Fun with genealogy

[Doom Shepherd]

I've heard that, especially in Europe, you also run into faked genealogies, because there have been times when it was fashionable to claim descent from figures like Charlemagne, or to DENY descent from a current national enemy or victim of persecution (like people tried to avoid being known to have Jewish blood at certain times) or even just people more important / less embarrassing than your actual ancestors.

 

[stardream]

The records of the Cherokees from the time of the first European contact are pretty good. Before that, it relies mostly on oral tradition. I can trace back to Amatoya Moytoya of Tellico. He's got his own wiki page.

My European side of the family has been here a long time. The earliest one showed up in 1621 on the Fortune which was the second boat to come to Plymouth Colony Mass after the Mayflower. I've had some very early ones in the 16th Century in Virginia but none I think were at Jamestown. My 'missing' ancestors are mostly located in NC where loyalties were divided in some locations.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I've heard that, especially in Europe, you also run into faked genealogies, because there have been times when it was fashionable to claim descent from figures like Charlemagne, or to DENY descent from a current national enemy or victim of persecution (like people tried to avoid being known to have Jewish blood at certain times) or even just people more important / less embarrassing than your actual ancestors.

Sometimes there's a lot of laziness on the part of paid genealogy services. They just pull information out of a hat that sounds good.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

A very good point. It's always better to personally look up the relevant information, even if it takes a lot of time.
Given the German obession with public records, it was very dangerous and expensive to tamper with these official files, so only the very rich could afford that. Going abroad would usually have been the cheaper solution which many families chose, for example the Rothschilds or the Wollwerths (which you might know as the Woolworths).

Stardream, I had no idea the Cherokee Nation had a system of documenting ancestry. Was it an oral tradition or did the family trees get written down (on what material?) ?

 

[stardream]

Stardream, I had no idea the Cherokee Nation had a system of documenting ancestry. Was it an oral tradition or did the family trees get written down (on what material?) ?

A lot of it was oral but the Cherokees became literate very quickly after a system of writing was developed by Sequoyah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoyah

 

[tomalak301]

My uncle made a family tree for my dad's side of the family. It was very informative. I never saw one for my mom's side, but they were somewhat private people.