Genealogy: How far back have you gone?

[Candlelight]

I've barely scrapped the surface; only about half a dozen generations and back to the mid-1850s. I never find time to do it, but unfortunately the name I am searching for was very common in that part of England.

My wife however has just blitzed me this evening and managed to find a path (with help from Ancestry.com) leading back to the 1590s and found out she is descended from the King's Daughters! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Daughters).

How far back have you gone?

 

[ITL]

^ Not far enough!

My paternal great-grandfather came over to England from Ireland around the turn of the 20th century, and that's as much as I know about that branch of the tree. I can only go back a paltry three or four generations in any direction - but to be fair, I haven't researched it much. I should do something about that.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

How far back have you gone?

Late 16th century. My father's ancestors apparently made quite a name for themselves as Uskoks (before that they were probably just farmers or herders who were displaced by the Turks) and after helping kick the Ottoman Empire out of the Adriatic they settled down to become the wealthiest and most distinguished shipbuilding family in Rijeka until 1945. My mother claimed to be descended from some sort of minor Hungarian aristocracy in Vojvodina, but she never went into any detail nor was I ever particularly interested in researching the subject.

TGT

 

[Skywalker]

My genealogy is something I'm interested in, but I really don't know where to start or how to look into it.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I have some documentation (Discharge Papers and so on) of a Great-Plus-Grandfather on my mother's side who served in the Civil War. He was hurt near Richmond, but made it home safely and lived to be quite old. It's amazing how proud one can feel of someone who he never met and who died decades before he was born.

It's also possible that I have an ancestor on my father's side who fought in the Revolution, but more research is needed. That would really rock.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Barring mistakes (ie: barking up the wrong "tree"), mid 8th century on my father's side.

My brother is doing our mother's side, only 4 or 5 gens back there. Mom is Polish and that country has been moved back and forth so many times, a lot of records there have been lost.

As far as Dad's ancestry, I have done a lot of my own research and borrowed some from other peoples' research on the same individuals further back up the line.

I have the whole shebang here.

The first "American" came to Fairfield, Connecticut in the mid 1600's. A few generations between then and now were born in Canada, then granddad in Michigan and dad near Chicago.

A third cousin 3x removed was Joseph Philo Bradley, a supreme court justice appointed by U.S. Grant and who was also on the electoral commission giving the contested 1876 election to Rutherford B. Hayes.

The earliest I have was Eardwulf, a King of Northumbria. Not like todays Queen of England or anything, Kings were in and out of power in those days, either killed or chased out. Then they or their son would stage a "comeback". The same line led to Uchtred the Bold. This lineage started with Danish Vikings who invaded that part of Britain. A couple of later individuals opposed William the Conqueror and subsequently fled to Scotland under the protection of Malcolm (likely III).

Obviously, some dates can be off, I just noticed something different in Wikipedia, but you can never know exact years for events in that age.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

My genealogy is something I'm interested in, but I really don't know where to start or how to look into it.

ancestry.com was very helpful in my research. There a lot of free sites too, but as far as recent generations and being able to look at census records and find newspaper articles and the like ancestry.com is a great option.
I had a subscription several years ago, then let it lapse. By the time I got another subscription, there was a shitload more info for me to use. They're always updating.

 

[WillsBabe]

I'm adopted. I've managed to struggle back one generation. Which is both and depending upon my mood. I have an interest in genelogy, ancestry, that kind of thing. Possibly because I feel I have no personal history in that sense.

 

[JuanBolio]

My mom has traced my line at least back to the 12th century. Not really my thing, but I was mildly interested in knowing I'm descended from William Shakespeare's aunt, am related to Captain Henry Morgan, Daniel Boone, and all kinds of British and French nobility and royalty. The latest one she found was one of the Earls of Warwick.

 

[Miss Chicken]

1699 - for certain. That is when my 8 times great grandparents, Thomas and Sarah Pegg had their first child in Derbyshire, England. Their great-grandson, Daniel, was born in 1791 and transported to NSW as a convict in 1816.

We are having trouble researching this family back further because they seemed to have been Catholics and there is one or two generations of records that were either not recorded or lost. We are pretty certain however than we are decendants of the Peggs of Osmaston, Derbyshire. One of these Peggs was a High Sheriff of Derbyshire. If we could only fill in the blanks we could get back to the early 1600s. I know that I am rrelated to the famous porcelain painter, William Quaker Pegg (he was Daniel's seoncd cousin - Daniel seems to have been the black sheep of the family).

My earliest arrival in Australia was Daniel's father-in-law, John Wood, who arrived on the Third Fleet in 1791 (3 1/2 years after the settlement by the British). If anyone is interest here is a transcript of his trial. He was originally sentenced to death but his sentence was commuted. I am a descendant of his daughter Ann, who was born in 1796.

Daniel and Ann moved to Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania) in 1821 and are our earliest known arrival here though there is one woman who was married in 1826 who we cannot find an arrival date for.

So far we have 10 convicts. all on my father's side.

 

[Outpost4]

My grandmother traced our family lineage back to John Neville, who was born in 1612 and came over to the New World in 1634 on the Arc and the Dove, settling in what is now Maryland. I can't tell you how many greats in the grandfather to me he is as I don't remember, but it is a direct line.

The Neville family tree has been well researched. I really should pull out my grandmother's genealogy and update it with the current records.

My grandmother was a funny one. She also traced our family back through Harry Truman's. Being the good Republican she was, she destroyed the documents that proved that link.

 

[Kryton]

I'm adopted. I've managed to struggle back one generation. Which is both and depending upon my mood. I have an interest in genelogy, ancestry, that kind of thing. Possibly because I feel I have no personal history in that sense.

Odd story:

I'm adopted but have never really had an interest in knowing much about my biofam. One day a lotta years back, local Sunday night TV news did a filler story about an adopted guy looking for his biofam and he'd found a lot of siblings.

End of the news piece: "...all he knows about the last brother is that he's 24 years old and his adopted name is [my real name]."

Okay, I wasn't 24 at the time...I was 20 or 21. But they got MY EXACT NAME! I freaked out. Called the TV station and it turns out they were replaying that piece in the morning news cut-in...so I watched it and <bam!> it WAS my name!

I thought about looking into it for nearly a week when I heard that they'd found the guy with my name that was his brother...and he lived just about 17 miles from where I was living at the time.

That was a weird feeling. Otherwise, beyond medical history (of which I know nothing) I really am not interested in finding out about the teenager who gave me up to my "real" mom and dad.

 

[Jono]

With my mum's side, back until the the mid-1700s, which I think was around the time my family adjusted their surname to Dodgshun, which would mean anyone with that last name in their ancestory is related to me.

For my father's side, given that they don't have written records in the Solomon Islands for births and deaths, it doesn't go back that far.

 

[Mallory]

I had a genealogist dig back to 1692 for me, when the first of my family here in America arrived in Boston from England.

 

[trekkerguy]

This is something I'd love to do, what are the costs usually associated with it?

 

[T'Bonz]

One German line goes back to the 1500s. I have another German one back to the late 1600s and quite a few lines in different countries back to the 1700s.

No royalty (thus far) in my lines, just laborers and farmers. I still have a few English lines that I can't seem to untangle, so who knows what other surprises await me?

All I know is that many people assume when doing genealogy that people stayed put in their hometowns until they suddenly up and emigrated. Not my lot! My Scottish and Irish went back and forth between Scotland and Ireland, my English traveled within England and came from God knows where, the Swiss went to Germany before coming to the U.S. and even the later Hungarian chose not to marry within his documented hometown (where he was baptized,) and had my great-grandmother God knows where in Hungary.

Then again, if I solved all of the mysteries, what would I have to look forward to? Solving one here and there keeps me going. I had one German ancestor, the only one for which I didn't have a hometown, and in the last two years, I found it, courtesy of a newly appearing set of formerly lost records, and an unexpected communication from someone online who had the church obituary written in old style German which gave the exact town (I had had Mainz on the death certificate, the obit said Kreuznach, which is very close to Mainz, so I'll check both.)

I've been doing genealogy for 30 years. I love it. There are times when I can't do a lot due to the health and it keeps me sane. (You lot don't! )

For those starting out or looking for free resources, I highly recommend going here:

http://labs.familysearch.org/

And then go to "record search."

They are putting up new stuff all of the time. They just released Irish birth, marriage and death indexes.

 

[Jenee]

I have all the required pedigree paperwork to be a member of the DAR, I just never got around to enrolling. One of the women in that line was a Danish Princess.

On one branch, the furthest back is 1640 something. That guy was jailed for not paying his tithes to the church.

My father has contacted several people in both England and Australia who, it turns out, were distant relatives - I don't think I ever found out how far back those lines went.

Also on my father's side, I'm a decendant of Merriweather Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) and, I believe 'the McCoys'. Could be 'the Hatfields', tho. Not that it matters, because on my mother's side, her line goes back to whichever one is not on my dad's.

And, on my mother's side, she's direct decendant of William Clark.

Even more weird, one of the ancestor's (not the one that I have the paperwork for the DAR, but another one) that served as an enlisted person during the Revolutionary War had a Commanding officer who's last name is the same as my mother's maiden name. Last I'd talked with my dad about it, he still hadn't pursued that particular line to see if he was an ancestor of my mother's.

So, at least three times in my Family Tree's past, my mother's and father's branches have ... crossed paths.

 

[Finn]

My Dad has done an uncomplete family tree on his mother's side going back to the 18th century. There's a possiblity that I'm descended from a line of Irish and Scot royalty during the middle ages. He isn't paying much attention to his father's family since they weren't nice to him and uncle. However, it is known that I'm descended from the man who wrote William Tell (he was of noble birth). He haven't done any research on my mother's side yet.

 

[Kommander]

I've only done research as far as what information my family has and going through stuff when relatives die. I haven't found much interesting on my dad's side. The biggest thing there is we thought my great-grandmother was 100% Ukrainian, but was actually half Austrian. Like I said, nothing interesting.

On my mom's side, however, I was told most of my life that two of my great-great grandparents were Cherokee, because my grandmother had darkish skin. After she died, I found some pictures of her parents and grandparents (which no one had seen previously)... they definitely weren't Cherokee. I did a little digging around and found that one was a Nigerian that came here in the early 1900s and the other was descended from slaves (therefore the original country of origin is impossible to determine). Apparently, my grandmother covered this up around the time she married my grandfather, and it was a big family secret until her death. It is kind of surprising, yet understandable in some way, because my grandmother didn't like black people.

 

[wew]

My father's side been traced back to the mid 1500s, they mostly farmers, came to Canada when the British brought in some Germans to settle in Nova Scotia. One relative was a sailor aboard the HMS Guerreire (sp) which the USS Constitution fought. He unfortunately became a POW and also ended up on Nova Scotia after thewar.