the thousands upon thousands of people descended from Robert I, King of Scotland, otherwise known as Robert the Bruce! Statue of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland at Stirling Castle I tend to take this lightheartedly. He is my 21 x great grandfather. Who know how many illegitimacies there can have been on the long descent from him to me, but following a paper trail I believe I can claim him, though claiming descendancy from royalty was not something I had intended to find myself doing. My immediate ancestry is very working class - miners, labourers, metalworkers, farmers etc. What I have noticed in my research is that is is usually a daughter of a church minister who can act as a 'gateway' ancestor to the gentry and nobility, as many a minister's daughter was married to the younger sons of land owning gentry. It was only when I followed my...
My ancestors, their stories and my genealogical journey