I feel very sorry for you truly. My grandfather worked tirelessly back in the 1980's to develop his family tree back in the days before the internet and long before genealogy sites like Ancestry.com and 23 and Me. He wanted to show my brother and I all about these people who were blood relatives on both his mother and fathers side but my brother and I were not interested. My children were either very young or unborn at that stage and since he, my grandfather, really was a tyrant of a man, no one in the family had any interest in finding other possible tyrants within his bloodline. Even today when I am a month away from my 57th birthday, I STILL couldn't care less about them but I LOVE visiting cemeteries and seeing the graves of those for whom time has now stopped. But I DO think like you of having no one to pass information and genetics to when I look at the furniture in my home and even in my bedroom that come from 2 spinster sisters who were the last of their line. I helped care for them in different ways before their deaths and I cared for them deeply due to our shared love of animals great and small but especially cats. There WERE no brothers or sisters that had survived other than them and they suffered from I'll health all their lives and I don't ever remembering them saying that their mother OR their father had any siblings. So I am now the ONLY person who talks about them or calls their furniture Ethyl's this or Wyn's that, but when I depart to the great beyond the photo albums and letters that they had written to friends who are themselves dead but which I myself cannot dispose of will likely be taken to the rubbish tip and thrown away or burned and that makes me sad. We are all doomed to become dust and unless we are someone special who's name will ring down the ages like Nero or the Pharoah's of old like Rammeses the 2nd, our names will die with us. I now understand just how MUCH money and time was expended by my grandfather to find out more about his family tree. He DID find that he had a sister called Mary who died when she was 2 days old and that explains why his mother would say during each of my grandmother's pregnancies that should the child be a girl she should be called Mary, which never happened due to my grandmother only having sons, but the old biddy NEVER mentioned WHY in her long antagonistic life (like mother like son). THAT was the reason, a lost girl child. My friends father's supposed paternity ended up with him taking his mother's surname which was French, Giruard, as he always told the girls that his mother was the mistress of the Earl of Bedford, the number of which I can't recall. As an illegitimate bastard of the Earl he was probably one of many but he DID share with them some remembrances of the nursery there and the wooden rocking horse he rode on occasion. I know that the sisters, who were prolific letter writers++ did attempt to prove the veracity of the story but were, unsurprisingly, unable to verify this. Genealogy IS interesting but I'll stay away from it as there are some secret skeletons in the closet from times past that I'll keep sleeping, for now at least! Once again I am sorry that your family, the necessary and nephews don't share your enthusiasm. Perhaps one day?

I have spent years on my family tree and yes some dollars also but the family are not interested. I printed everything out and have filed each family in their own marbig folder including all documents, photos etc. On 2 sides of the direct family I have gone back to the 1400's and where my grandfather was born and all his forebears their houses are world heritage listed. Like most families there are some historical figures in there, heroes (the real heroes not sports people and such), and of course ones who travelled to Australia in the mid 1850's and forged a life for themselves and families. It is very interesting and there are always skeletons in the closet some recent and some way back when. I thoroughly enjoyed the investigation of it all and still could look into it more but after 25 years I have put it aside and maybe will take it up again one day as more and more things come on line.