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.
...including a South Carolina officer in the Revolutionary war who might have been at the battle of King's Mountain.
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.
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.
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
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.
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
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.
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
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.
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.
Just adding to the information here, not saying good or evil----The largest genealogy worksite in the world is run by the Mormons, and located in solid granite canyon virtually A bomb proof. Members are encouraged to do genealogy work for non-members, both dead and alive. Baptism for the dead, so they can admitted to heaven is part of the every day Temple work performed in 1000s of Temples across the world. One of the most up to date genetic research labs in the world is at BYU. At least 100s of DNA samples are analyzed daily. The FBI and CIA would be happy to have access to it. The purpose? Establish a genetic pathway from the middle eastern tribes that came to the Central American region to hide the golden plates and prove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Ever wonder why Myrid genetics was in SLC and Delphi was in Provo?
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
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.
He has his ancestors on ignore.
That's the key, following the right lines.
Some of my lines go back to peasant farmers, others go back to European nobility, and once you're related to one European Noble, you're related to all of them.
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
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.
Having dabbled in this over several years I was surprised to see the advances in the past couple years. My family on one side is in it's own genealogy website broken into 110 branches going back to the 1600's and farther. Last year I found WikiTree picked that up and went right back to year 1025 listing us as descendants of magna carta surety barrons and more to George washington and more. Then links taking back into 900's. Links to current family, castles, cattle, and tapestry pedigree as large as a ballroom. This has boiled down to relatives history of 1/3 criminal, 1/3 politician, 1//3 royalty, or all the same under a different labels. Not sure if I've learned anything valuable but seems interesting to many in my age category.
This site is affiliated with familysearch.org. It will tell you if your related to various persons. Royalty, declaration signers, celebrities, etc. Goes back something like 15 generations.
Interesting.... so am I. He was my 11th great grandfather, through Pocahontas and her full blooded daughter.
After so many generations, my Native American contribution is tiny, but you and I still have more factual claim to that ancestry than a certain senator from Massachusetts.
Interesting.... so am I. He was my 11th great grandfather, through Pocahontas and her full blooded daughter.
After so many generations, my Native American contribution is tiny, but you and I still have more factual claim to that ancestry than a certain senator from Massachusetts.
Interesting.... so am I. He was my 11th great grandfather, through Pocahontas and her full blooded daughter.
After so many generations, my Native American contribution is tiny, but you and I still have more factual claim to that ancestry than a certain senator from Massachusetts.
Goddam we cuzzins 🤜🤛
Me too, but Pocahontas was a aunt.
On the other side I'm descended from three of the Mayflower passengers.
Interesting.... so am I. He was my 11th great grandfather, through Pocahontas and her full blooded daughter.
After so many generations, my Native American contribution is tiny, but you and I still have more factual claim to that ancestry than a certain senator from Massachusetts.
Goddam we cuzzins 🤜🤛
Me too, but Pocahontas was a aunt.
On the other side I'm descended from three of the Mayflower passengers.
Interesting.... so am I. He was my 11th great grandfather, through Pocahontas and her full blooded daughter.
After so many generations, my Native American contribution is tiny, but you and I still have more factual claim to that ancestry than a certain senator from Massachusetts.
Goddam we cuzzins 🤜🤛
Me too, but Pocahontas was a aunt.
On the other side I'm descended from three of the Mayflower passengers.
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
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
2^40 would be over a trillion...got screwed up on the zeroes. Using 2^30 you get over one billion. But, whatever. Going back 30 generations ought to be exercise enough, if the data is there.
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
Like the Cubans here in south FL. Grand Papa was a horse and cattle rancher. Grand Mama was the matriarch. No plumbers, electricians, carpenters or ditch diggers.
My Great-Grandfather was the Sheriff of Beaver County, OK for a while. Maternal side, grandfather. A Great (or GG) uncle was hanged for stealing horses in Kansas. Maternal side, grandmother.
Paternal Grandparents came to NM straight from Croatia, near Zagreb.
I'll probably be one of those ghosts that get shaken out in these searches.
This site is affiliated with familysearch.org. It will tell you if your related to various persons. Royalty, declaration signers, celebrities, etc. Goes back something like 15 generations.
I share a common ancestor with 42 US Presidents, 42 Declaration signers, 93 movie stars, and 30 people of European Royalty. I find it kind of odd that Winston Churchill is listed on the European Royalty list.
I downloaded the full list in pdf. format which includes a lot of LDS names, my "relationships" report is 158 pages long.
some of the stuff amateur genealogy sleuths come up is hilarious. Seems like almost everyone is linked to royalty. lol
Like the Cubans here in south FL. Grand Papa was a horse and cattle rancher. Grand Mama was the matriarch. No plumbers, electricians, carpenters or ditch diggers.
This site is affiliated with familysearch.org. It will tell you if your related to various persons. Royalty, declaration signers, celebrities, etc. Goes back something like 15 generations.
I share a common ancestor with 42 US Presidents, 42 Declaration signers, 93 movie stars, and 30 people of European Royalty. I find it kind of odd that Winston Churchill is listed on the European Royalty list.
I downloaded the full list in pdf. format which includes a lot of LDS names, my "relationships" report is 158 pages long.
This site is affiliated with familysearch.org. It will tell you if your related to various persons. Royalty, declaration signers, celebrities, etc. Goes back something like 15 generations.
I share a common ancestor with 42 US Presidents, 42 Declaration signers, 93 movie stars, and 30 people of European Royalty. I find it kind of odd that Winston Churchill is listed on the European Royalty list.
I downloaded the full list in pdf. format which includes a lot of LDS names, my "relationships" report is 158 pages long.
He was. Duke of Marlboro if I recall correctly.
That would explain it.
Here's the story of my 11th Great Grandmother, I didn't write it but I am a direct descendent of hers.
Catalyntje died Sep 11, 1689 in Wallabout, New York about the age of 84. She was buried in the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church cemetery. She had a large family, and there were as many as 150 descendants living at the time of her death; it is said that today there are over one million descendants, including Humphrey Bogart, James Spader and Howard Dean.
This site is affiliated with familysearch.org. It will tell you if your related to various persons. Royalty, declaration signers, celebrities, etc. Goes back something like 15 generations.
I have enough of my family history to know if a genealogy site is accurate. That's something I'd like to do. The problem is, in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, records can be a bit sketchy. That's where my prior knowledge will come in handy....I'll know if they go down the wrong trail.
I have worked extensively with genealogists at certain periods of my life, I have never used any of the LDS tools and dont know anyone who has, although I know their collection is huge.
In Canada, the main source is the Hudson Bay Archives in Winnipeg, the archival collection includes records from the Catholic Church, Northwest Company, Marriage's, Baptism's etc... these sources have records starting around 1610 IIRC. These sources can be cross referenced quite easily and they are available online, they never used to be but are now. Pretty sure there are people who can do the research for you for a small fee.
This is important if your family came here with the first French (Champlain) as an example, or the first Scots (Selkirk settlers) who were engaged with one of the Fur trading companies, Hudson Bay Company, North west company, etc...
Many of the original non- native inhabitants of this Continent worked in the Fur trade, then went South either before the USA was founded or afterwards. I have been contacted by people around the USA who were descendants of Fur trade employee's, and we shared information with one another.
I am not sure of the extent of American Fur trading companies record keeping, but there are a number of them, I would be curious to know that, I have never needed to know that, but I would look there too.
I was curious myself how those records were kept and I researched BuzzH and found out his great grandfather was a toad. That should prove that evolution isn’t real…
I was curious myself how those records were kept and I researched BuzzH and found out his great grandfather was a toad. That should prove that evolution isn’t real…
Yep. Truly just a chip off the ol' block, ain't he?
My mom and aunt spent about 15 years traveling all over the US, England, and Ireland researching our family history .... everything has been documented by finding birth, marriage,death certificates, etc. They have been to museums, county clerk offices, you name it. Sometimes church records or county land records..... regular old detectives lol. They put together a nice binder with copies of everything and gave them to all of the kids awhile back for Christmas and every year she gives us updates that we can add to the binder. Pretty neat.
I have a dumbazz cousin that claimed to trace our family back 500 years on a website.... her info was about 80% wrong lol. Everyone claims they're related to someone on the fuggin Mayflower lmao.
My mom and aunt spent about 15 years traveling all over the US, England, and Ireland researching our family history .... everything has been documented by finding birth, marriage,death certificates, etc. They have been to museums, county clerk offices, you name it. Sometimes church records or county land records..... regular old detectives lol. They put together a nice binder with copies of everything and gave them to all of the kids awhile back for Christmas and every year she gives us updates that we can add to the binder. Pretty neat.
I have a dumbazz cousin that claimed to trace our family back 500 years on a website.... her info was about 80% wrong lol. Everyone claims they're related to someone on the fuggin Mayflower lmao.
That is a very nice gift to give, it takes alot of caring work to put that together.
I doubt if any one website can put 500 years, or even 200 years together, if there is I haven't seen it,, so ya there are alot of dumbazz cousins around lol.
Do not underestimate the LDS church. I'll never be Mormon, but this is something they take very seriously and put a lot of resources into and I'd bet on them to be the best in the world in the field.
Do not underestimate the LDS church. I'll never be Mormon, but this is something they take very seriously and put a lot of resources into and I'd bet on them to be the best in the world in the field.
If you are referring to me......I wasn't referring the the LDS, my apologies, I think it likely has the most extensive collection that probably works for alot of people. I use other sources is all, and they are available for research.
Sometimes people enter into a genealogy search for as short as 1-2 immediate generations, looking for lost family, that happened to me. Then others try to go back 10-20 generations, interesting.
Do not underestimate the LDS church. I'll never be Mormon, but this is something they take very seriously and put a lot of resources into and I'd bet on them to be the best in the world in the field.
When you're constantly bangin your nieces, cousins, and other relatives you gotta keep track of that chit.
I checked familysearch.org finding they had my fathers birth year wrong, age off, burial town incorrect, some siblings missing, yet parents correct ending there. Other sites are correct going back to famous criminals and famous politicians beyond 1025.
I've got ancestors that go back five, maybe six generations in the Kentucky county where I was born. I've got some distant relatives who have tracked it back much farther than that. But it goes in so many directions once you get back past five generations that it doesn't have much significance. There's too many lines feeding into it if you take it back to sixth great grandparents.
My wife passed in 1998–shortly after I did some genealogy research on her name and my own. Traced her family name back to 1610 with Champlain and my own to the Mayflower. Soon forgot about it.
During Covid I looked it up again and was absolutely astounded by all the new information that’s available.
I found out that somewhere between the whaling Captain and the whiskey trader in early Alberta there was an adoption. That adoption was probably a white kid but nothing else is known about him. So while I have the complete family tree back 12 generations to the Mayflower there is no genetic dna relation.
I was curious myself how those records were kept and I researched BuzzH and found out his great grandfather was a toad. That should prove that evolution isn’t real…
I don't have what it takes to dig like my wife did tracing hers and then mine. The mystery can suck you in though. She relied on LDS a lot. Immigration records are also very good once you get on the scent. The really old ones didn't always list the wives. She went to the National Archives in DC. This was 12-14 years ago so some of the old microfiche records might be digitized now. On a parallel course, genetic tracing services like 23 and Me or Ancestry.Com can link you to a whole range of people, showing the closeness of relationship, ethnicity, and geographic origin. Also, I forgot to mention church records. Many churches maintained what was like a big family bible recording births, deaths, and marriages.
Per the relative finder site, I'm a direct descendent of 4 passengers that were on the Mayflower. 11th, 12th and 13th Great Grandfathers, and one 12th Great Grandmother.
The "more options" button allows one to sort the list of "all" relatives, to just "direct" decedents.
My wife passed in 1998–shortly after I did some genealogy research on her name and my own. Traced her family name back to 1610 with Champlain and my own to the Mayflower. Soon forgot about it.
During Covid I looked it up again and was absolutely astounded by all the new information that’s available.
I found out that somewhere between the whaling Captain and the whiskey trader in early Alberta there was an adoption. That adoption was probably a white kid but nothing else is known about him. So while I have the complete family tree back 12 generations to the Mayflower there is no genetic dna relation.
Adoptions were common, native kid to white family, white kid to native families, alot of that happened.
I have a signed contract between my 5th gen grandfather and the Northwest company, it says to go to Lk Superior, Nipigon and beyond.....1793.........he was around 16yrs, unlikely he ever saw his parents again as he spent the rest of his life in the Athabaska region of Alberta.
I recall a husband/wife LDS team spending well over a year going thru our courthouse records researching genealogy records for the church. A lady in our church made a living doing searches on genealogy and sold several books of census, voting rolls, Indians and the like. She bumped into every day for well over a year doing research at the courthouse. The lady at church was also instrumental in compiling lists of everyone buried in the many cemeteries scattered throughout the county, GPS and map directions to them. Another church member and I did repairs on a house she purchased. She even helped me with CSA enlistment records of my great great great grandfather. I was able to locate his grave complete with CSA marker and learned was a POW and wounded 2X, even got a CSA pension. Wife’s maternal side was professionally researched and goes way back to Lincolnshire. Some were knights and sea captains. Related to Lady Grantham on Downton Abbey.
HAHA you win the inerweb prize of the week
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