My mother had no aunties

[DelphineInTopsham]

My parents grew up in the same street in Edmonton, North London but whereas my father had aunts and uncles on both sides, from Bethnal Green, Hoxton and beyond, my mother knew none of her parents' relatives. Her father said he was Scottish (Findlay is a Scottish name), and he had served in the Royal Horse Artillery; her mother was a Watling from Woodbridge, and she implied to my mother that she had come down in the world. So in the late 1970s, I bought myself 'Teach Yourself Genealogy and Heraldry' and began haunting St Catherine's House on my days off, tracking back through certificates for the Watlings. I hit a Jones (as I thought - it was Sones) and a Smith, so I stopped (also my life had taken a different turn). The Scots were beyond me then - but I envisaged Rob Roy.
Fast forward to the late 1990s, living in Devon and needing an occupation for the little grey cells, I took an evening class with the legendary Don Steele. And I've been doing family history ever since, mainly using on-line resources. I come to Lost Cousins very late in the process, based on a recommendation in the journal of one of the Family History Societies I belong to. (Oh, and Rob Roy turned out to be a Fife ploughman - grandfather had Scottish ancestry all right, but had never lived there - he was born in Dublin, where the RHA were stationed at the time)