Another ancestry ?

[Syrreal]

Does anyone know of any websites that are good for researching ancestors when you haven't been in the US long at all and neither has your family? What about for other countries? I have lots of family from Portugal, Italy, and Greece but don't know anything further back than great grandparents.

 

[agnes!]

Ancestry.Com has some free parts but for you I think an International membership might be best (it includes US information like Federal Census *plus* overseas data that you can't get with their lower-tier membership). if you know your ggrands, get all the information NOW(names of their home villages in the old country, places they've lived in the US, if any of them served in the armed forces of the US or elsewhere, etc.) from family-members in the know. Also, you can search on ancestry.com & other sites to find [famiy-name] message boards to find others who have information and who can help you in your search.

Good luck ,
agnes!
PS - Just thought I'd throw this out there...
I have this one ancestor, named "John Farr"(1758-1844) who just seems to drop down out of the sky. Can't find out where he's from or anything about his background. If anyone reading this maybe can help? ... John Farr is my 'brick-wall' ancestor.

 

[Syrreal]

That's the thing though, no one from my family came to the US except for my parents and even they came after I was born. I have some info from my mom's side of family who went to Brazil from Italy and apparently the name changed from ending in an I to ending in an E.

 

[agnes!]

I think if you get the higher-tier International Ancestry.Com membership, I think you might then have the ability to search overseas databases. You also might want to see if there are any geneaology clubs near where you live. if you show an expert what you do have, maybe they an give you advice on where to look for more information.

agnes!

 

[Syrreal]

Thanks. I will check them all out.

Totally OT- I was thinking about you the other day. I was watching Everest: Beyond the Limit and remembered that hotel challenge we had to do for WAPASADI

 

[PaulaSB12]

Ancestry.Com has some free parts but for you I think an International membership might be best (it includes US information like Federal Census *plus* overseas data that you can't get with their lower-tier membership). if you know your ggrands, get all the information NOW(names of their home villages in the old country, places they've lived in the US, if any of them served in the armed forces of the US or elsewhere, etc.) from family-members in the know. Also, you can search on ancestry.com & other sites to find [famiy-name] message boards to find others who have information and who can help you in your search.

Good luck ,
agnes!
PS - Just thought I'd throw this out there...
I have this one ancestor, named "John Farr"(1758-1844) who just seems to drop down out of the sky. Can't find out where he's from or anything about his background. If anyone reading this maybe can help? ... John Farr is my 'brick-wall' ancestor.

John Farr which country are you looking for him in? My brick wall ancestor is Daniel Whadcock 1720? 1783 UK

 

[Boo'sMom]

Ancestry.com does have a pretty good international membership...but that's only from my standpoint. My research has been only in Great Britian The do offer a free trial for the international membership, so maybe try it out for 2 weeks and see what you're going to find?
My brick wall is a marriage record in 1910 in NY/NJ for my great grandparents....sadly, I can go back 150 years +/- on both sides, but can't actually tie them together with a marriage certificate. It's driving me insane!

 

[agnes!]

John Farr which country are you looking for him in? My brick wall ancestor is Daniel Whadcock 1720? 1783 UK

My John Farr(1758-1844) pops up in 1776/1777 Rev War as a sailor in the Pennsylvania Navy, then disappears until he turns up in western Pennsylvania in the early 1790s where he marries my gggggrandmother Lucinda Hopwood(ca1774-1844. They both live in that settlement and raise a family until they pass away within months of each other in 1844.

So I do not know where John Farr came from. I do not know anything about his birth-family - if he had any siblings, his parents' names...*anything*. I do not know what he did between the War and the early 1790s. He's my very own personal brickwall/enigma...there's even a little group of family history-buffs who've been unable to find out pretty much any more information than what I posted above. One of our group-members even has a male Farr relative who got a DNA test done and we don't match up with ANY Farr's in the DNA databases available online.

One hint I would give for those searching for "missing" ancestors is to check in the pertinent records/databases for ALL possible variant spellings of your ancestor's names, not just what you have in-hand now. Daniel "Whadcock", for instance...could that be "Wattcock" or "Whadcook" or "Whitecock" or "Whitecooke" or "Whittcrooke"...or .... see what I mean? Same for Boo'sMom who has the missing marriage-license for her great-grandparent's - check all possible variant-spellings. Also check in surrounding jurisdictions, different counties, different towns, even different states and go up or down by a year or two. The family tale might have come down that GGGrandma & Pa were married in New Jersey, but maybe they high-tailed it over to a state/county/city that didn't require parental permission...

agnes!