Family Tree

A few years back, one of my adventurous cousins in Finland, took on the project of researching our family tree, on my Father's side. I really appreciate that he did this. I'm sure it was a very time consuming project. Currently, there's someone working on something similar for my Mom's side.
I found one aspect of this very interesting: my great-grandmother was not married, but had two sons by a man now known only by his last name, Raitanen. She therefore, having been abandoned by the scoundrel, who apparently went to "America" (which is Finnspeak for somewhere in North America), gave her two sons her last name, Annala, which was then the family name of my grandfather, father, and me, until I married. If he had been a decent man, we would have been Raitanens.
My father's father was in the merchant marines before he became a chimneysweep and father of nine. There's even a picture of the ship he served on. Imagine, a naval connection in the family!
The Raitanen/Annala incident just goes to show that every family has secrets, and that previous generations weren't somehow nobler than we.
It's nice to see the lists of all of my cousins, their spouses and children. As a nurse, I would have liked to know the cause of death of my relatives, purely from a health history perspective, to know what's in my genes, but I suppose there are privacy issues with that.
The family tree was presented in a spiral bound notebook and had some pictures I had never seen. It's a great thing to pass on to my kids. It gives a sense of connectedness to something bigger and a sense of belonging to a group. I had a great-great grandmother named Amanda. I see very little family resemblance even over just five generations. How much of me will there be in my descendants, I wonder?