X-post, Mitzy. Yes, JH was not happy about his lack of Irishness, was he?
It seems a peculiarly English thing to waste energy wondering where we came from, because we have this lack of national pride that makes us consider ourselves quite dull. We conjure up ideas of the 'exotic' other and long to find some mere scrap of evidence to claim we are different, special, better than the heard. A Russian 8 generations ago. A minor Lord 16 generations ago. Oh, well, makes all the difference.
But I don't think this is what interests most people. I'm not English, and we have no family records at all. My parents weren't properly literate, and my grandparents weren't, and other than some mystery that left my paternal grandfather genuinely shocked and ashamed when he got documents to apply for his first passport in his sixties (he would never talk about it, but I suspect discovering his mother wasn't married to his absent, supposed sailor father, making him illegitimate), I know nothing about anyone before the two of my grandparents I knew. I would just like to know my great-grandparents' names and where they lived, and see if I could trace it a bit further back. They will all have been farm labourers on my mother's side, but I'd like to know where - unfortunately Irish records are far spottier than in England, and a lot were destroyed in 1922.