Our blog is changing into one of genealogy, ancestry, family history. It began with a focus on our aid work in Kathmandu, morphed into a personal travels blog, then into one related to our general interest in wine. Sometimes there would be a post about philosophy and the occasional political rant. Our goal was never to strive for more and more followers, nor was it to collect like like likes from passers by. Originally it was a store of our efforts and research to develop Nepal’s primary education system to update the 1000 or so professional connections we had on LinkedIn, then it was a means to keep friends and family aware of and share in our travels around America, Asia, and Europe. An increasing number of followers was a by-product, NOT a primary achievement and regular readers will know that I have occasionally ranted about the lack of engagement from our hundreds of followers with the regulars being countable on the fingers of one hand!

So, it has become clearer by the day that articles we create merely float off into the ether, whatever we write about, be it wine, politics, literature, philosophy, history ….. and therefore writing them has become a millstone rather than a pleasure dome. I suppose it’s akin to talking to oneself and as a psychologist I’m well aware of the downsides of such behaviour. There’s only one solution!

I’m currently writing a book, it’s about Nepal, not a guidebook, but a year of personal experiences covering culture, family, religion, mountaineering, corruption, all with anecdotes and images ….. I intend to try and publish it on Amazon digitally, it’ll be free as I have no need to earn money from it.

I’m also researching my family tree and have gone back ELEVEN generations to Queen Elizabeth I time in the 16th Century with most of my maternal family being tin and copper miners from Cornwall. Many migrated to America during the Gold Rush, and most were clearly affected by the Poor Law which may account for one entry where it appears that a brother and sister married! But I need further confirmation. My father’s side of the family is a mystery, I cannot seem to get beyond his date of birth, date of death, and the fact that he was a Coldstream Guardsman. But I will unravel this genealogy mystery eventually without having lived in Baker Street …… Sherlock!

Our blog will remain open, though new posts will be made only about the Ancestry search; I realise that they will mostly be only of interest to family and others researching similar lines of ancestry and we intend to make those posts private and only accessible to those we give a password. We are already finding and linking with such people and groups …… a definite common interest with plenty of room for engagement.

We will shortly be visiting Cornwall for a week and hope to see some of the places where my ancestors lived, worked and died, especially the old tin mines. I’ve also sent off a sample of my saliva for DNA testing to find out as much as I can about my “original home”, results back in a month or so, and who knows …. I may be of Asian origin like my wife, but I strongly suspect more Celtic blood than anything else.

To summarise, future posts will be about ancestry searches and family history, some will be general posts on process and history, whereas some will be specific posts on family. Most will be private.

Categories: Ancestry, Genealogy

Tags: ancestors, Ancestry, Cornwall, Devon, dna, dnatesting, ethnic, Family, familyhistory, familytree, Genealogy, History, mining, research, roots, tin, tinmining, tree