I don't know if it's important as such, certainly not to people outside my immediate family, but it was fascinating to trace my family back to 1696 using old census records and other documents.

I used genesreunited.com and thru that also found out some history about an aunt and uncle who emigrated to Australia 5 years before I was born which I couldn't get anywhere else but enabled me to make contact with my then 96 year old aunt just before she died, so it was really cool.

For me it is very important because we've lost history because on my maternal side they didn't want to talk about the Jewish family and on the paternal side they didn't want to talk about the Native American family

It doesn't matter much though I'm proud of my dad.

Not at all.