My interest in my ancestry has always been at a background level, but recently jumped with my interest in kilts and discovery of this board and its many discussions. I wanted to know what tartans I was "allowed" to wear, which led to asking my mother for any information she had about family history.

From the first Family Tree we had to make in elementary school, I remember being told that I had some ancestors from Scotland on my father's side. Today I got a package from my parents with all the genealogy information that anyone's been able to dig up on either side, along with a note. This note informed me that there was no Scottish blood in sight and my grandmother had apparently used the term to mean thrifty (I have no idea what context this would be - describing herself when she was acting in a thrifty manner?).

On the other hand, in creating a new, comprehensive, digital family tree from all this information, I discovered a number of ancestors from Ireland!

Now it's late and I haven't even taken the next step of finding tartans that are associated with these families, if any exist. Still have some time before I can get more kilts, but that's just more time to figure out what I want, right?