Family History is it important to you?

A post on A Satisfying Retirement led me to my thoughts, on this issue. In his post, Bob Lowry (The blog's author) asked, What about you? Are you interested in all the twists and turns of your family's past? Do you have old documents that trace your ancestors back to some historical event? Or, like me, do you prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. You aren't particularly motivated to learn about all that?

Bob also posted a link to a site which asked and answered the question Why is Genealogy important? The short answer according to Bob is  ... some of the reasons include validating family stories, tracing medical conditions or land ownership, finding birth parents and any links to famous people or historical events.

To answer Bob's question I have not been particularly motivated to learn about my history but events and times change. For me, it was a Facebook message that moved me to take some more action.

On my mother's side, I received a message on messenger from a cousin who was exploring his genealogy and had some questions, which I answered. He had been in touch with an elderly cousin who had completed a family tree for our grandmother and wanted more information about our grandfathers family, so I undertook to gather all the information from my brothers about their families and am just about complete in that task. I hope to send it off to my cousin and receive a copy of the updated family tree for my grandmother on my mom's side. At this time, all I know is that my grandfather was born in Tulcea, Romania about 1890 and came to Canada when he was 14. My grandmother was also born in Dobrogea Austria (now Romania). and moved to the US (North Dakota) with her family and came to Canada when she was 3 with her 11 brothers and sisters and settled into the town my grandfather had moved to from Romania.

When we went to our first family reunion on my father's side of the family back in the 1980's we learned that my grandmother's family had come from Ireland to Canada somewhere between 1840 and 1850, along with many other Irish settlers and the family had settled in Ontario. I was given the names of my great grandparents (Ramsey and McTeer) on my father's mothers side and learned that someone in the family had created a genealogy chart, which a cousin promised to send to me. I never received it and I forgot about it until recently. 

I also found out that my grandfather had come to Canada in the 1920's from the United States, somewhere around Michigan area to hide out for a while. We are not sure why he came to Canada, as he had a career as an Accountant, but when he came to Canada he became a farmer where he met my grandmother bought, then lost his farm in the 30's, and became a tenant farmer and raised a family. I have over the years tried to find out more about my grandmother and grandfather on my Dad's side of the family but have had little luck.

Going through the family history is important and I hope to continue to find out more about what must have been some fascinating stories, which I would love to validate.