Have you ever researched your family history?

[DeaverTex]

My maiden name is McCarthy, try sifting through Irish immigrants in the early/mid 1800s coming through Ellis Island. it was only recently that we started getting through that road block. Talk about reaching a dead end.

I'm an Adams. Trust me, that's harder to find. Me and about a bazillion other folks, living or dead! Pretty much 99.99% of my hits turn out to be for people who died in the 19th century, and I wouldn't know what names to look for. (All I know is that my paternal grandfather went by "Jack" and committed suicide around 1935/36.) It doesn't help that I was born in Houston, Texas. Lots of 1950 babies. Apparently, none of them with my name!

 

[Wishing on a star]

I wouldn't be able to trace my Maternal line, or my father's paternal line, at all.

At any rate, I have a sister who tried the ancestor.com, and did the DNA... I do not give much credibility there, at all.

 

[JaneBanks]

I wouldn't be able to trace my Maternal line, or my father's paternal line, at all.

At any rate, I have a sister who tried the ancestor.com, and did the DNA... I do not give much credibility there, at all.

Why not? You should watch Finding Your Roots on PBS. At the end of each episode, they do the DNA testing and it is very interesting and, in my opinion, accurate.

 

[DisneyWorldMimi]

Just a note for anyone looking for Irish relatives. In 1922 the main courthouse in Dublin where alot of birth, marriage and death certs for Ireland were stored was destroyed by fire, so it can be very hard to find documents from around that time. The only way to get the information now is to know the exact area in Ireland where your family member lived and to contact the local church as they have the original record books.

Thank you for this information. My cousin is doing the paternal side of our family tree and I was doing some for a while. I found some information on a family name website that helped us trace our family back to Prussia in the late 1600's. He has verified all the information that I found. On my mother's side, I can go back a little bit, but where I run into problems is that the family changed their last name from Murphy to Murray when the moved to England. They originally came from Ireland in the late 1800's and getting a job as an Irishman was impossible. I hope to be able to get some information though.

We do have a semi-famous English boxer named Jock McAvoy. He was a cousin of my mother's.

 

[AustinTink]

Pirates. 18th century. On my dad's side. They came to America by ship fleeing capture and scattered when they hit land. It's true. And it's super cool!

 

[SureAsLiz]

I have a family member who has done a bunch of research. It's always fun to look through the books and find new names.

Our most interesting relatives include the Winthrops. John Winthrop was a lawyer/governor/leader of the first large wave of immigrants from England. He oversaw the trial of Anne Hutchinson. His son is a founder of Connecticut.

Also related to John Proctor, the first male accused witch in the Salem Witch Trials.

 

[stargazer2892]

I did quite a bit a couple of years ago and got pretty far. On my moms side we are direct descendants of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd ( yes i had to wikipedia that) he was the last offical King of Wales. Then I had two realtives come over on the Mayflower and one helped settle Dedham Mass. Some others where Tory's during the revolutionary war and ended up in Quebec for a couple of decades then they crossed the Maine border to have my Nana then went back over once she had her SSN and American Birth certificate, each of her 7 bother and sisters where born that way until the mid 1940s when they fully immigrated, So my family has actually immigrated to America twice,.
On my husbands side no one knew anything about his grandfather besides he was off the boat Italian. There has long been a family issue since my grandmother in law had given birth to my mother in law while she was still married to her ex husband so her last name is Belbin even though my husbands grandfather was her true father, they later married and went and had 2 more children who look exactly like my husband and brother in law. So any sort of questions about him where always kind of ignored and no one could ever find any record of him anywhere ( everyone just kind of figured that had something to do with the mob in Boston which was never fully denied everyone just kinda didnt mention it or didnt acknowledge . Until one day when I was scanning the 1930s Cambridge census and realizd that there was his brother and sisters names but listed Rosario Melino as age 9 female. Once we realized that it was pretty easy to find the only town in Italy where the Melino last name comes from. so that was pretty neat.

 

[BadPinkTink]

Thank On my mother's side, I can go back a little bit, but where I run into problems is that the family changed their last name from Murphy to Murray when the moved to England. They originally came from Ireland in the late 1800's and getting a job as an Irishman was impossible. I hope to be able to get some information though.

You are welcome. Thats very common. There was a huge stigma being Irish in England , my dads uncle did the same. He changed his name from Michael to Brian. It really confused us as children , as my dad would talk about his Uncle Mike who lived in London, yet when we went to visit, everyone in London called him Brian!

You should be able to find info about your family , its only around 1920 to around 1924 that is hard, as the fire in the courthouse was due to the civil war in Ireland. For example, my mum has found many of our relatives on the 1911 and 1901 census and there are a huge amount of land records, estate records, tenant records surviving, as well as Church records of births, marriages and deaths.

You wont be able to find ship passenger records for Irish people moving to England before 1920, as Ireland was a colony of England, under British rule, and technically part of Britain, so going from Dublin to London was just seen as moving within the same country and no official documentation was needed. There were no passenger ferry boats, people just took the Mail Boat or bought passage on a commercial trading ship

If you know where they took the boat, ie Dublin, Cork or Belfast, then you could work backwards and find a general area they might have come from. Before 1900 Irish people did not generally travel or move around the country much, the only transport was mainly horse and cart, so people would go to their nearest port. The Irish in Scotland generally came from the north part of Ireland, the Irish in Liverpool generally came from the east part of Ireland. Those who went from Cork generally either went to London and the south east of England or went on to America through Southhampton and Plymouth

 

[PrincessBelle39]

So that would make her your 21st cousin? this whole removed thing confuses me sometimes

I have no idea. Sounds right though. It confuses me too.

 

[monorailsilver]

I have done a little, very little! I am too cheap to pay for ancestry but I was using something with the CT state library online.

I can't get back far, I found my moms address in the 1940s when those census forms came out which I thought was neat. She lived in Brooklyn for a few years then. I got her moms records from the 1920s and prior to that I have no idea because I am not sure what year they immigrated from Italy. And from where. Plus I have no idea what my grandmothers maiden name was. My gram was a Vitalie and I know she has a Ligouri cousin. And then she turned into a DiDonato by marriage. I know the maiden name of my mothers grandmother on her fathers side, my mother said she was mean! But I also have no idea when they immigrated from Italy.

My dads side on his mothers side I have nothing. I did find his mothers birth/death certificate so I know her maiden name but there was a divorce so names were changed. His father has roots from Plattsburgh,NY-Senecal. I know my GGG grandfather Senecal owned a bar because I have a picture that says "dads bar" in Plattsburgh. I think I even have the whole town in one picture, not sure. My GGG grandmother who married the Sencal was a Charbonneau and that is where my French Canadian roots come from. I do have a bunch of siblings from those 2 GGG grandparents as well as pictures.

My grandfathers dad was born in Vermont and that's where I end there.

My husband had someone do some research and there is a book about it. There is a tree we have and I can't recall the years but at least 200 yrs ago starting in Germany.

His grandmother was a Boone, yes of the famous Daniel Boone. I tried to do some research on it and have come to the conclusion that Daniel is uncle status to my husband.

That's all I got.

 

[coloredimage]

I find ancestry and the like so interesting!

My mother's side of the family is fairly easy - I can go back to the 1500s when her paternal side immigrated from Swedish across to Finland.

My father's side though....ugh. Although Irish our name is NOT common and is really from only one part of Ireland and England so it's obvious they came from England at one point. But my 3x great grandfather is the biggest wall in the world. I have information about him in Boston after his immigration but I can't find any immigration information on him, no birth or marriage records either in America or Ireland (and he was born after the census started so there should be at least pastoral information) and I've been through all the information my grandfather had on him. I'm going a more circuitous route now, looking at great-great aunts/uncles to see if maybe I can get information from there but the brick wall just doesn't want to crack yet.

I did find a landed family in the area that my father's family is from with our surname so I'm thinking there's a relation there that's being hidden (the family was NOT well-liked at the time it seems).

 

[DisneyOma]

My dad did a ton of research - traced us back to before the American Revolution. Found out family came from the little town hubby and I moved to 25 years ago - and that I was related to half the old families in town. John Greenleaf Whittier is a cousin, and we married into the Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie) family. I've got an ancestor at Lexington/Concord.

Hubby has done more reserach, his side is much more interesting, IMO. He's got Pilgrim blood, his family can be traced back on his mom's side to the founding of the town he grew up in. He's got a grandfather who died on the USS Constitution.

His grandfather on his father's side came to the US during/around WWII, from Germany, and changed his first name from Adolph to Arthur. I don't blame him!

 

[Disneychick75]

Jean Lafitte is thought to have actually a different family name. This last name is my maternal great-grandmother's. The research was done by a University so it wasn't just guesses by a family researcher. Then, the first person on my grandfather's paternal side was supposed to land in New England but the ship he was traveling on was raided and taken over by pirates. He ended up escaping and going ashore in North Carolina.
Also found out that our daughter's birth grandmother is from the same small area where my Mom and Dad grew up, so our adopted daughter may well be related to us! I have people looking into that right now.

 

[WDWMom]

My uncle has been big into genealogy for about 30 years. When Detroit had its 300 birthday he was able to prove we had descendents that helped start the city. Our family owed the land that Tiger Stadium was built. He also learned recently that Madonna is my 8th cousin.

 

[BadPinkTink]

really fascinating , thank you for sharing your family stories. My family research is the opposite, we can find lots of info about family members here in Ireland, but once they left Ireland and went to America, we find it hard to trace their journeys. We did find a branch of the family in California, but only because THEY were looking for us, the Irish side of the family. My mom was a member of the same ancestry site as them and somehow they made contact and we realised we were researching the same family and we were related. I did manage to meet up with them but unfortunately the man who my mom was originally corresponding with and who was a direct relative of mine died before I made it to California.

 

[goofyernmost]

I was always told that we were German and that we, as a family, migrated after WWI to Canada (Quebec to be exact) to the U.S. about 4 generations ago.

After doing the Ancestor search I found out that not only were we not German, we were English and in the late 1600's the first of my ancestors was given a 100 acre tract of land in Massachusetts by the King of England (George, if I remember correctly). He came over to the colonies with his wife and two sons. About two months after they arrived he died. His wife had a 3 year battle with the government to keep the land given to her husband. She eventually was granted 3 acres of it. How she survived for those three years is a mystery. Anyway, one of those sons is a direct link to my current family. So much for the German link. It is amazing how those things get distorted from generation to generation.

 

[Geoff_M]

http://lifehacker.com/second-cousins-once-removed-and-more-explained-in-1661572056

Here's an excellent video that I think does a good job of explaining the concept:

What I've found out:
- My parents are distant cousins via the Mayflower (they are direct descendants of siblings that were on the boat).
- My wife is a distant cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln.
- One of my wife's great grandfathers was a Confederate POW in the Civil War that was incarcerated for a couple of years at Camp Douglas in Chicago.
- One of my 3rd GGF's was part of Sherman's March and died of Small Pox in Savannah, GA at the end of the campaign.

 

[Lilacs4Me]

My Maternal Grandfathers parents and older siblings (he was the youngest of 14 and wasn't born yet) came to America on the last western journey of the Lusitania before it was sunk. The very next voyage back to Europe, the boat was hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat.

My Maternal Great-Grandmother (grandmother's side of the family) was instructed to hide under her bed and not come out no matter what when certain men would visit their house - apparently her stepfather was involved at some level in the Mafia in Chicago in the 1910-20's. Yikes!!

Also, not very newsworthy or anything, but I am German, Irish, Polish, Dutch, English, French, and most likely Czech. We don't know for sure because one side of the family lived close to the German-Czech border and boundaries were constantly changing. *They* weren't even sure what country they belonged to!
And we are not 100% positive on the English because my Paternal Grandfather was adopted by English parents. It was during WWII and really, he could have come from anywhere. That was at the time of the "Kindertransport" to get children at risk away from the war and somewhere safe. Many of these children were taken in by Brittish families and never saw their biological family again. Luckily for my grandfather, his adopted family ended up somehow finding his older brother at some point and adopted him too. But neither brother ever saw their real parents/family ever again.