First, friends, let me acknowledge that sharing with you even a sliver of my paternal family history is not something you will find riveting, interest-wise.

This I understand. We all have our own family tree, while some know more, have greater interest in such, than do others. This is just how it is.

Still, it’s a bit hard for me to appreciate how some have little or no interest in their ancestors, and all that this can entail. I mean, how can you not want to know about your own roots? Where those in the now murky mists of another time came from. And just who they were. And how their lives unfolded.

In the graveyard at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church here, on the north side of the building, is buried a George Houston. Inscribed on the full grave size stone slab is that he was born in 1774 in Edinburgh (Scotland) and that he died in 1839 in Washington, North Carolina.

There is no reason for me to believe that there is any familial connection with this George Houston. My Houston family roots had no ties whatever with our little town. My father and mother came here in 1936, and were the first of either side of my family to ever live here.

Yet, genealogical records show that my family roots are easily traced back to Scotland, from whence old George came. A coincidence, but …

Now, I could go on a bit with my family history, but I know better.

It is my belief that at least those of you who are kind enough to read my weekly journalistic peregrinations are quite probably interested in your own family history, and all that can encompass.

We are all part of our very own long line of forebears.

We all have our own familial history. Some of us have an interest in this.

Some don’t.

Yet, who we are — you and I — is determined, at least in part, by those who came before.

And those who come after us, even well beyond our children and grandchildren, carry a part of us. They have our genes. They are of our blood. There is some of us, however minimal or even biologically diluted the strain may become, in them.

I hope some of them in my family might be at least a little interested in knowing where they came from.

Even about, just maybe, who I was.