Product Overview
The joys of genealogy: An introduction. A pirate on your family tree? A duke or an earl? It's not likely nor is it likely that you will prove yourself heir to a fortune or gain an impressive coat of arms. The unknown-to-you ancestors that you discover when you become an amateur genealogist are almost certain to be farmers, small businessmen or craftsmen who lived and died in relative obscurity, either in the eastern U.S. or, if you go back further, in Europe. That's because most of the men and women who settled this continent were ordinary hard-working people, poor in purse but well endowed with energy and ambition. (Few pirates settled down to produce sons and daughters; few dukes and earls left the comforts of their ancestral estates to establish new homes in the American wilderness.) Why bother, then, to find out who those ancestors were? You will understand, once you begin family-tree-climbing.
