MY RESEARCH
I started researching when my own father died aged 58. It was something that he had said we would do together when he retired. Unfortunately he died not knowing anything about his family or his history.
I began with a one name study (ONS) of the surname Gulline. I never realised at the time that was what I was actually doing. All I was doing was trying to find all the living Gulline's and link them together - expecting to go back to one ancestor - a bit like Adam and Eve. I started to find some all over the world (I expected a little bunch still in Wigtownshire, Scotland). Then as the research developed information became harder to come by and I ended up with three different trees that I couldn't link together. As my research became more difficult for the Gulline side I started looking at my maternal surname of McGarva. Once again I figured that the name was rare so I could probably tie up the family quite nicely. Once again I was wrong. To aid me in my research I started visiting the records office in Edinburgh and taking note of every single birth, marriage and death of any McGarva and McGarvie in Scotland since civil registration in 1855. This has proved quite a costly and time consuming task but as the information is punched into my genealogy software each certificate links to McGarva's I already have information on thus the tree is becoming larger but more connected.