Family Tree

Tonight I attempted to jot down my family tree.

It turned out to be more of a family sapling to be honest. My Gran was not as forthcoming as I had hoped. There is so much distrust in my family that if the house was very obviously on fire and you asked my Gran for a fire extinguisher, she'd ask you what you wanted it for.
After about three hours of intensive questioning, it felt like I had been pulling teeth all evening. Pulling teeth and then putting them back in again. Followed by more pulling.

We got as far back as my Gran's grandparents and my Granddad's parents (all on my Mother's side).
On my Father's side, we get nothing. I know they're out there, but they do such a good job of hiding. Besides, they nearly all live in Wales and it's hard to gather information from a land where even light cannot escape.
When my Father was alive, we'd travelled to Wales to visit his elderly cousin. We knocked and rang her bell for two hours and she refused to let us in. I'll admit, after the first 15 minutes, we probably should have left her alone, but we'd come a long way and we're stubborn and stupid in my family.

Shortly after, she sent my Dad a note, explaining how "it had been too long for us to meet again" and "maybe we should leave the past in the past".
After a brief exchange of letters, she died sometime later. Or maybe faked her own death? Who knows?

I know very little about my Dad's family. I know that he had an Uncle that sold a lot of property to a local publican for a jug of gold coins and then drank himself to death. Hopefully not in pub that was owned by the guy that gave him the gold coins, otherwise that was the deal of the century. The rest appear to be miners. That about sums it up. I always seem to hit a wall of silence when I ask about family history, so they're probably not exactly a shiny bunch of moral pennies.

So, after that and being disowned by my Dad's sister (don't ask), that leaves my Mum's family. And what a merry bunch they are.
I haven't found anything interesting yet, but I'm hoping that with a bit of digging, maybe a pirate or an inventor might turn up.
I'm not after anything special, but I'd just like to know where my family came from.