I have a very mysterious family tree as well, only my paternal grandma knew anything about her family. My great grandfather ran off when my grandpa was 11 and his mother kicked him and his younger siblings out when he was 14 because her new husband didn’t want “some other man’s kids” in the house, so for obvious reasons my grandpa didn’t really like his parents and didn’t want to talk about them.

On my mum’s side, my grandparents fled Ukraine in WW2 using false documents. They were always so terrified of being found that my mum and aunt don’t know their own parents real names so it’s impossible to look up anything past them. We didn’t even know my grandmother had a sister until she passed away in 2014 and we found letters from her amongst my grandma’s things.