Your Bignell family heritage

For more than a quarter century, I've been researching our Bignell family heritage, Kieran. Shortly after you were born, I created a website called Kieran's Family Tree. It's my legacy to you. On the website, you'll find a page for each one of our direct-line ancestors (father-mother-grandfather-grandmother, etc.) as well as for each of their siblings. It's a work in progress, so if you look at it today and then again in another month, you'll see that it's probably changed a little (or at least some of the entries have!).

You boast a proud Bignell family heritage, Kieran. Our family was among the first to pioneer Wisconsin in the 1850s. The ancestors of women who married into the Bignell family takes you ancestors back to the founding of this nation - our ancestors were among the first to colonize New England in the 1600s and fought in the Revolutionary War to gain independence from Britain. Our family also boasts ancestors who fought in the Civil War. One even appeared in the famous book "Caddie Woodlawn."

So far, I've been able to take our family history back to the mid 1500s - which is before Shakespeare bagan writing his famous plays.

I suppose my interest in geneology began in 1977 when an impressive miniseries, "Roots", ran on television. Like the author whose book formed the basis of that television series, I began to wonder, too, where my family came from. Answering that question is like solving a difficult puzzle. But in solving in, I began to understand who I am, for I certainly am a product of my genes as well as the environment I find myself in. Sp should it be surprising that I (we?) suffer from the same ailments, such as allergies and sinus issues, as did our ancestors? That I find attractive women who hail from the same regions as our ancestors did? That the very same fears and outrages that drove our ancestors to immigrate are exactly the same fears and outrages that bother me most today?

Along the way, I've made some friends who are third or fourth cousins and some who live across the oceans in New Zealand and England. One from England even once sent you a set of postcards showing the sites of London. You were only four at the time, and when I told you she was from England, you said, "Wow! Does she live with the Beatles?"