to pass on family history,even the bad sad stuff,not that Ive got any really to tell.I wish my children and grandchildren to know where the family came from, what the people did,where they lived,did they go to war.I do so wish I had asked more questions and written it down,for the next genaration. I have been interested in my family's history but only started to do it seriously recently. However for some reason I have been seen as the family archivist and when elderly members have died who had no children (and there were three or four) any papers, photos etc they had got passed to me and I have been amazed by what I have received, the apprenticeship document my grandfather signed in 1899 and the document my Great Grandfather received in 1880 when he became a Freeman of the City of London. He was a labourer with the Corporation and anyone who worked for them then at any level was expected to become a Freeman. I am scanning everything I have received onto the computer and I am building an online archive so that every member of the family can receive copies of everything, they are interested, even though the actual documents can only go to one of them. When I collected the census information I was reduced to tears to discover the poverty in which my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather, both Irish, grew up in. Both made their way up in the world and hid the