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How my family tree yielded a few surprises
'We are the vehicles in which our ancestors ride," my father used to intone sententiously at the dinner table, after spotting some trait in his children that had been a hallmark of earlier generations. I had largely dismissed the maxim, until my own children arrived on the scene and began (eerily) to display characteristics of various aunts, uncles and grandparents. This might have driven the scientifically minded into a study of genetics. However, lacking the science gene, I chose instead to research my family tree. Courtesy of a great-grandfather and an uncle who had laboriously catalogued my father's side of the family, I began casually sifting through family history when I was a teenager, but I didn't really get bitten by the genealogy bug until (if you'll pardon the pun) relatively recently. As I began my research, I was astonished to learn that Americans' second largest hobby is genealogy (the source didn't indicate their first choice, but the possibilities provide an endless source of conjecture).
Napoleon is said to have observed that even his lowliest soldiers carried a marshal's baton in their knapsacks. He may not have intended his pronouncement to be taken literally, but, from a genealogical standpoint, he was surprisingly accurate. Today, genealogists estimate that perhaps as many as 60 per cent of North Americans are likely to carry descent from royalty in their genetic knapsacks. As Bill Bryson entertainingly observed in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything: "Next time someone tells you they are descended from William the Conqueror or that they have a Mayflower ancestor, smile and say 'So do I.' " The trick is to find what genealogists call a "gateway ancestor" -- someone in the family tree who married into royalty -- where tracking bloodlines was serious stuff involving, as it did, thrones and the fate of nations. I discovered that one of my Puritan ancestors in New England was descended from a line that included Plantagenet kings. 
Now, this is all good fun, but having a royal ancestor confers no special status (since a goodly proportion of our fellow subway straphangers also have royal ancestors) and you will still have to dispense three bucks for your morning latte and figure out how to manage your next mortgage payment. Besides, the scoundrels in one's family are often as interesting as the kings -- and usually more abundant! My research yielded a ninth great-grandfather who was hanged as a horse thief in the early 1600s (the English nobleman who had him executed ostensibly apologized afterward when his horse showed up elsewhere and tried to make amends by educating the dead man's son). A sixth great-grandfather was transported for burglary to the American colonies where he worked off his sentence and then became one of the most celebrated makers of navigational instruments in early America. 
An eighth great-grandmother created a scandal by divorcing the mentally unstable husband who abandoned her and marrying for love (she became the subject of a somewhat racy historical novel entitled The Winthrop Woman -- which I gave to my adult children for Christmas with a note showing their direct line of descent). Lest you think from the above that I am descended entirely from bad stock, my family tree also has a generous smattering of respectable ancestors, including clergy and a second cousin five times removed who wrote the famous poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Most of us have trouble researching with certainty much further back than two generations, unless family members have paved the way. So how does one mine for genealogical gold? The Internet has been a boon to family research and there are several web sites where one can begin a search (try Ancestry.com and Cyndi’s List for starters). For the most part, amateur genealogists are more than willing to share their research - and I have been delighted to discover ‘new’ cousins Canada, the U.S., England and Australia. Perhaps the most profound and poignant result of my family research has been to discover that every generation has its share of triumphs and disappointments, happiness and despair. That, more than anything, unites us all.
What a great read! My son thought he had found a “gateway ancestor” , one from which he would eventually inherit an immense fortune. He stated , at the age of 10 that he was ready to be told the truth and that he could handle being an heir to a significant estate. He was crestfallen when we told him the truth- we were not related. We recounted the scenario at his 18th birthday party much to his dismay.