I started collecting photos of my relatives and asked for birth dates and names. And then things got too difficult and I stopped.
Recently my brother sent me a whole heap of photos he collected from my cousin when he visited Portugal a year or so ago. I had no idea he collected the photos and only now did he have a look through them to send.
There is heaps of information right there. I know my grandmother's father's parents name. I know that my grandmother was named after her mother, and like her, died too soon. I never met my grandmother from my dad's side, so seeing photos of her is great.
She was so beautiful.
Now I am obsessed to know everything that I can about everyone. I have a whole lot of photos, some I have no idea who they are. I visited my mother and went through the photos with her to see if she recognised anyone. She then let me know some of the family stories.
A very interesting story is one from my dad's side. About my grandfather's sister and my grandmother's sister. They both got impregnated by the same man at the same time. He then married my grandmother's sister because she was the youngest, and abandoned my grandfather's sister with a child. He then had more children with my grandmother's sister. This means that my grandfather's niece and my grandmother's nieces and nephew are half siblings. Here I was thinking that these people were only related by marriage. Nope, there is the same blood running through there on both sides!
Below I created a diagram in order to figure it out visually. I had to be a little bit creative with the family tree structure...
Then I asked my mother about one of her cousins. I asked who his mother was. I was confused because I knew that my great grandmother only had one surviving child, which was my grandmother (mother's side). I knew she had half siblings as her father moved on to another two women, so I was wondering if this particular cousin of my mother's came from one of those half siblings of my grandmother. Nope, it is more complicated than that. I had to go back to my great great grandmother. She had two children with a man, and then another child with another. Her first man also changed partners and had a daughter. That daughter of his then had another daughter and that person is the mother of my mother's cousin.
With all this in mind, drawing up a family tree will be a bit of a nightmare if I want to include everyone I know!
However this information journey is pretty cool. Just recently found out that my mother was present at my grandparent's wedding. They got married after having four children. I thought these kind of things only happened in the most recent generations. Guess not!
