Have you traced your genealogy? How far?

[Grumpy's Gal]

I'm working on my genealogy. Some days go really well and some days are so frustrating. The internet has been helpful. The farthest I've gone to use a genealogy library is about an hour and fifteen minutes away.

I've traced one set of 4xgreat grandparents back to 1700's Germany. I'm working on another line now that has lots of dead ends.

Are any of you tracing your genealogy? Has it been easy? Enjoyable? Frustrating? I love to watch the tv shows " who do you think you are" and " finding your roots." They make it look so easy!

 

[Mirielle]

I'm working on my genealogy. Some days go really well and some days are so frustrating. The internet has been helpful. The farthest I've gone to use a genealogy library is about an hour and fifteen minutes away.

I've traced one set of 4xgreat grandparents back to 1700's Germany. I'm working on another line now that has lots of dead ends.

Are any of you tracing your genealogy? Has it been easy? Enjoyable? Frustrating? I love to watch the tv shows " who do you think you are" and " finding your roots." They make it look so easy!

My stepson was on fire with this for several years. It was sad, but not another soul in the family shared his excitement and we grew bored listening to him tell all he'd uncovered. He went back to the 1600's in England and found that his grandfather had been attending the *wrong* family reunions for years. A shame that his grandfather had passed away by the time he discovered this. Now, the "other" side of the family is the one we'd really like to know about. Lots of unscrupulous behavior and tall tales...no boring stuff at all! His has no interest in that. Anyway...yes, it's been very enjoyable to my stepson and he's traveled out of state to meet long lost relatives and has seen towns that were started by our ancestors. Really, he's done a remarkable job and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as he. Oh, and I hope your family truly appreciates what you uncover.

 

[Grumpy's Gal]

Wow! That's great and certainly not boring! I haven't found anything funny or exciting to share yet.

One of my friends found out that her grandfather had been married to two women AT THE SAME TIME! And had two sets of children.

No one who's left in my blood- family seems particularly interested when I find new information. But my DH is awesome and excited for me and even helps me search!

 

[Bilberry]

It was fun working on genealogy for awhile. I spent a good amount of time on it around 15 years ago.

The farthest back I've gone I guess is to the 1600 hundreds, possibly 1500s, I don't remember now. I have a number of Pilgrims as ancestors on my father's side of the family. Mom's side of the family were early residence to N. America also. They began in the south though, and moved from southern state to southern state through generations.

 

[mmouse37]

Not me but my aunt has. she traced family back 1700 Ireland (flew there to track some things down and take pics). She put this awesome bound book together for the family.

On our other side another family member traced us back to 1500's England. Found out that our ancestor was the first governor of Salem, Mass. Statue in the center of the town and all!!!

http://www.salemweb.com/guide/roger.php

We have been to Salem several times to visit him LOL!!

MJ

 

[DawnM]

I was adopted. I found my birth parents about 2 years ago.

My birth mother and I have a relationship now, and I have a relationship with my 2 sisters I found out about.

She told me who my birth father was, and I have no reason to believe she didn't know who he was (as in, no Jerry Springer, "it could have been one of 5 guys").

Fortunately, my birth father has a full online page of his genealogy, traced back to the Revolutionary War. So, I do have the History there.

For my adopted family, there is at least one History buff on each side of the family. So,I have a lot of that history as well.

 

[tvguy]

DD spend some time on this. Much of my father's side is lost due to the passage of time, that fact that my Grandparents moved around the world a lot, a lack of records, and a general lack of interest in family history by dad and his parents. We did discover my Grandmother got on a ship in England and arrived at Ellis island 10 years younger than she was 8 days earlier. We do know my dad was born in China a German citizen, and moved to the U.S. at age 2.
We can go a bit further back on my moms side.
My wife's side is easier to trace because her family has live in big U.S. cities with lots of record keeping for hundreds of years.

 

[Darcy03231]

My aunt has traced my father's side back into the 1200's in France. She and my uncle made several trips over there.

A cousin and I have done quite a bit on my mother's side (back to the 1600's in England) on her mother's side. Unfortunately, we can't go too far back on my grandfather's side. His parents came to the United States from Germany and the town they lived in no longer exists due to war. The little information we have comes from a family bible. We have been able to contact relatives still living in Germany to fill it out a little, but sadly there are no records in existence anymore.

 

[rastahomie]

One of my cousins on my dad's side (Dan) has done extensive genealogy research, and he shared his findings with me online. I could have spent hours on it - he had branches going this way and that, with several hundred (if not several thousand) people. For the lulz, I went up the line strictly patrilineally (my father to his father to his father, and so on), as far back as Dan did. He got as far as the first person bearing our name to cross the Atlantic; speaking patrilineally, I'm German. Specifically, I'm the descendant of a tobacco farmer who fled the authorities (apparently that was illegal at the time), changed his name, came to America, and decided that he'd seek his fortune in central freaking Illinois.

 

[Praying Colonel]

When I started I was into seeing how far back I could go, but in the past year or 2 I've been more about trying to do more in my past 4-5 generations with aunts/uncles/cousins. In doing so I've also been able to find things on my direct descendants I hadn't known before.

BTW, if you enjoy watching shows on genealogy, the new season of Who Do You Think You Are? premieres this Sunday night on TLC. The guests this season are:

Jessica Biel
Julie Bowen
Courteney Cox
Jennifer Grey
Smokey Robinson
Liv Tyler
Noah Wyle

 

[QueenIsabella]

My DH is into genealogy, and he loves the show "Who Do You Think You Are?" Luckily for him, he's had some past family members (a great-aunt, maybe?) that did a ton of research ages ago--pre-internet. She had booklets made up with names and vital dates, so he had a good starting point. He does a lot online, meeting distant relatives and so forth. His father's family goes back to being in this county since 1640-ish. He also took a DNA test--turns out, he's more Irish than British.

DH has tried to trace my family lines, too, and has some success on my mother's side. She was Canadian, so the records exist and can be accessed. OTOH, my dad was born in Italy, and his father was illiterate (my grandmother had a third-grade education). And they lived in a tiny town in Italy. So, accessing more information there would be tricky, although I still have relatives back in the Old Country.

 

[cabanafrau]

I'm working on my genealogy. Some days go really well and some days are so frustrating. The internet has been helpful. The farthest I've gone to use a genealogy library is about an hour and fifteen minutes away.

I've traced one set of 4xgreat grandparents back to 1700's Germany. I'm working on another line now that has lots of dead ends.

Are any of you tracing your genealogy? Has it been easy? Enjoyable? Frustrating? I love to watch the tv shows " who do you think you are" and " finding your roots." They make it look so easy!

If it makes you feel less frustrated only the successful searches that result in a story worthy of putting in front of a TV audience make it onto the shows. They simply don't film the searches that hit roadblocks.

 

[Liberty Belle]

One of my lines is verified back to 1630, when my ancestor came to the US from England. All the work was done by my cousin, though.

I did go back to the 900s through one site, but I can't verfy any of that.

Back when Ancestry.com had the "are you related to anyone famous" feature, I found out George W. Bush and I shared a great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother. Not my president of choice, unfortunately.

 

[Magpie]

Mine is a mess, due to my very, very common name and my somewhat dodgy ancestors. But my stepmother's been trying, and my father was very keen to inform me the last time I visited that one of my ancestresses was mixed-race. I think my reaction disappointed him a bit, as I said, "Yeah, that's no surprise!" But really, I'd been hearing rumours about it since I was a kid, and there's even a museum in our family's hometown featuring some civil war photos of a black officer, who looks SO much like my father's side of the family.

And I did manage to trace my husband's side of the family back to the very first fellow to bear the family name, in France. He married a laird's daughter, got some land in her dowry, and had to give himself a last name for legal purposes. That was fun to read about! Some day we'll have to visit the ancestral homeland.

 

[wilkeliza]

I'm getting some conflicting information the further I go back on my mom's side. My grandpa does say it is kind of because the families were bigger so when the census guy came to count if one of the kids was out playing in the field they may not have been counted or someone may have been marked as older than he was because their mom said the wrong kid etc. I've traced my dad's family back a little further. Mostly figuring out they have been in Texas longer than dirt it feels like haha. Literately all of them basically lived in the same 50 mile radius as the whole family does now. Thankfully on my mom's side we have the right information even though some census records are wrong because the family keeps a pretty accurate history and we all donate to help keep it and the family grave yard kept up so a lot easier to fact check when things like family bibles and stuff are still at your finger tips.

I'm starting to slowly piece together that most of our family lore is false at least on my father's side. I haven't come up with any Native American lineage even though both of my father's parents swore to it.

 

[MamaBelle4]

I'm getting some conflicting information the further I go back on my mom's side. My grandpa does say it is kind of because the families were bigger so when the census guy came to count if one of the kids was out playing in the field they may not have been counted or someone may have been marked as older than he was because their mom said the wrong kid etc. I've traced my dad's family back a little further. Mostly figuring out they have been in Texas longer than dirt it feels like haha. Literately all of them basically lived in the same 50 mile radius as the whole family does now. Thankfully on my mom's side we have the right information even though some census records are wrong because the family keeps a pretty accurate history and we all donate to help keep it and the family grave yard kept up so a lot easier to fact check when things like family bibles and stuff are still at your finger tips.

I'm starting to slowly piece together that most of our family lore is false at least on my father's side. I haven't come up with any Native American lineage even though both of my father's parents swore to it.

Be careful what you wish for.

My brother has been working on our genealogy for a couple of years now. Our family has roots back to the 1690s on my mother's side and back to the revolutionary war as Hessian soldiers on my father's. We are Swiss, Welsh, German and Irish. And we have Native American ancestors.

At the end of the 17th century, a child appears on a census. A 14 year old Native American who was married to one of our European ancestors.

What was the circumstances that led to their union? His first wife had passed. I hate the idea that the union probably came about under horrid circumstances.

But, my brother did one of those DNA tests. CANNOT wait to hear the results.

 

[wilkeliza]

Be careful what you wish for.

My brother has been working on our genealogy for a couple of years now. Our family has roots back to the 1690s on my mother's side and back to the revolutionary war as Hessian soldiers on my father's. We are Swiss, Welsh, German and Irish. And we have Native American ancestors.

At the end of the 17th century, a child appears on a census. A 14 year old Native American who was married to one of our European ancestors.

What was the circumstances that led to their union? His first wife had passed. I hate the idea that the union probably came about under horrid circumstances.

But, my brother did one of those DNA tests. CANNOT wait to hear the results.

Oh I already know some crappy parts of my family's history (me unfortunately being the victim of some of these "skeletons") so not much would phase me. I have no preconceived notion of my family's history especially my father's side being all flowers and sunshine.

 

[mrsv98]

My maternal Grandmother and Great Aunt were DAR so we have family history on that side way back. On my dad's side, it is harder. Most of the family is Norwegian and German and came to this country in the 1800's. Using Ancestry.com has helped some but it might take a trip over there to find more.

On DH's side, the family "story" is that his 4x great grandfather was the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm I and came to America in the 1840's. He did own much of the land that is now Green Bay WI and there is a really cool private family cemetery but I am reserving judgment on the royal lineage... We did find that there is a town in Germany with our last name so that is cool.

 

[loves to dive]

My aunt did my mother's mother's side back to when they came to the States before the revolutionary war. That ancestor was Dutch royalty, had the castle the whole 9 yards, Goethe even wrote a poem about him and he had a listing in the Encyclopedia Britannica for a while. We have a copy of that. He came to the states because of religion. So we know that one little branch and they have family reunions which we've only attended once. We know that we can be in the DAR and also the daughters of the confederacy, my mom belonged to both. My mom's dad's side is a little more difficult, he was half Cherokee and other than his birth certificate nothing goes back much further on the Cherokee side and we've been afraid to trace on his father's side, we do have pictures. My Dad's side is a mess. There is a history of the men on that side just sort of disappearing and on his mother's side we know my great grandmother was born during reconstruction and that her father was a yankee drummer boy (gasp). I used to love to sit and listen to her tell stories about Alabama and Georgia during that time. We know her mother had to hide her father for a while during the war since her uncles fought for the south. We don't have anything any further back than that. I do know my grandmother (father's mother) was a bit of a wild thing, married 3 times and in between the 2nd and 3rd marriage dated one of Roosevelt's secret service agents while they were in Warm Springs (that branch is from Manchester, Georgia a town right next to Warm Springs). We know Daddy's grandmother on his father's side was Creek but can't go much farther back than that. I've thought about it but am too cheap to pay for ancestors.com.

 

[mnrose]

On my paternal grandmother's side, I'm back to the 1600's in Switzerland. Discovered in that process that I have a grandfather about 5 greats back who fought in the American Revolution, which I had never known. Other lines have proven more vexing, although I can trace every one of them back to Europe or, surprisingly to me, Russia (husband's side of the family).