I'm also doing this challenge on my own blog at wwwRootfindersGR.com.
The event that got me STARTed researching my family tree was when I was in college. I had heard and been interested in family stories, but I assumed that all the stories had been told to me in my eighteen years. I thought wrong. In college, one evening some friends and I attended a live performance of a Celtic duo performing Irish and Scottish songs on harp and violin. There was a lively audience including both college students and community members in a range of ages. Some were dressed in kilts, and many were dancing. I enjoyed the music so much that I stayed far beyond the hour I had planned and I purchased a record (vinyl) from the band that was performing.
Later, when I was home for the summer, I told my mother about the evening and confessed I felt a bit of an imposter for loving the music so much when I wasn't Irish or Scottish. My mother, who was driving at the time, nearly drove off the road. "What kind of a name did you think Keirnan was?" she exclaimed.
I didn't know and hadn't thought about it. I'd never been explicitly taught anything about my grandmother's surname and my main interaction with St. Patrick's Day had been wearing green so as not to get pinched.
Well, my mother realized that her duty to share what she knew of her family history had not yet been discharged and she began to share a great deal more of the stories she'd learned growing up.
It turned out that her grandfather (my great-grandfather) James Francis "Daddy Frank" Keirnan was descended 100% from Irish Catholic immigrants and we know we have Keirnans (yes, that's the way they spelled it), O'Briens, Mangans, and McGills on my mother's side. Later research revealed another Scots-Irish line that both she and my father share, and both Scots-Irish and Irish Protestant lines on my father's side.
She also sent me a greeting card every St. Patrick's Day without fail to remind me I was at least 1/8th Irish. She also took more interest in her own heritage and she and my father visited Ireland and encouraged me to do so as well.
And I realized that people don't just tell you things, you have to take the initiative and ASK. So I did begin asking a lot of questions about family history and those questions became the basis for research projects and so it all began.
PS. Research revealed additional Irish immigrants both Catholic and Protestant on both my mothers and father's lines.
