"In England the Patten family claim an ancestry coeval with the Conquest." This is the beginning of the genealogy handed down to me when I was young. My Scots-Irish ancestors were said to have been privateers during the Revolutionary War, but then moved to Nova Scotia shortly after the war. My great-grandfather brought his family to Minnesota, but died of typhoid in the early 1880s. My great-grandmother returned to Nova Scotia with her daughters, leaving my grandfather with relatives to recuperate from typhoid. This family history was just the beginning of my interest in history.
