Who Do You Think You Are?

For those of you who are following WDYTYA on Fridays, this past week was different from the others.  Kim Cattrall was tracing her long, lost grandfather and found out he was quite the scoundral.  This is a far cry from the wonderful, wonderful lives of most of the other people researched.  I think it gives you an idea that you may not always find you are related to the Queen of England or high society, but there is an occasional horse thief or two that you should be prepared to find.  That’s what makes genealogy so interesting.  It is also something to think about ahead of time in how you are going to handle the information you find.  Would your grandmother be horrified if this got out?  Kim’s mother and aunts initially didn’t want to contact  the other family involved, but after the filming did contact them.

Watch for this week’s episode of WDYTYA on NBC.

One-Name Study Course

Today starts my Pharos course on One-Name Studies.  I have registered my Duart family name with the variants of Dewart, Doward, Dhu-Ard and Duard.  This should help me reach out to others researching the family name.  It is a fun course, from England, done entirely on computer.  I’m excited to get started and will keep you posted on the outcome, but keep an eye on my One-Name Study – Duart website.  You can reach it by clicking on the One-Name Study emblem on my front page.

On another note.  The TV program “Who Do You Think You Are?” begins again on NBC on Friday, Feb 4th at 8:00 pm.  Last year’s program was a great success and brought lots of people into genealogy.  Beware of how easy they make it look.  They had hundreds of people and research hours to bring you a 3 minute segment.  It is still pretty amazing what you can find on your family, if you just look.