I have been interested for a while now in finding out about my Scottish roots. I knew that my paternal grandparents came from Scotland and that some of my family ancestors on my maternal side also had Scottish connections but I was always put off by the likeliehood of spending a lot of time and effort searching and finding no information on my ancestors especially as I have quite a common surname.

After watching some of these programs on the television about celebrities tracing their family trees I decided to search online and used some of the ideas on http://scottishfamilyhistory.com to make a start.

Firstly I spoke to my living relations to find out what information they knew about our Scottish family history and then using the information they gave me I used the Scotlandspeople website to look up the birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates and census information on my ancestors from Scotland.

Finding the information and tracing my Scottish roots has so far been much easier than I imagined and so far I have managed to trace my paternal side back to the mid 1800’s. I never knew that genealogy could be so addictive and interesting and my intention now is to see if I can trace them back to the 1700’s and possibly beyond during the course of this year.

Most of the information I have found to date has been achieved simply using my computer from home however it would be great to be able to visit Scotland and to walk in my ancestors footsteps and to get a real feel for what their lives were like.