Have you ever researched your family history?

[meaty]

if so what is the most interesting thing you found out?

 

[RedAngie]

I personally never researched my family history, but one cousin has been doing it for over 20 years now, and periodically sends updates.

I suppose the most interesting thing is that my maternal grandfather was actually born in pre-Soviet Russia, not Poland as originally thought. The borders were somewhat fluid in those days, and his family were ethnic Poles living just across the border in Russia. So I guess I'm a Commie.

 

[lovin'fl]

Tried on Ancestry website but couldn't get very far. My ancestors have been in America for a long time and lots of things have been forgotten (like where we're from even). So I recently did the Ancestry DNA test and was a little surprised at some of the results (5% Scandinavian and 2% West Asian). My mom had always said we were native American (that came up as 0%) and German (got 10% Europe West...that's German I suppose???).

 

[minnie mum]

I've dabbled in our family history a little, but previous generations have kept pretty good records. One of the more interesting things I learned was that my maternal Grandmother's ancestors were amongst the first settlers in Port Royal, Acadia, in the early 1600s.

 

[Feralpeg]

My 13th maternal grandmother was Mary Tudor (sister of Henry VIII). I have spent the past six years working on my family history. I finished my paternal research. I am still working on my mother's side. It's fun, but a lot of work.

 

[tazdev3225]

I haven't because my mom is the family historian. She managed to find the birth or death certificate yesterday of her great-great grandfather in England. We are one step closer to finding out if Lord North really was a distant relative. He was Prime Minister of England during the revolutionary war.

 

[Bilberry]

It has been a little while since I last worked on family genealogy, but it was surprising to me at how much information on the family could be found. There is probably lots more out there. I guess some family history discovered that sticks out, an ancestor founded Yale University, several came over on the Mayflower ship, a few ancestors were living on the frontier/ first to live in an area, and as a result short biographies were written about them, a relative kept a diary during the Civil War, a few relatives were early Mormon converts. The Mormons had large amounts of detailed records on the early converts. A southern relative sued the northern union government after the Civil War for damages done when Shermans Army camped on his farm in Georgia. He lost that battle.

 

[eliza61]

Just started on ancestry. Com. It's a little harder for me because I hit the slavery wall.

 

[Magpie]

My last name is too common and my ancestors are too dodgy to be worth researching, but I did research my husband's ancestry and that was cool. We found the very first ancestor with his name over in France, back in the 16-somethings. The fellow was a peasant who got a land grant, and needed to give himself a last name. Fortunately for us, he was creative about it, and now every one his descendants can be traced.

My personal favourite ancestor is the farmer who remained 65 for thirty years, in every census. His children aged, but he didn't.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

My uncle has spent several years researching family history. He was into this genealogy stuff before the Internet was a huge thing to make it a lot easier He says that side of the family can be traced all the way back to being related to Anne Boleyn. I thought it was pretty exciting, but nothing to lose your head over.

 

[minneylovesmicky]

My dad did about 10 years ago. What a can of worms that opened up and resulted in relationships ruined.

He found out his father was not the father to his sister - result of that information is that he has not spoked to THAT sister since due to her not being his "full" sister. He blames her, NOT his mother for the affair, that led to her conception.

He is near 80 and his sister is in her 70's, so they have loved one another for decades, but one secret ruined all that in a flash. He removed her from the family tree and refuses to talk about her at all.

His mother, my grand mother, took this secret to the grave, but my father found it out whilst doing his family tree and it ruined his family. Some secrets should remain buried

 

[BadPinkTink]

my grandmother did a huge amount of research during her life, long before the internet and my mom has now taken over as the family archive / historian.

One of the most interesting things we found was that one of my grandmothers relatives left Ireland, went to America and had a major part in the construction of The Brooklyn Bridge in New York

We have also traced my dads aunts journey from Ireland to America back in the 1920's , finding her on ships manifests.

Oh and we also found some interesting things on various births and marriage certs.

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.

 

[Flight]

Would like to see a high school level class taught on researching one's ancestry. The students might find it easier to connect to a subject if they discovered that some relative in the past had a connection to that subject:

"Hey, look what I found. We had a relative that fought in the battle Lexington! Wow, how cool!"

Now, just maybe, that student would find the study of history to be worthwhile of a bit more attention.

That would work for all the things we teach in school. Make it relevant to the student. We might be happily surprised by the results.

 

[Flight]

My uncle has spent several years researching family history. He was into this genealogy stuff before the Internet was a huge thing to make it a lot easier He says that side of the family can be traced all the way back to being related to Anne Boleyn. I thought it was pretty exciting, but nothing to lose your head over.

 

[Marionnette]

One of my 7x great grandfathers was among the founding fathers of Baltimore. And his descendants owned slaves. Among those slaves was a man (Ephraim Costly) who adopted the free name of Basil Dorsey. Basil's story is well-chronicled in his fight to remain a free man once he escaped to Philadelphia. It is rumored that he had been fathered by his so-called "owner", my 6x great-grandfather Sabrett Sollers. Sabrett's oldest son (my 5x great-grandfather), John, left Maryland and his "inheritance" behind to make a home in Central PA. Sabrett's remaining son,Thomas, became the new "owner" of Basil, in accordance with Sabrett's will. It was after that, that Basil escaped to Philly (well, actually Bristol, PA) where an historic court battle was fought to keep him in the North and a free man.

The slave-owning aspect of my family history was very disturbing to learn. The courage of a man who is quite likely my 6th great uncle is inspiring. His quest for freedom began is 1836, long before the Civil War was fought.

 

[mnrose]

Carrie Snodgrass, an actress and the musical "inspiration" for Neil Young's "A Man Needs a Maid," is a distant relative of mine on my Dad's side. There's some completely useless information, eh?

And, I recently learned that my great grandmother, on my mother's side, was killed in a tornado in the 1880's, along with one of her children. My grandfather survived to become my grandfather. There's that fickle finger of fate in action.

 

[clori]

About 1 to 2 months ago I started doing some research based on info from sources like my 87 year old mother and ancestry.com. My 91 year old father passed away in March. When we had his unveiling (small Jewish service as family sees the gravestone for the first time) my mother was pointing out some other headstones that were distant relatives. Once the weather is a bit nicer I may go back and take some pictures, review with my mother, and see if they open up more info. For the most part though I find that things like moving borders (Russia, Lithuania and name changes, spelling changes etc. as people moved to the US combined with divorces, 2nd marriages etc makes things interesting but harder to research for me). The most interesting thing I learned doing ancestry research was when I put in my grandmother's name and city I know she lived in. I found an obituary that I knew wasn't hers but I read it and it turned out to be a friend of my parents who had a sister with the same name as my grandmother.

On my husband's side is challenging too. His mother died around 12 years ago, his father has Alzheimers, and lots of family members died in the Holocaust and Hungarian Revolution. We do have a letter his mother wrote when I asked who they would like us to name a baby after which is helpful combined with someone else who is a distance relative who has done tons of research already so I do have more on his side. The most interesting thing I learned though came from a combinatation of research combined with talking (on facebook) with a half niece who lives in Hungary who is doing research for a book she wants to write set in WWII in Hungary. She came across a link that has my husband's great great uncle who worked as one of Raul Wahlenburg's drivers helping Hungarian Jews escape to Sweden.

 

[Donnainnj]

My brother has done a lot of research, but I have just started. Did the Ancestry DNA and was very surprised. We were told a lot of Irish on both sides and that came out 52%, also told some Scottish and (Great Britain) that was 13%, we were told possibly French, American Indian, German, Scandinavian etc, so I thought we were about half Irish and little bits of a bunch of other stuff, well came up with 30% European Jewish, along with a couple trace amounts, Scandinavian being the only one included on our list at 1%.
DH also did his and expected mostly French and German, got mostly Iberian Peninsula, and Scandinavian.

 

[csmith1004]

I did a lot of work researching my family. My favorite story is that my great grandparents who emigrated from Wales but met here in the US came over on the same ship (but at different times) - the RMS Teutonic - a sister ship of the Titanic. Also found out I'm a 5th cousin to a fairly famous outlaw - John Wesley Hardin aka the Gentleman Killer.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

My mom did a large amount of family genealogy research. Found out that I'm related to Dan Blocker. And there's a reason that family got that name - they all look like that, big, solid blocks.

Also found out that a great (not sure how many greats) grandfather was given a "plow furlough" during the Civil War, and never returned. Plow furloughs were given to poor farmers with no help to go home and plow the fields for their family back home. Of course, I'm not sure I blame him, he had something like 6 or 7 young kids and a "sickly" wife. Probably felt his presence was more important at home than at war.