Have you ever found anything surprising or interesting when researching your family history?

[Keetchino]

Haven't done any research yet, but I think there’d probably be some interesting stuff on my dad’s side..... I remember him talking when I was really little about some relative being involved in the mafia... not part of the Family, but a non-Italian who would do work for them.... something about how the guy’s wife would hide cash and stuff in the oven in case the house got raided.

 

[RUDisney]

Haven't done any research yet, but I think there’d probably be some interesting stuff on my dad’s side..... I remember him talking when I was really little about some relative being involved in the mafia... not part of the Family, but a non-Italian who would do work for them.... something about how the guy’s wife would hide cash and stuff in the oven in case the house got raided.

That's funny. Feds would never think to look in the oven or under the mattress.

 

[Moliphino]

Growing up we were always told my great grandfather was supposed to cross on the Titanic but was late and missed the boat, literally. It was a running joke that the reason our family members were always late was because of this. Not too long ago I found his immigration papers that show he actually arrived 11 years prior to the Titanic sailing. Also interesting while our family was always strong in Polish tradition, he denounced Russia as his citiizenship and in places states Russian as his nationality
I was able to trace one family part back to colonial America and a marriage to a Montauk Indian who from what I've read could very well have been similar to Pocahontas, as being a voice between the settlers and the natives.

Russia occupied parts of Poland for a while, that could be why. My Polish ancestors were listed as being from Prussia and Austria because that's who controlled the area when they left.

 

[Alicenwonderment]

Well...I've learned that nothing I was told about our family history is likely true.

I'll first say that I was definitely raised in a family who believed "You're American. That's what's important." We have no culturally-based family traditions or anything like that. However, when we had to do family heritage projects in school my mom said that her family was German and my dad said his was French. For family tree projects we never got farther than great-grandparents and even then it was "I don't know. Her first name was Myrtle or Margaret or something like that. I just called her Grandma ___."

When my son (now 20) was in elementary school, he had to do a family heritage project and my parents told him the same thing "German for grandma's side. French for grandpa's side." The school had an ancestry account and brought home a print out home which showed that a LOT more people with my dad's last name immigrated from Ireland than France. Weird, I thought... but there were a few from France, so one of those must be us.

Then, my mom took a DNA test. It originally said that a large part of her heritage was "Northwest Europe" which my mother insisted was the German part. However, it's been revised over the years and now it's almost all England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and a little bit of the Nordic region. Nothing German at all.

Early in Covid 19, I started looking into the family history just for something to do. I lost interest after a while (and/or met dead ends to what I could research for free online). However, on my mom's side, I have traced several relatives back to their immigration to the US and they're all from England or Ireland (none from Germany). And on my dad's side I found out that my grandmother was 100% Irish (American born, but from Irish immigrants). I do not remember her well -- she died when I was 4 -- but several of her siblings lived till I was a teen and I remember them well. I don't remember any of them EVER saying anything about being Irish.

I mentioned my findings to my Dad and he was like "oh yeah, I know..." and I said "I think your grandmother's maiden name was Bunke, but the handwriting on the record wasn't great." And he said, "No... it was Burke" and spouted off a bunch of other info about people and towns were people were buried, etc. How did I not have this info before now?! I *know* I asked. My mother was shocked too and even said "Then why did you tell the kids your family was French?!" and he said "I don't think I did." But he definitely did... all though school and also for my son's project.

You can make yourself a Family Search account for free and look things up. They are Morman so there are tons of documents. I would be sure to keep a copy of your tree offline because the Family Search tree anyone can work on and usually the researchers work on the trees too.

 

[Alicenwonderment]

[QUOTE="SarahC97, post: 62362732, member: 588669"

Also, we learned that my grandfather, my dad's dad, had a family he left in the 1920s. He had a wife and three kids and just vanished one day. Turns out he went to another state and then started a whole new family with my grandmother and no one ever knew until these people we'd never heard of turned up matching a DNA test as cousins. We contacted them and then learned the whole sordid tale. It was a little crazy.
[/QUOTE]

Wow, I wonder how often this happened back in the 1920s? Maybe it runs in families? I keep seeing the same patterns throughout the generations. My grandmother's parents divorced (rumor had it her dad had an affair.) Her mother packed up the three kids and moved with her mother from Kansas back to New England. Later her older brother gets married in 1921 and has three children and a wife living in MA. My grandmother then hears from her younger brother that her older brother did not want to be contacted by the family ever again. From what I'm finding through Ancestry and Family Search it looks like the oldest brother abandoned his wife and 3 children too. I'm trying to trace down the tree and found a grand son but he doesn't remember his grandmother (my grandmother's niece) because he was young when she died.

 

[cbg1027]

My 4x Great Grandfather was in his 120's when he died! It was a family legend and no one was sure it was true. A cousin of mine likes to research genealogy and found an obituary for a man who died in his early 90's. The obituary mentions the man being survived by his father (my 4x Great Grandfather), Moishe Kruk, age 121!

 

[antmaril]

I have a great uncle on my mother’s side who was best friends with Charlie Chaplin. That’s all I’ve got.