Family history.

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Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:09 pm

My grandmother traced her ancestors back to the 16th century.
She got started in genealogy when she needed an American
Revolutionary War veteran ancestor so that she could join the
DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution).

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:46 pm

I've been messing with mine for the last couple of years.My mother side of the family is German,and I've been unable to go back much more than the 1870s when they came to this country.My fathers side has been much easier,with a lot of good links back to Bermuda in the early 1600s.Like Gomer,one branch can be traced back to 1066,and a hired sword that came over with William.No trace of him before that,so I asume he was a nobody,but it seems he set himself up nicely once he came over.
One thing I have had a good time with is looking up records when my family visited or lived in New York City in the early 1900's,then going to street view on Google Earth,and seeing what where they were looks like today.
I have one known smuggler,and possibly a privateer as ancestors-this is what keeps this stuff interesting.My grandmother was old enough to remember prison camps for the Boers on Bermuda as a child,I really wish I had paid more attention to her when I was younger.

Master Baiter Joined: 07 Oct 2008 Posts: 116

My dad has been doing his. We found a court case in the early 1800's where one of his ancestors was convicted of stealing laundry off a neighbor's clothesline.

I did one on our house after we bought it. It turns out I am a distant cousin of someone who owned the property in the 1930's.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:59 pm

The furthest I've gotten back concretely proven is my great-grandmother's grandmother on my father's mother's side, and that my father is at least the fourth in a row (family legend says seventh) with the same name (firstborn son, see...). On my dad's mom's side things seem to come to a wall: nobody in the family has (or likely will) admit that these names are Jewish (but come on... some of these are more Jewish than Ben Gurion). And further, it's known that one relative's father - brother to my great-grandmother's father - Hungarianized his name from the original, which seems perhaps Polish-Jewish (there's a possibility that one of these brothers went to the US... but nothing further found on that yet). AND then there's another family legend that we have a Scottish engineer in the lineage from during the industrialization of Hungary. No clue as to the truth of it though, but it's a fun story.

My mom's side is a dead end. Her father left Hungary in 1956 to never be heard from again. Her mother, I know her parents' names. End.

My dad has a great way to summarize this, which I paraphrase with my addition of two of the entries: We're German, Slovak, Czech, Polish, Croat, Serb and Jew, but 100% Hungarian. Very Happy

Master Baiter Joined: 07 Oct 2008 Posts: 116

The dead ends are heartbreaking. This happened on my mother's side. I was pestering her aunt for information on the parents and she kept telling me she didn't know. I didn't understand, this was code for "I promised not to tell." Finally my grandmother broke the promise and told me that the sisters had made a pact, nobody would talk about either parent or anyone before. The family history was to begin with themselves, no earlier. The reason is that their father was a batterer, a drunk and a child molester. He was wailing on his 8 months pregnant wife late one night and pushed her against the woodstove where she was burned very badly. She was afraid to ask for help until he sobered up to go to work in the morning. By then she had gone into shock and it was too late. She died and took her baby with her. The son of a gun then married a teenager and tortured her until he was almost 100.

I went looking for her grave and finally found it. She'd been buried in her family's plot in the Catholic cemetery but nobody marked the grave because of the shame. So my mother and I paid to have her name engraved on her parents' monument. We felt it was the least we could do, to bring Alma back into the light.

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:45 pm

It's totally correct that doing family history is addictive (I've been doing it for a few years now) if you have any brickwalls, need lookups for places you can't get to or just general help, the best place I've found is a forum called rootschat

www.rootschat.com

they're really friendly (like here) and the combined resources people have there are amazing and as it has people who are experts in their area it's not just confined to the UK.

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 5:03 pm

Well, I´d have the option to do research in now Poland or learning Latvian Sad

nothing, nothing at all known of the pre-WW I / II generation.

Master Baiter Joined: 07 Oct 2008 Posts: 200 Location: UK

Hi guys

I'm new here. But loved this thread. I have been researching my family for 20 years. Earliest is 1537. I started before the internet and did it the hard way. I still only use the internet as a useful pointer and prefer to see the originals myself.

Always happy to help with particular (UK related) problems though!

Cx

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

I've found the old copperplate or barely legible writing in old parish records sometimes defeats me
The Scots often noted births, marriages and deaths in the family bible.
sadly in our case it was "given away" by a disgruntled spouse along the way ( malicious so and so )

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:34 pm

Ruby Tuesday, I have just discovered that site too and I agree.
I was stuck for ages on a family member that had disappeared for one census but reappeared for another. Within 5 minutes somebody had given me an answer that on all accounts looks to be correct.
For those of us living the other side of the world to where we need to research the help from others like the members of RootsChat is invaluable. Smile

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:42 pm

I am a genealogy librarian in a public library in Texas. All day long I help people find their relatives. On my Father's side of the family I have them traced to 1637 when they arrived on the American shores (paternal side) on the maternal side which jumps right into Denmark I have them traced to 1440. On my Mother's side of the family we came over on the Mayflower (paternal side) and spread all over the USA. On her maternal side again we jump right into Denmark where I have traced them to 1560. My Mom is half Danish and my Dad is half Danish so that makes me whole Danish right? Laughing

It's great being paid to research your ancestors! Laughing

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

I know I must have family in NZ and Australia but not sure which of my mums coiusins emigrated there
I'm veering into the grannies raising grandchildrens as their own (I think)

Pretty boring on my side, Borders sheep farnmers it seems
Hubby lived in Oz for a while ( is that exciting? )
Coz can trace family back to freed Haitain slave girl

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:14 pm

Mugatu wrote:

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.

didnt know you where related to the infamous rab c nesbit.
Confused

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 12:20 am

I've been working on my family tree for several years. I traced both my paternal and maternal lines back to the early 1600s, and found that the first new-world settlers in each family's line arrrived in the same town in Quebec in the same year, 1663. The direct lines were fairly straightforward but working on all the other branches is endless. As a history buff it's endlessly fascinating to research it.

*** BANNED *** Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 2049

Genealogy was my main hobby for the past 20 years until I discovered nigerian scum - but I am hoping to get back to it sooooooonest Laughing

I have traced my Scottish ancestry back to about 1760. Of immense help, in addition to the parochial records, were the records of the local kirk (church). After nearly 20 years of looking I found a record of my great, great, great, great grandmother on the paternal side. She was hauled before the kirk session for the crime of "antenuptial fornication" Shocked

No - she didn't make it with a goat - the modern term is "premarital sex". When a recently married woman had issue (a child) the sick crusty f*kers who ran the church would count the number of days and if it didn't add up to 9 months they summoned the woman to appear before them and punished her. They apparently had no concept of premature birth in those days.

My Irish ancestry goes back to about 1800 in the Country Antrim where my great, great, great grandfather was born. His name was John Smith - try and look that sucker up on databases. Laughing

My central goal now is to find a Scottish relative with a first name of "Mungo". Thumbs up