Genealogy Research Surprises?

[stefania4]

I've recently started tracing my family heritage; a task made infinitely easier by the fact that my mother (adopted) knows her birth name.

This is absolutely fascinating and addictive. I've filled out some holes on my father's side; I even found the immigration records from when my great-grandmother came here from Italy, and facts about the ship she came on.

What's bizarre is suddenly having a second half of my family history. Neither Mom nor I had any idea of our ethnic background, how long her family had been here (I've found ancestors on the 1880 census and I'm still tracking back). And I told my 62-year-old mother that she was named after her grandmother, which she didn't know.

The census forms are fascinating, too - just watching how ethnic identity changes is a history lesson in itself. It took me forever to figure out that the "nationality" part of one of the forms specified the part of Italy folks were from (and yes, this was a US Census).

Has anyone else done this? Any experiences to share?

[Robyn1007]

I haven't gone real deep into it but I remember when I was 15 discovering that my dad was born in the small town we were living in randomly sent there by a job. His first house was about 4 blocks away from where we lived and his dad taught at the local community college. He had no idea!

[peachykeen]

Recently, my mother asked me to find out what ship her father came on. He was supposed to come on the Titanic, but couldn't get a ticket! I found a great website called Ancestry.com and was able to find the passenger list for the ship he came on; and printed the manifest. It also gave me a link to a picture of the ship. It turned out that he actually left the day before the Titanic left! His ship left Londonderry, Ireland and would have been too far away from the Titanic when it needed help. I had always thought that because he couldn't get on Titanic, that he probably came months later. When I ever realized how close it was, it gave me chills. I wouldn't be here if he had! I called my mother and read the details to her: the name of the ship, where it sailed from, the date it left, the date it arrived, how old he was, how much money he had on him, where he was going when he arrived, who he would stay with, how tall he was, what color eyes he had and what color hair. (Of course, she knew some of it - but to see it all in black and white was amazing). Her father died when she was eight years old, so there were a lot of things she would not have known. She then asked me to get information on her mother. Again, I found the passenger list and tracked down a picture of the ship. My next task is to see what I can find on her aunts and uncles.

My mother, her sister and their cousin did research on our family tree years ago. They worked for years researching church records, city and town hall records, checking gravestones and asking lots of family members for information. They didn't have computers or word-processors at the time, so all of the information was set forth using a typewriter. They color-coded each generation to help keep track of first cousins and second cousins and so on. My siblings and I helped to underline the generations. One person would read the names of all those to be underlined in "blue" and then "green" or "brown". They had a party at the cousin's house to distribute all the "trees" and people were coming and going all day. One person who was leaving greeted a person who was arriving - it turned out that they worked together and had no idea they were related! We find ourselves referring to people in our community as "being on the tree". I may not necessarily remember who their grandfather was and how he's related to my mother, but I know they're related.

It's fascinating to find the information and a treasure to have. Good luck in your research.

[gertdog]

I've been looking into family history for a few years now. I haven't been very systematic about it, dabbling first in one family line and then another, but I've learned many things, some interesting, some sad.

On my dad's side, I knew (from my grandmother's stories) that my great-great-grandfather was a coal miner in England who brought his family to the U.S., where they migrated to Colorado with their four children. What I learned from immigration, birth and census records is that they actually came to America twice- and that they had 7 children, not four. The first time they immigrated, they had three little boys with them (ages 2, 4, and 5), and then they had a little girl shortly after they arrived. At some point in the following year, all three of the boys died and they returned to England with their infant daughter. They then had two more girls and a boy, my great-grandfather. It made me so sad to realize there had been three little boys that weren't in any of our family records; my grandmother had never heard anything about her father having had older brothers (of course, they died before he was born). Somehow it was important to me to record their names in our family history.

I also traced a line on my mom's side back to the Quaker community established by William Penn- my ancestor's cabin from the 1700s is now an historic site- and it turns out that it is only a few miles from my house! I thought it was kind of neat that those ancestors made their way across the U.S. to California, eventually helping to establish a Quaker church in Pasadena where my grandmother and mother grew up. I also grew up in CA, yet here I am back where my ancestors started. :)

Yet another relative received a land grant for service in the Revolutionary War- the land was somewhere in Arkansas, and he and his brother built a mill. I think it would be so cool to go and see that land- though I'd be afraid it's now got a Wal-Mart on it or something!

Right now I'm trying to close in on another great-great-grandfather on my father's side. The family story about him is that he was found wandering in the woods of Arkansas around age 4 after his parents were killed in a skirmish with Native Americans, didn't know his own name or birthdate, and that he was adopted and raised by another family. I've been looking carefully at census records and think I've found his birth family- but am still trying to figure out how to confirm my hunch.

It's definitely addictive- like a never-ending mystery where you pick up new clues all the time. You didn't ask for advice but I'll offer some- document your sources carefully! I was really casual at first, but as I got deeper in it became important to know where I got which piece of information, as I often found conflicting dates or data and needed to refer back to other documents.

[Hollie]

I've also done a lot of research. One of my prizes is the civil war record of my great great Grandfather! Copies of his and my great great Grandmother's handwriting. Really neat. And to read of where he traveled in the war; he was a farmer in WI, before the war. And came home after injuries.

[KristaMB]

I find genealogy fascinating. It's something that I have always been interested in, but I haven't actually tackled it for our family. Every year we have a paternal family reunion, and one of my dad's second cousins brings all the research that she has completed. I love seeing all the information she has compiled.

Last October while speaking to one of my dad's cousins, I discovered that Billy Joe Armstrong (from the band Greenday) is a distant cousin of mine. I wish I would have known that when I was in high school!:cool:

What do you do when you run into a big obstacle in your research? I've felt too overwhelmed to even start researching since neither my DH nor my mom know their dads' names. I think we may be able to convince MIL to tell us about DH's dad, but everyone who would have known about my mom's biological father has passed away. (Although she was born in a home for unwed mothers- maybe they would release some information?)

[stefania4]

What do you do when you run into a big obstacle in your research? I've felt too overwhelmed to even start researching since neither my DH nor my mom know their dads' names. I think we may be able to convince MIL to tell us about DH's dad, but everyone who would have known about my mom's biological father has passed away. (Although she was born in a home for unwed mothers- maybe they would release some information?)

Do your Mom and DH have their birth certificates? The father's name is often listed there. If nothing else, you could google on "home for unwed mothers [town name, year]" and call whatever agencies look likely.

I'm hitting a stumbling block of a different kind - last name spellings that were incorrect or mutated over time. For example, if my last name were Foster, I would probably find census/draft registration/tombstones/etc. under Foster, Fosster, Fossa, and Voster.

[SDMomChef]

It is like a fun mystery! My mom & I started about 3 years ago working on our family's history. We got lucky with my dad's family because his last name is unusual. We were able to trace his family's history back to around the year 1100 and it turns out that one of the relatives was/is a historical figure in the Netherlands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigbolt_Ripperda

On my mom's side, we have hit a brick wall. It is a combination of a common last name and the different ways it can be spelled.

[gertdog]

Oh, yeah, the spellings can be a killer. Even common names were often misspelled by census-takers, meaning a family can disappear from the census records in one decade, then reappear the next. Sometimes, if you know where the family was living at the time, you can search records by location rather than name- that's how I found one branch of the family in the 1900 census. They were living in the same place in 1880 and 1910, so I figured they were probably there in 1900 even though I hadn't found a record when searching by name. Sure enough, they were there, but their short & simple last name had been misspelled.

Some electronic records databases give the option of searching by Soundex code, which accounts for sound-alike names with different spellings. Ancestry.com also allows you to specify "exact match" searches for names- but if you de-select "exact match" you have to select at least a few other parameters (birth year, residence) to have a hope of getting a manageable number of hits. Otherwise you sometimes get thousands of potential "matches" that you have to wade through.

[TieKitty]

My mother, who is in her 80's, has asked me to do a genealogical search for our family to pass on to her grandchildren. I would love to do this, but I don't have a clue where to begin. Someone told me about the records that BYU has and also about Ancestors.com. I would appreciate any other suggestions for getting started.

[Meganator]

My mother, who is in her 80's, has asked me to do a genealogical search for our family to pass on to her grandchildren. I would love to do this, but I don't have a clue where to begin. Someone told me about the records that BYU has and also about Ancestors.com. I would appreciate any other suggestions for getting started.

Other people in my family are the genealogists, so I don't know a lot about it. But I think the best way to get started is to talk to your mother and any other family members to find out what they know, then when you go to outside sources, you will have a starting point. Write down names, dates, where they lived, where they were from, etc. - as much as anyone can remember. Some of it will be remembered wrong, so it is better if you have mulitple family members to better correlate the info. But you work with what you've got.

[FruitsAlive]

I've found it totally addictive as well. My grandmother was very secretive about her past, and my grandfather died soon after my mother was born. It turns out that he was older than my great grandfather and had four other children besides my mom...some older than my grandma.:eek:
I couldn't find the boat records, but I found that they came from Prague in the late 1800s. For nationality, all it says is Bohemian...which, of course, always gets Bohemian Rhapsody stuck in my head when I go through the census.

[Meganator]

My mother, who is in her 80's, has asked me to do a genealogical search for our family to pass on to her grandchildren. I would love to do this, but I don't have a clue where to begin. Someone told me about the records that BYU has and also about Ancestors.com. I would appreciate any other suggestions for getting started.


In addition to what I mentioned above, also ask your mother or other relatives about any alternate last name spellings they are aware of.

[TieKitty]

Other people in my family are the genealogists, so I don't know a lot about it. But I think the best way to get started is to talk to your mother and any other family members to find out what they know, then when you go to outside sources, you will have a starting point. Write down names, dates, where they lived, where they were from, etc. - as much as anyone can remember. Some of it will be remembered wrong, so it is better if you have mulitple family members to better correlate the info. But you work with what you've got.


Thanks for the information! I guess it's best to just jump in.

BTW, I didn't intend to hijack this post. I'll be interested to see what others have found out about their family history.

[tamawrite]

My several-greats grandmother was a survivor of the Donner Party.

Soup's on! :p ;) :D

[FruitsAlive]

My several-greats grandmother was a survivor of the Donner Party.

Soup's on! :p ;) :D

Was she one of the snowshoers?

[tamawrite]

Was she one of the snowshoers?

I believe so. She was young -- teens or early twenties? -- and one of the Murphys, if I recall correctly.

[Canice]

My maternal aunt traced her family back to the 17th century in France and Motreal, which is a miniscule part of our bloodline - pretty much every came from Ireland. She went back a couple of hundred years there, too (all this in the pre-Internet days) so I have an extensive family history on my mother's side. But it was my father's family that interested me: His parents came from Northern Ireland and he didn't have any relatives in this country; as a result I have no known relatives on his side (and just my aunt and one cousin on my mother's side). So I once asked my aunt if she would mind helping me find a relative or two of my dad's in Ireland. All I had was my grandfather's obituary, and an estimated year of emigration. She posted a notice in the local newspaper, and I quite a few letters from people who knew my grandfather and/or his family, and that he had had a son in the U.S.
One woman sent my mother a photograph of my father at his First Communion. She'd had it for (obviously) many, many years and it had been said to be a different relative, though she didn't think so. She asked my mother if it could be my dad, and we could see in a heartbeat that it was. I have the photo now on a shelf, after all those decades in a drawer in Northern Ireland.

[TieKitty]

According to my DH's aunt, they are related to Daniel Boone. Also, his GGF was the mayor of Budapest before coming to the US.

[TieKitty]

According to my DH's aunt, they are related to Daniel Boone. Also, his GGF was the mayor of Budapest before coming to the US.

Oops. I stand corrected. :o It wasn't Daniel Boone, it was Jesse James.

[Krysia1031]

Stefania, what a great thread!

I loved learnig about my families history. Both my parents came to America in the 1950's on ships (seperately, they met here in the US) so it was interesting when I started digging around and asking about our family history. It turns out that my mom's family was Polish royalty in the late 1800's. My GGM fell in love with a "commoner" and wanted to marry him, but was not allowed to by her family. She ended up leaving the family's castle & all the wealth and ran away with my GGF to another part of the country where they bought a small farm and had 3 children. My mom has some pretty cool pictures of my GGM when she was a small child with her "royal family".

[Kayaksoup]

I put in hours and hours of research into my famiiy tree. I contacted distant relations in the US and England, got first hand accounts of graveyards and church records in Scandiniavia, scanned census records and Civil War records and SSI records, church records form England and Ireland, used Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com etc. I uploaded my very extensive family tree to Ancestry.com, but failed to save a hard copy. My hard drive crashed and I lost all of my work (well all the stuff I had put into the computer ~ I still have 4 notebooks full of extensive notes that would need to be picked apart). So Save yourself a hard copy of whatever you do!!!!

I managed to take one branch of the family back almost a thousand years to Ireland. Of course, that is just one small fragment but it was so cool to be able to see it all laid out. There is actually a gravestone in Wales with one of my ancestors names from around 1500, I would love to see it. Oh, and that line of the family has a small intermarrying issue:o The tree actually converges after 3 generations in the 1800s.

[Sookie]

I just received a packet of information from my cousin in Switzerland. She is big into genealogy. It appears that my Swiss Great Grandfather:

"on July 13, Mathias is 10 years old, and in the house of the shoemaker Andreas Fausch starts a fire which destroys within 5 hours 96 houses and 116 barns. Almost the whole village of Seewis Switzerland burned down".

[tamawrite]

I just received a packet of information from my cousin in Switzerland. She is big into genealogy. It appears that my Swiss Great Grandfather:

"on July 13, Mathias is 10 years old, and in the house of the shoemaker Andreas Fausch starts a fire which destroys within 5 hours 96 houses and 116 barns. Almost the whole village of Seewis Switzerland burned down".


Oh, my! Don't play with matches! :D

[stefania4]

Over the past few days I've learned that one of my great-greats was a Union soldier during the Civil War - he died in Andersonville prison in south Georgia. I also have at least two Revolutionary War vets in the tree. Where's that DAR application? :cool:

[ErinM]

I've started doing some digging on both sides of my family.

First odd thing: My great-grandfather's name was Alpheus. His parents' names? Almond and Electa. Yeah. That's about as weird as you can get, IMO.

On my mom's father's side, I can trace the paternal line, via the familysearch.org site, back to the 1500s England. Quite possibly, someone came over on the Mayflower, but I'm not sure of that.

My great-great grandmother was born in Lowell, MA in 1835. I wonder if she worked in the factories at all when she was young.

Lots to find out, who knows where this will take me? Mom said that a few relative have gone before me in learning about this stuff, I think my aunt or someone even paid to have some big huge book made. But I wanna dig around for myself, it sounds like it will be more fun than to have everything told to me...

[Sherlock]

What a great thread! I love genealogy. I started researching my family tree when I bought my computer about 9 years ago and found it to be fascinating and yes, totally addictive.

Some of the more interesting facts I found:
One of my ancestors was captured by the Indians along with her sister when they were 13 and 11 and the rest of her family, except for the males who were hunting at the time, were massacred (The Wyoming Valley Massacre). They were eventually set free at Fort Niagara as a result of a treaty agreement after months of "cruel captivity". Her son recorded her memoirs and it is an amazing story. Several rode with George Washington. I was able to get a list of the pension application of one of them and the total of his wealth was about 9 dollars, including a bugle and a cow.

My grandfather on my father's side left my grandmother when my dad was 16 and no one would talk about him. When I started delving into my family tree, I found out that he had left and moved to Buffalo with a "redhead"! That side is still my biggest brickwall.

I am hoping when I retire (in about 1 1/2 years) to be able to work on it more consistently. Good luck with your research.

Sandy

Erin, your Alpheus wouldn't be a Heath would he?

[ErinM]

Erin, your Alpheus wouldn't be a Heath would he?


As far as I know, he isn't...but Heath is way better than Alpheus in terms of naming babies! ;)

[stefania4]

First odd thing: My great-grandfather's name was Alpheus. His parents' names? Almond and Electa. Yeah. That's about as weird as you can get, IMO.


I was so impressed with the classic names I found in my family - William, Thomas, Mary, Henry, Anna, Margaret, etc.

Then I found Cletus.

[badunnin]

First odd thing: My great-grandfather's name was Alpheus. His parents' names? Almond and Electa. Yeah. That's about as weird as you can get, IMO.


My great-grandparents (paternal grandmother's parents) were Edmere and Ethelbert. Which was Gram and which her DH? ;)

[ErinM]

My great-grandparents (paternal grandmother's parents) were Edmere and Ethelbert. Which was Gram and which her DH? ;)


Hmmm....well, based on the names alone, logically I'd say that Ethelbert was Gram and Edmere was her DH. But I get the feeling that it's really probably the opposite!

Where the heck do any of these names come from? I'm guessing there's a reason they've died out. The fact that people 100 or so years into their future are astounded by them is probably reason enough...

(Although, in the back of my head, "Almond" coud make for a interesting middle name. I guess it'd depend on how much I plan to hate my child. ;) )

[badunnin]

Hmmm....well, based on the names alone, logically I'd say that Ethelbert was Gram and Edmere was her DH. But I get the feeling that it's really probably the opposite!

It is the opposite - Edmere was Gram (and she lived to be 98!). The names are French in origin I'm assuming.

[Kristena]

My Dad has researched a lot of our family tree. We knew we had a huge Norwegian line but then there was a bit of English and Welsh thrown in. And through the English & Welsh line we are directly related to 2 signers of the Declaration of Independence. And I'm married to an Englishman!