Any relation?

I don't know if it's age that has made me logon to a website and start looking into my family history but it was something that I started to do earlier on today. I've seen a few people around who look a little like my Grandparents - or like myself more to the point. It has made me wonder if there's any genetic connection as we have an unlimited number of relatives, what tends to be the case in most families is that there is a limited capacity for how many we can deal with before it becomes more of a hindrance than pleasure. I don't know if there is much in the way of support on genes reunited but I guess that there could be a connection or two that I find.

I have spent an hour putting my family tree on Genes Reunited which was interesting as a way to spend time for a short while. I managed to get some information out of my dad on his family background which has not come forward that readily before - his mother's maiden name was Holland which I think is something that I should have been aware of many years ago really. On my maternal Grandparents side the family names were Parkes and Golding - though I don't know how Golding or Goulding would have been spelt as I never saw this in writing.

I have heard that people feel like tracing their family trees, at least prior to the advent of internet and the information superhighway, around the time of a birth in the family. A nephew of mine turned 18 recently which is a kind of later-day coming of age, a Brummie Bar Miztva, may be deep within our family culture and led to my family tree mapping. May be this event led to a need to look to the depth of family history that I hadn't looked into before. Difficult to say why people do these things....the picture above is of William and Beattie Parkes - the maternal Grandparents.