Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Genealogy

I never wondered enough about my own ancestry to really dig. Stories about some of my more immediate ancestors were interesting and I have dabbled just a bit, but ran into dead ends quickly and lost interest.

I was wondering about an old acquaintance just the other day and searched a site or two to see what I could find out. While I was looking around I saw a link to a site I had never heard of:

familysearch.org

It turns out that the LDS church runs and maintains this site. You can register for a free account and hop on it and ride. I think I know why they do it but I won't say why because I am not sure it's correct. Anyway, I got curious about it and started looking for some closer relatives who have passed on, but who I knew well. My own mother's info was incomplete and I saw that I could add to it, so I did. Then I looked to see what my biological father's family tree looks like. His father's mother, my great grandmother once sent me a Christmas gift which I still have. That was in 1971. I never saw her as she lived in Pennsylvania and never came down to Texas. Anyway, I started looking at her ancestry because I knew nothing about her.

I was amazed at how far back the records go. One branch was documented as far back as around 800 AD (I know...that's just almost unbelievable). I backed out of that branch and went up another one, and then another and another, and what I found blew me completely away: I saw David I king of Scotland, Henry III, and numerous other lesser known royalty. Needless to say, my jaw was on the space bar of my keyboard. I did not count how many generations back that was, but it has to be around forty or so.

When you think about it, when you have umpteen great, great, great, great, great, great, great (etc. etc.) grandfathers, it stands to reason that you're liable to run into something like this. If you're curious enough, give it a try and see if you can find someone famous or notorious in your own ancestry. I'll bet about half of you would find something similar if you looked around enough. There's no telling what you'll turn up.

One of my father's cousins traced their family tree to Scotland in the 15th. Century, to Ireland, South Carolina, and Tennessee by the 1820s, including a South Carolina officer in the Revolutionary war who might have been at the battle of King's Mountain. He's buried in a little country church yard in SC. Two of my distant relatives walked 40 miles to Nashville to enlist in the Army of Tennessee in the 1860s. I found one of their names in the Dickson County Tennessee property tax records from the 1880s, so at least one of them survived the war.

I've been told a very similar story about someone in our family tree, and that the main character of Mel Gibson's "The Patriot" was based on him. I have not been able to corroborate that. Maybe I'll go snooping a little more and get lucky.

I just found William the Conqueror in my family tree. Unreal.

My Dad's brother Benton researched their family genealogy back to 1683 when John Nesmith from Scotland landed in New Jersey. Our family name exists in several variations as Naismythe, Naismith, Nesmyth, Nessmyth, NeSmith and probably others I am not aware of. Some of the family came to the South over the years, my bunch in Alabama. Uncle Benton lived in California for a while then retired and lived in Texas until he died. I believe that the family name goes back quite a few years in Scotland. My Mom's family are Blands of S ottush descent and Burkards of German, so I'm typical Scotts-German blood. Great grandfather Burkard was a German immigrant and worked as a butcher in Cullman Alabama near here. Cullman was a settlement started by JohannG. Cullmann for German settlers, incorporating in 1878. Some of the local churches held services in German language until World War 2 ended that. Cullman is a twin city with Frankweiller Germany and has Oktoberfest celebration each year. Great grandfather never taught any of his children the German language, preferring to leave the old life behind.

Assuming there were no adoptions or oopsies along the way lol.

My aunt ( mother’s sister) is into that.

Traced that side of our family back to the Mayflower…

She’s also fascinated with old wooden churchs.

Lots of good stuff there. Because it can be modified, they sometimes mess up. They had my mother dead while she was still alive.

No doubt. We know of quite a few oopsies in the family tree.




I can't find any connections to the Mayflower, but there are a few who arrived here during the early 1600s. Some who fought the Revolution, too.



It's amazing they have as much as they do, and there just has to be mistakes when dealing with so much information.

"We're each out $15,000."

"And we have to go on long trips in a Winnebago."

And we're not Romanovs."

"We're descended from thieves and whores."

My Dad said, if we knew it, probably descended from riffraff. Who left money behind in the old country?

some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol

I am offspring of Edward I, KOE

9th G.Grandson of Susanna North Martin, a Salem Witch

Cousin to Jeremy Swift that played Spratt on Downton Abbey, maternally

Cousin to Henry Herbert, current owner of Highclere Castle, IE: Downton Abbey, paternally

A Soldier that rode with Sherman, and a Soldier that fought them...through paternal grandparents

Cousin to BHO, through his mama of course.... you can't pick and choose!!!

Cousin to Dr Edward Maynard, I have one of his earlier rifle creations, we also wear the same last name..

Maynard MASS., settled by the earliest Maynard immigrants....

Alas, none left me Title or great wealth...........

As grandma said: '...where we've come from don't much matter, it's where we are going that matters...'

My great, great, great grandmother split rails with Lincoln?

Your split tail split rails?

All I'm doing is following the branches that are already constructed. I put none of it together except to link my own mother to her parents, and that's not part of dear old dad's lineage anyway. Look at your own family tree and go back 40 generations. That amounts to over 1 billion ancestors. Odds are good there's someone very notable there---IF you take the right paths to find them.


2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776

He has his ancestors on ignore.

Could be genetic, too.

I can't see that it would change anything.

Horse thieves in mine.
Tried following Drake Lanning Dismore Frack Peal Hamilton with varied success
Wife's Wilson Clough Gay is all the names we know.
Iowa Indiana Missouri Oklahoma Pennsylvania Virginia

Found slaveholders and abolitionists. I think I owe myself reparations.

I calle myself Flemish Jew redneck American