My Granfather (who has since died) had researched our family tree and discovered that we're related to General Elliott who defended Gibraltar from the French and Spanish in the 18th Century. His daughter also married Sir Francis Drake, who is a pretty cool guy to be indirectly and distantly related to.

Unfortunately he didn't seem to leave any working out, and my modern day attempts have gone back through our family by a couple of generations but nowhere near the 18th Century.

Is it best to work back through my family to try to get that far, or to start at General Elliott and work down? It's difficult to know which branch of the family to follow and our general knowledge about our ancestors only goes back a generation or two.

Is there an online resource I can make use of?

Ancestry.co.uk

My mom got very into genealogy. I think it was the fact that her grandfather was left on a step at about 3 days old which drew her into it. There is no trace whatsoever down that line. I find it illogical that she feels a stronger bond with some distant relative who died hundreds of years ago than some second cousins who are still alive today.

Most people go from latest back, because they don't know who their ancestors were. If you go both ways at once you will meet in the middle, just like the channel tunnel.

Like you, I've got a gap in my family tree. But mine is between my great grandparents and Noah.

My great(x32) grandad was William the Conqueror but then again 80% of the population will also be similarly related to him – you only have to go back about 20 generations to find you have 1 million great(x20) grand parents & the population of England in 1066 was only about a million.

You can work backwards or forwards to find your link but there will be numerous dead ends & lots of painsstaking detective work, like any journey probably more interesting what you find out about other relatives along the way.

Probably not the easy journey I was planning on undertaking on a lunch break then!

I realise that as you go back there are more and more people you become aware of and that at some point you'll run into either a character or a historical figure. I'm interested on the path our family took from that point in history and why I'm not living in a castle.

Family Tree Maker software – about £35 by the looks of it – very good

+1 for Ancestry.co.uk (subscription payable – MrsJulianA thinks about £70 per year)

FamilySearch.org – free Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) website also very useful.

Good luck – expect to find crime, insanity, penury, bigamy, illegitimacy, unknown close relatives, agricultural labourers and all sorts in your family history! (Not casting aspersions on your family – just that it all happens!)

Bad News: General Sir George Eliot's daughter wasn't married to THE Sir Francis Drake, he was around about 200 years earlier.

Good News: His wife was directly descended from Sir Francis Drake so if you are directly descended from him you can still claim the lineage to Drake.

Also he had the title Baron Heathfield so there may be some family history in websites on the Peerage.

A quick wikipedia shows he had a son called Francis who died without children after which the Baroncy became extinct. And a daughter.

Francis Augustus Eliott, 2nd and last Baron Heathfield (31 December 1750-26 January 1813)
Anne Pollexfen Eliott (1754-24 February 1835), who married John Trayton Fuller on 21 May 1777

My cousin has been researching one branch of my family on my father's side, through his mother, my gran Jenny Drake. Her mother, Annie, vanished under odd circumstances, and it turned out that she left her husband and did a bunk back to London, where she remarried. Her grandson from that marriage is one of the Great Train Robbers…
Further back, another relative was a Royal Marine, Colour Sgt. John Drake, one of very few survivors of a terrible shipwreck off the coast of South Africa which saw 455 people lost. It was written about in the book
"A deathless story, or, The Birkenhead and its heroes . . ."
which can be read here: http://www.archive.org/details/deathlessstoryor00addiiala
A fascinating read, it established the principle of women and children first. John features around pp208, he was also involved in the capture of a Portugese slaver and beat two escaped crew to death and also served in the Crimea. Truly a man to inspire respect. There also appears to be a connection to Sir Francis Drake via one of his many brothers; John Drake came from Dorset.