Fun with genealogy

[Kor]

Is anybody out there into chronicling and researching their family histories? I'm just getting started on this hobby.

I'm finding the Google book and newspaper archives rather useful in this regard.

Did you discover that your great-great grandparents lived somewhere you never would have expected? Got any interesting stories about famous or infamous ancestors that you would like to share? ...tales of outlawry or other shenanigans?

I discovered that a distant relative on another branch of my family tree was apparently the first person to escape from a certain prison in a rather remote area of my state.

Kor

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I've had an ancestry.com membership twice, and it paid off both times. The later time, there had been a lot of new information added.

Through my own digging and finding other people's entries for parts of my father's family, I was able to put together a 41 generation family tree. Of course, I admit you never now how accurate those things are going so far back.

I did buy birth and death certificates for my grandfather and great-grandfather, and found someone near Toronto who had done genealogy for families in that area, including a couple generations of my ancestors. It helped fill in some of the more recent blanks.

My earliest ancestors were kings of Northumbria in the 7th and 8th centuries, then earls of Northumbria after William the Conqueror routed them. The first one to come to North America did so around 1665-1670.

My brother has worked on my mom's family, but there are fewer surviving records in Europe it seems.

 

[Velocity]

My husband's family always wondered if they were related to Daniel Boone, so I started researching and traced his family back to Daniel Boone's youngest brother, Squire Boone, Jr. There is a family resemblance also, judging from portraits of Squire Boone.
I traced a branch of my family back to Edith Swan Neck or Edith the Fair, the first wife or mistress of King Harold II of England.

 

[Non Sync]

I discovered my parents were 7th cousins once removed. One was from Indiana and the other from Pennsylvania.

 

[Miss Chicken]

We have been researching our family tree for many years. So far we have nine convicts on our father's side including one who came out on the Third Fleet, about three years after Australia was first settled by the British. Two of these convicts were sent to New South Wales (1791 and 1814) but the rest arrived in Van Dieman's Land between 1823 and 1852.

So far, all free settlers on my mother's side. Her family originally settled in New South Wales, but she grew up in Queensland.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

I've been having fun with genealogy for a few years, ever since I did genetic testing through 23andMe to take part in a sarcoma study. My ancestry results came back with a totally unexpected 25% Ashkenazi, i.e. East European Jewish. Long story made short, I, who'd thought I had no living maternal relatives, tracked down maternal cousins in three countries and learned that my grandmother's parents were Jews who converted to the Russian Orthodox Church.

BTW, there's an old thread on the topic right here.

And I forgot to mention that I met my Israeli third cousin when he was in the U.S. a few months ago!

 

[thestrangequark]

I recently read some interesting articles about genetic testing for ethnicity. It seems that, unlike for medical conditions, genetic testing for ethnicity isn't really reliable at all, and is more about interpretation of results than actual hard facts. The geneticists cited in the articles I read said that it really only works for large groups of people over very long periods of time, not individuals, and that DNA testing companies (again, while totally reliable for medical conditions) aren't worth the money at all and shouldn't be trusted when it comes to determining your ancestry.

Basically, they are full of shit.

Anyway, I'm not really interested in genealogy enough to actively delve into it, but some family member on my dad's side was. He's all Cajun French and British Isles. My mom's Ojibwe, Turtle Mountain Band Chippewa specifically, but she had a grandmother or great grandmother or something who was white. She didn't really know her family so we don't have much info on that side.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm pretty much solid German on both sides of my family tree.

 

[Kor]

I recently learned that a great-grandmother of mine was a German immigrant.

Very interesting stories so far, all around.

My family lore says an ancestor was on the wrong side of some fracas in England in the 1790s and was kicked out, and then had to spend the rest of his days in America. I'm trying to pin this down more accurately. So far, nothing in English history of the time seems to fit this scenario.

Further back, it looks like we held some kind of small manor in Devon. I've tracked down a tiny hamlet within Dartmoor National Park that appears to be the old family stomping grounds. So if I ever visit England, I will definitely try to make my way down there.

Kor

 

[B.J.]

I recently read some interesting articles about genetic testing for ethnicity. It seems that, unlike for medical conditions, genetic testing for ethnicity isn't really reliable at all, and is more about interpretation of results than actual hard facts. The geneticists cited in the articles I read said that it really only works for large groups of people over very long periods of time, not individuals, and that DNA testing companies (again, while totally reliable for medical conditions) aren't worth the money at all and shouldn't be trusted when it comes to determining your ancestry.

Basically, they are full of shit.

I've seen ads on TV for those services. Glad to know my skepticism is justified.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

My mother has been into genealogy for decades. She's a member of the DAC and DAR, and has travelled all over the US and to the UK searching for and verifying records. Interesting facts include:

My parents are eighth cousins (something removed).

I am related to the founder of Shrevesport, LA.

I am related to both Richard Nixon and Alexander Stephens (former VP of the Confederate States.)

My great_x_5 grandfather helped survey the boundary between VA and PA, under George Washington, and was paid in land in southwest PA, on which some of my family still resides.

One of the aforementioned grandfather's brothers moved to Eastern PA, one of his descendants became a Rear Admiral in the US Navy and later had a Destroyer and a Destroyer Escort named after him. The second ship was the last American ship to sink a submarine in the Atlantic in World War II, sending U-881 to the bottom.

She has also traced my surname back to the point where history starts to become legend. Apparently, the first person with my last name was the son of a man named Farquhar Shaw, and he is supposed to be one of the descendants of MacDuff. (Yes, that one, the one what killed MacBeth.)

We also had the Ancestry.com DNA test done, twice. Maybe it's not as reliable as they say, but the results were interesting: Large chunks of Scandinavian, smatters of both Eastern and Western European, and a tiny percentage (<1%) of European Jew and even North African. This fits with the idea that the ancestors of people in "my" part of Scotland were mainly Vikings, who obviously ranged far and wide.

 

[thestrangequark]

I also know the history of my surname and rather like it! Mine comes from when the English were first made to put surnames on their taxes in the early medieval period (if I remember correctly). Many men chose their father's names as their surnames, but one of my ancestors chose his mother's name.

 

[BillJ]

I'm a mutt.

 

[stardream]

The ancestry.com DNA test pretty much matched our paper trail.

Interesting thing about our family is some of my mother's maternal ancestors was at Plymouth Colony. Deacon John Doane has his own wiki page. We found out that someone there 're-enacts' another ancestor, Stephen Deane who came to Plymouth on the second ship after the Mayflower, The Fortune.

Then on my dad's side we are registered Cherokee, descendants of Amatoya Moytoya of Tellico. I'm rez born but didn't grow up there. We always had mixed feelings about Thanksgiving.

Abigail Overman, a Quaker minister, has her own historical marker in NC. Another ancestor, Michael Woods is mentioned on a Virginia historical marker titled "Jarman's Gap'.

My husband's family is related to the Randolph family....the family of Thomas Jefferson's mother.

We aren't descended from anyone famous but we joke that our ancestors knew the famous people and were bystanders when historical things happened.
For instance Velocity....one of my ancestors knew Daniel Boone. He bought his homestead on NC when he moved to Kentucky. His name was Peter Noland.

During the Civil War most of my southern ancestors were southern Union loyalists.

I also have German, Dutch, Irish and Swiss ancestry and of course some Asian ancestry via the Cherokee.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

I've seen ads on TV for those services. Glad to know my skepticism is justified.

It all depends on which company you use (they're not all created equal), what your actual ancestry is (some populations have been tested more than others, some are more endogamous than others and therefore easier to recognize genetically, etc.), and what you're looking for. If you're looking for great precision (did your ancestors come from, say, northern or southern Germany?) or for a thousand years ago, you're going to be highly disappointed. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but what I got was very accurate -- about 50% Southern European (yup, two grandparents from Italy), 25% East European (yup, grandparent from Russia), and 25% Ashkenazi Jewish (totally unexpected, but I've been able to confirm it, using resources that I never would've had reason to look at if I hadn't gotten the AJ results).

 

[Random_Spock]

I'm a mutt.

Same here.

Got some Irish, German, French, Native American in me.

Found out some history on my family tree, but a lot of it is still a mystery.

 

[thestrangequark]

Then on my dad's side we are registered Cherokee, descendants of Amatoya Moytoya of Tellico. I'm rez born but didn't grow up there. We always had mixed feelings about Thanksgiving.

I'm a halvesie, totally get that!

As for famous folk, I did find out recently that I'm fairly closely related to Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde fame. He was my grandfather's first cousin or something.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I discovered my parents were 7th cousins once removed. One was from Indiana and the other from Pennsylvania.

How many toes do you have?

 

[rhubarbodendron]

One of my greatuncles investigated the main line of the family tree back to the sixteenhundreds. I've taken up this hobby and have been tring to find out something about the respective siblings and their descendants. It proved unexpectedly easy as I work in an area where many of them lived. It's quite a freaky situation as most of my family now lives in a different region and I came to work here only by a weird chain of coincidences.
It can lead to unexpected side effects in my job:
farmer: I drown every inch of my fields in manure and the Ministery For The Environment can kiss my bottom.
me: ahem, thanks for the offer but I'd rather you did neither. Btw, I am the representative of the ministery and my name is xy.
farmer: no kidding? That was my grandma's maiden name. Who were your great-grandparents?
We compare family trees and find we are 5th cousins thrice removed or something of the sort.
farmer: ahh, that's a completely different matter,of course. No manure in a 8 yard strip along the creeks and rivers the law says, right? No problem, dearie, I'll make it 10 to keep on the safe side.

And the great thing is: it's really no prob and he keeps to the law and even talks his neighbours into doing it, too =)

 

[Timewalker]

I just finished filling out the federal census here, and got randomly picked to do the long-form version. Among other things, they want to know in which country I was born, if my parents were born in Canada, and every ethnicity I can remember for my ancestry. Then they asked if I would give them permission to make my information available to researchers in the year 2108 (92 years from now).

Not that I expect to have any descendants who'd want to look anything up, but in case any distant cousins might be curious, I said 'yes.'

At least that 92-year rule means I can now look up some stuff about my great-grandparents.