I became interested in the family tree in the 1980's before the internet and would travel down to New Register House in Edinburgh to do my research great atmosphere but slow and quite expensive. There were still a few older family members around but the ones with more knowledge of the family history had died before my interest in family history was awakened. 0ne of the interesting facts was the my great grandfathers wife had died and he remarried and went off to Australia probably around the 1870's leaving his children in the care of his parents. This was a blank for many years till the internet revealed he had in fact gone to New Zealand, the south end of the south island which appeared to have been populated by the Scots. While we think of people in the 19th century as not travelling much but some travelled extensively and I discovered a number of relatives on my mothers side emigrated there. His second wife and her two children(she was a single mother which must have been difficult) stayed in South Island. Also who were the children's father or fathers. Both children were born in Oxfordshire so she must have travelled from Forfarshire to give birth. I would guess that my great grandfather was not particularly successful in New Zealand and the family line fades. He had no official children with his second wife. This stimulated my interest in my relatives remaining in Scotland particularly Fife and what is now Angus. Scotland. But there are interesting facts some regarded as scandalous at the time and not talked about and some very sad but all interesting.
