Family history.

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Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:06 am

Anybody here interested in family history?

I have just started this year researching both mine and hubby's family trees and found amazing things. Shocked

If anybody is interested in this 'hobby' (more like addiction) I just thought it would be a good idea to get together to swap knowledge.

So far I have managed to find records back to the 16th century.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 05 Oct 2008 Posts: 33

Whoah! 1600s? Thats a long time!! Shocked

Even I only have my birth certificate! Laughing

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 1043

I've got most of my family tree transferred to digital, but it needs silly amounts of work doing to it. I'll do it one day, but tracking down distant family isn't something i'm in the mood for right now.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:59 am

I'm back to the 1700s, and then did a DNA test to move things back to the 1500s.
Find an association for your surname, join, and get a DNA swab of your mouth. It is as easy as that.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:13 am

Sorry I have been bugged by one of those for a long time to share personal info and pictures, just because he knows my last name Rolling Eyes

[rant]
I have a nice family member that did all that and claims he is family, fine, we share a tree and maybe a great great grand parent, so what.
I'm just me, trying to be the best I can within my limits, nothing is going to chance that.
Adding to the pissing contest we go back to 1760 Smile

[\rant]

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 1043

Oh, i think GomerPyle's into genealogical research too, although his HDD is busted at the moment. See his thread.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:21 am

I don't much about my family but there's a pretty good chance my ancestors were the first European immigrants in America(then known as New France) .
I've recently found out that my great grandfather was an Italian who came to Canada more than 100 years ago.
I have European roots huh . Razz

Trophy Videos · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:24 am

There are quite a few members on here who are into geneology.

My grandmother always told us that our ancestors in Ireland were sheep rustlers, so I really don't want to know if that's true! Maybe I have family members who have graduated to grand theft auto. Laughing

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:34 am

Supposedly I'm related to these people:

Father's side:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis

Mother's side:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_Scotland

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:41 am

Yes. I did do a lot of research, but got stuck.

The fact is, in the UK anyway, that most people go back to plain old agricultural labourers, and if you have a pretty common surname it's really hard to get far.

I intend to get back to it, after I get what I managed to find out back from my hard drive, and I did get some interesting stuff. I had relatives in the Boer War, one or more in the Crimean War and potentially one at the Battle of Waterloo. It somehow seems more satisfying that he was not a mounted officer but a member of a gun team.

There is a possible connection to a local minor dignitary and I was able to hijack someone else's tree to take that link back to one of the knights who came over with King William in 1066. That link is going through a female line. but I'll take anything that makes life easy.

Genealogy is a great way to wind up people in the family especially as it appears that the well off side appear to have risen from humble stock (and as has always happened they try to hide that) and the poorer side appear to have fallen on hard times after the Boer War.

The social history that goes with it is fascinating.

Baiting Guru Joined: 29 Jan 2008 Posts: 2531 Location: AU

my father did a lot of research into ours.

even traveled to ENgland and Ireland to visit where we came from.

Our family came to australia in chains. ggggg granddad stabbed some official to death. He was also an instigator for insubordination(unionism)

we are a country born of criminals and prostitutes Rolling Eyes

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:07 am

My Dad uses a program called Relatively Yours, or something like that to keep track of kin, living or dead. I help him with backing up the data. Can't say that I'm all that interested in the subject though. Mum has done a fair bit of research into her line and has found a couple of examples of newborns being passed off as the children of other people and birth certificates revealing the father to be someone who could not possibly have been the father.

Chances are very high that I don't share DNA with most of my 'official' ancestors. Must acknowledge though that I have great respect for all my natural ancestors and consider them in an affectionate, if abstract light.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:22 am

I can't do the DNA thing because I'm adopted, and the only family I'm interested in is the one I grew up in.

I do know that my mother's mother was a sharpshooter in Sweden (I still have one of her medals) and Mother's father was a gymnast (I have some pics of him in his natty gym uniform). And my father's grandfather was a businessman and amateur magician in Detroit who made a pair of handcuffs that could not be gotten out of - even by Houdini. Great-Grandfather was a friend of magician Howard Thurston and the poet Edgar A. Guest.

That's about as far back as I go. Smile

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:12 am

I'm related to a Swiss Saint, and someone in my family invented the anti-scratch/smudge on sunglasses, or helped. Very Happy

At least that's what they tell me.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:55 am

What I really like about this is already this year I have found a 2nd cousin in Cheshire that I keep in contact with and have just found a relation that I have just emailed living in NSW.
I have also traced today an ancestor that was born circa 1600 in St Just Penwith.
Like baiting it becomes very addictive.
Laughing

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:13 am

A far family member (grandson of the brother of my grandfather) managed to trace back till around 1590. And all the way back to get the full family tree.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:57 am

My brother stumbled across our family history one day when he googled his own name. It went as far back as the early 1800's in Poland. Turns out that my grandfather and the grandmother of the person who did all the research were brother and sister.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:34 am

I looked into my history and found that my father was a Glaswegian street brawler with a penchant for Tennents Super, talking to himself, and pissing in his trousers. I think I'd rather not go back any further.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

I wish I'd sat looking through photos with my mum a lot more.
There's so many with family/friends/locations that I know nothing about.
I'm now making an effort to date and label my own pics

I've been scanning and sending off photos to my cousins and relatives in a bid to identify great grandparents and their siblings.

Oldest one I've got is I believe my great great grandfather on my mums side. A shepherd in the Borders.

@ Mugatu if you'd said Edinburgh I'd have thought we might have been related, sounds familiar Very Happy

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:59 am

My cousin has been researching my mother's family for many years and has done a family tree back to about 1600. She did it the old fashioned way by looking at parish records and other documents stashed away in town halls and other archives rather than the internet so kudos to her. No major scandals or famous ancestors to relate but still very interesting. The one thing that strikes you is how many children died in infancy so while a woman may have given birth to 10 children only one or two lived to adulthood in some cases.

On my father's side I have French Hugenot ancestry and know they fled persecution in France to settle in Buckinghamshire, UK during the early 19th century but I am still trying to get more detail on that story.

I've been using various genealogy websites but unfortunately once you go back more than 2-3 generations the records just aren't available online so you have to do it by looking at the documents themselves which is tricky for me as my family is/was British while I now live in Australia.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

Another thing I've found is that the family may know someone by one name but the records have another
In Scotland it was common for Jane's to be known as Jean, sons named after fathers to be known by middle names or other pet names.

My own mother was never known by a diminutive of her given name but by something else entirely.

Its sad to see the number of young men killed in the Wars, there's also a chunk of family that seen to have died just after WW1, probably the flu epidemic.
The number of post partum deaths and infant mortality make me thankful for the NHS

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:46 am

Another family history fanatic here...

Like Mr Gomer said, most of 'em are plain old Ag Labs but not all of them...I did find out that my mum's 5th cousin owns this place...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatsworth_House

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:50 am

A whole branch of my family has 'disappeared' because only the daughters survived WW1 while the brothers, male cousins, etc perished. Once you are trying to track down the females whose names change upon marriage or who die single and childless it can be very difficult (and sad).

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:19 am

My cousin has done a family tree the old fashion way. She drug my mother into it, mom's health is so bad and she really didn't feel like it. She's been going at it for years and sent us copies of what she has found. I can't get into it, because of all the troubles it caused my mom. She found nothing that was out of the ordinary.

Lovey's family is interesting. His mom was from the Philippines and she was a child when the war was going on. Her uncle is in his 90's and one of the few living survivors of the death march. I could listen to their stories all day. They had a hard life and they appreciate the small stuff that we take for granted.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:44 pm

I did a bit of research on my own and was able to get to the mid 1800s but have since passed the info onto my newly retired father who will have more time to devote to it.

It was amazing being able to go online and look at scans of the logs for Ellis Island and see my ancestors names written in the entry books after they arrived from Europe.

I can't wait to find out more info about my English, Irish, Scottish, German, et al ancestory. Very Happy