Over at Uncle John's farmhouse, a man told a story he'd heard about somebody in the county. Seems he'd gone off to fight in the War Between the States (1860s), and when he came home, his wife had thought he was dead and married another man. Apparently, so the story went, the two husbands sat down for a confab in the parlour. Afterwards, the 'old' husband went away with a new shotgun, and the 'new' husband kept the wife...

There was silence in the room.

On the way home, the man's wife berated him. 'Why did you tell that story? That was Uncle John's grandfather!'

Let's face it: our ancestors were weird. They wore funny clothes, talked funny (and possibly in foreign tongues), they did outrageous things we would scoff at if they were invented by a Hollywood writer...so why not mine them for anecdotes?

An 'ancestor' is anybody you're related to: this includes odd grandparents. Or you might just think you're related to them. Or maybe, possibly, could be related to them...go wild. We won't check up on your research.

Did your ancestors:

• ...go west (or east, or north, or south)?
• ...fight against oppression? Or run from it, lickety-split?
• ...elope with the love of their lives?
• ...experience excitement, adventure, really wild things?
• ...do something really funny?

Tell, tell. We're dying to know. That's the least they owe us for leaving us all those stuffy sepia photos and dust-collecting knickknacks.