I began researching my family tree several years ago after visiting Blist Hill Museum  near Telford. The Victorian shops houses and school really captured my imagination and  I realised that the sights and sounds I experienced would have been familiar to my  grandparents. I decided there and then to seek out my ancestors. Sadly there were few  people to ask as I had left it too late to question my grandparents and even my father  had recently passed away. Those aunts and uncles that were around gave me snippets of  information to get me going. Thankfully my parents had boxes of old family photos and  I have gathered more as I connected to others in the family who started to take an  interest into what I was doing. I have spent many many hours travelling to the Family  Records Office in London ploughing through heavy bulky tomes of birth, marriage and  death records. Thankfully our local library now has the complete collection on micro- fisch so those train journeys are now a thing of the past. When Ancestry.com provided  the complete census' and birth marriage and death records on line. I found myself  glued to the computer trying to discover more and more about my family. I suppose it  has become an addiction of sorts but it has been, and still is, a fascinating journey.  I feel that I have come to know those who have gone before me in a way I never  expected. I have discovered they mostly endured extreme poverty and hardship and  suffered the terrible loss of infants to diseases we now treat successfully with  modern medicine. Although I must have spent many hundreds of pounds on train fares and  paying for birth marriage and death certificates I don't resent a penny of it. The  whole project has been a labour of love and I am so glad that I visited that museum in  the Black Country all those years ago. I rather think that I missed my calling though.  I think I would have been a very tenacious detective.