How much do you care about your ancestry?

[Tracy Savage]

I am very proud of my ancestary, my grand parents line includes "greats" who fought in the revolutionary war, founded the Ohio branch of the underground railroad, recorded the Lakota language and save thousand of Indians from extermination, served along Hudson Taylor in China and more. We have 5 generations of Ministers/missionaries/social activists on my mother's side.It inspires me all of the time not to be the generation who does not live up to the ideals our family stands for.

Interesting. I live just down the street from homes and a grave yard with tunnels from the underground railroad here in Lake County Ohio!

 

[Diznygrl]

Unfortunately, I hit a wall with a big chunk of Mom's side.

Taken out of context, that sounds so funny! Where's the tag fairy??

 

[Lintasare]

My dad is very much into genealogy and he has found some interesting stuff. Mostly on my maternal grandfather's side since they have been in the country the longest.

My ancestors are the Shield's brothers. There were like 10 of them living in Ireland...3 got kicked out. I am related to one of the 3. One of them opened a tavern in Williamsburg VA. If you go there, the Shields Tavern is a restaurant you can eat in. My dad has traced the Shield's line all the way back to the court of Charlemagne. A Shields was a tutor to the royal family.

And through the Shields line I am related to our 10th President John Tyler, to a Governor-General of Cuba and a blacksmith on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

My paternal side all came after the turn of the century but before WWI. Can't trace much of them, most of the information is in Poland.

My maternal grandmother's family came from Bavaria. Many were farmers but some were craftspeople and worked with the Bavarian Royal Family. Most notably my great-grandmother's uncles worked on Neuschwanstein. One was a stablemaster of Mad King Ludwig.

So my family may not be descended from royalty...but we sure rubbed elbows with them.

 

[Robindianne]

I am quite interested but have no idea how to go about it. I think I don't know enough to get started.

 

[Planogirl]

My aunt on my father's side traced her (and my Dad's) paternal branch of the family and it was quite interesting. I'm not interested in as much detail as she found but it was fun to hear about the movement and travels of our ancestors.

She thought about doing my grandmother's side too but that is Norwegian and looked very difficult. My mother is Dutch and I wouldn't even know where to begin since her mother was adopted and her father was Jewish and most of his family was killed when she was just a child.

 

[Snow_White]

My great-great-great grandfather was a Captain for the Union Army in the Civil War. He served for 3 years before he was killed in action at Weldon Railroad in Virginia. Thankfully he had a son before he joined the army or else I guess I wouldn't exist. We even have a picture of him (which was unfortunately colorized in the 40's, but it's still cool). I find it all pretty fascinating. I'd love to make other cool finds! Like the person who is related to Henry the 8th...how cool is that! I love reading about the Plantegenets and the Tudors and all of those crazy families, so that would be wild.

 

[dyna]

I find it very interesting..esp the stories and wish I knew more. My dads family has been very well traced a few has tried to do my maternal grandfathers family but there is NOTHING to be found beyond my greatgrand mother who was 1/2 Cherokee and was rejected by her family and the white man. She died very young leaving 7 young children orphaned my grandfather was the oldest at 13.

My grandfather was soon taken from the orphanage to live with a family an be their farm boy...he did keep in touch with the family the rest of his life an my mom an her siblings did call the parents grandma an grandpa an the daughters aunts.

As an adult grandpa did try to find his siblings was told they was all dead. Years later he was in a bar an a man told him he was his baby brother grandpa did not believe him because he had been told they was all already dead. A few months later grandma read in paper that his baby brother had died that man in the bar was his baby brother.

Grandpa lived well into his 90's his mother an siblings did not live past 30 or much more....odd.

 

[rie'smom]

Since I started looking into my ancestry, I've discovered what I think are amazing facts, for example:

The first person in my maiden name's family to get here was put on a boat from the Isle of Skye by his mother because his stepfather beat him. On the way to Massachusetts, their boat was raided by Blackbeard. The pirates took my ancestor on board and made him a cabin boy. A few weeks later he and a couple of other captives threw wooden barrels off of the boat, jumped, and then floated to the shore of North Carolina.

My great great grandfather was Captain Leonard Destin who sailed from Connecticut and founded Destin, FL. I knew his daughter, my great grandmother, Ellen, who was an absolute doll.

Herman Melville is (was) a distant cousin.

 

[EMom]

I have sort of traced mine back to the 500s. I say "sort of" because I didn't do all the work. I piggybacked off the work of more industrious relatives. I will say it helps to have some famous people here and there in the family tree, because people keep records of those folks and their descendants.

Anyway....Back to the 500s is quite a ways, but apparently not enough for some members of the family. I have found numerous official "trees" belonging to various societies which all agree on the lineage back to the 500s, but it stops there. However.......I found one distant relative (and heaven help me, she lives in the same county as I do, although I've never met her) who has "traced" the family tree back a teeny bit futher back than the rest of us. And what an illustrious lineage it is. I swear to you.....She has "traced" the family tree all the way back to Jesus. Yes, THAT Jesus.

I told my DSis that this was one relative I would not be looking up in hopes of sharing ancestor info with. Seriously......Jesus?????

 

[hambirg]

I'm adopted so I don't even know who my parents are.

However, there have been people on both sides of my adoptive parents' sides that have traced the ancestry. I do find it interesting. . .it just doesn't really apply to me.

 

[EMom]

I'm adopted so I don't even know who my parents are.

However, there have been people on both sides of my adoptive parents' sides that have traced the ancestry. I do find it interesting. . .it just doesn't really apply to me.

We adopted DD. As far as my family is concerned, our ancestry is her ancestry. She also has her Russian ancestry. It's not an either/or. When I tell her about my side of the family (as opposed to DH's), I always say, "your great-great grandfather", etc. Because that's what he was. Mine and hers, not just mine.

 

[hambirg]

We adopted DD. As far as my family is concerned, our ancestry is her ancestry. She also has her Russian ancestry. It's not an either/or. When I tell her about my side of the family (as opposed to DH's), I always say, "your great-great grandfather", etc. Because that's what he was. Mine and hers, not just mine.

I understand what you are saying. .. my parents never made me feel excluded. Their ancestry is mine to share. . .however. . .just saying, that she will, without a doubt, at some time, know that she has her own unique ancestry that none of you share with her. It's just part of being adopted.

 

[PaulaSB12]

You just should be prepared for what you might find. My wife's cousin researched part of their common heritage and found from 1800 to 1900 and found a great great great great grandfather was a bigamist, married 5 times, never got a divorce, and had 6 children, none with women he was ever married to. Be a great TV show, kind of a cross between Sister Wives and the Girls Next Door.

In the 1800 in the UK bigamy did happen more than people think. Divorce took an act of parliment which was out of the reach of most people so moving to a new area and just remarrying was not unheard of. Its also interesting to see how history has affected you own family though the ages. How people moved to get work how the last two wars affected them (My mother's family had two brothers fighting in ww1 both survived, her brothers survived ww2)You can see how people moved from mostly agricultural work to industrial jobs as the industrial revolution progressed. Mind you some women who had "late" babies where raising their grand children because being born out of wedlock was a big thing then.

 

[NMAmy]

I'm very grateful to my grandmother who did a lot of research because she was determined to join the DAR. She did find a Revolutionary War ancestor but she also found some really interesting footnotes to history along the way.

I do care about my ancestry because I'm proud of the things my ancestors accomplished. Learning about how your ancestors were a part of history can make past events come to life.

 

[indimom]

I find it very interesting, but haven't done any of the research myself. I just like hearing the personal stories from my grandmother and others who did the work! Like the GGgrandparents who were originally in-laws, but who married after both of their spouses passed away. He was alone in the US with 6 children after his wife died in childbirth, she was struggling in Germany with 5 small children after his brother passed. He brought her and the children over and they had an additional four children together. A real "Yours, Mine and Ours" story. My branch of the family comes from the "ours" stock.

Our known history only goes back to the 1700s in my family. The bulk of my heritage comes from Germany, although I have one French GGGrandfather who jumped a ship and hid in a pen with sheep until he was found out and put to work.

At the small rural Lutheran church I grew up in, it was well-known that most of the families hailed from the same small part of Germany. (Since the bulk of this area was Catholic, this small band of Lutheran stuck together. ) In the mid-90s, they had a researcher find our "sister church" in Germany and much of the history of that area. It was interesting to know that the church still exhists and branches of our family trees still live there, but didn't provide any major insights-generation after generation of farmers.

My husband has no interest in his origins.

 

[barkley]

I have sort of traced mine back to the 500s. I say "sort of" because I didn't do all the work. I piggybacked off the work of more industrious relatives. I will say it helps to have some famous people here and there in the family tree, because people keep records of those folks and their descendants.

Anyway....Back to the 500s is quite a ways, but apparently not enough for some members of the family. I have found numerous official "trees" belonging to various societies which all agree on the lineage back to the 500s, but it stops there. However.......I found one distant relative (and heaven help me, she lives in the same county as I do, although I've never met her) who has "traced" the family tree back a teeny bit futher back than the rest of us. And what an illustrious lineage it is. I swear to you.....She has "traced" the family tree all the way back to Jesus. Yes, THAT Jesus.

I told my DSis that this was one relative I would not be looking up in hopes of sharing ancestor info with. Seriously......Jesus?????

years ago i went on a tour of the public portions of one of the larger mormon temples in northern california. one of the areas we were taken to was where members (and the public) could work on geneological research. i remember seeing some kind of mass produced family tree that they offered to people wherein (they claimed) that if you could search your geneology back to a certain point that connected you with one of dozens and dozens of names they had the rest of the "family tree" mapped out which connected you with adam and eve.

maybe your relative has based her information on one of these mass produced products.

 

[kirstenb1]

Not interested. My family's from England/Scotland. My dad is fascinated by it, and has written down family trees for all of us kids.

 

[golfgal]

I have a cousin that has done EXTENSIVE research on my mom's side of the family. He has been working on this for over 20 years. He has it all on a computer website that we can access. It's pretty interesting.

On my Dad's side my Grandpa spent many years trying to track down his family. His Dad immigrated here from Luxembourg after his first wife died. There were 2 or 3 daughters from that marriage that were older that stayed. He wanted to find these half sisters and was never able to find them.

 

[barkley]

i'm getting more and more interested but my interest stems from wanting to see what information there is/documenting for future generations things from a medical perspective.

i was recently talking to a somewhat distant family member who was sharing some frustrations about some medical issues her adult child is having. some of the stuff that's been driving her child crazy with trying to get diagnosis on is identical to issues my branch of the family already has diagnosis and effective treatment on but because we don't routinly talk her branch was'nt aware. sharing that information can likely help her child provide his medical providers with information they will find very helpful.

when mil passed away and i was going through old cards and letters (mil never threw away cards or handwritten letters-and i had to go through all of them to make sure no important documents were in the stacks upon stacks) i start reading years of holiday letters from different branches and far flung relatives of dh's that make mention of how this realtive is doing with an illness or how that one has passed (and what they passed away from) and all of a sudden i'm realizing that there are certain illnesses that are occuring with enough regularity in his family that his/our kids/his sibs/their kids/grandkid's doctors should know about (stuff where there has to be a genetic factor-no way that many people in the same family living in totaly different regions can be experiencing it through coincidence).

when i had my strokes my doctor started questioning me about family history, and it was'nt till i started talking to family members who knew different cousins and "greats" than i knew (or were around when i was born) that i realized the trend for it in my family (meds i had taken for years should not be taken with this kind of trend in a family but noone ever took the time to actualy sit down, count the people who had strokes and come to realization there was a trend).

 

[olwyngdh]

I have been working on both my husband's and my geneology, and found some pretty cool stuff...like my husband's Civil War ancestor who did the exact same job in the Army that my husband does now. We have found ancestors in the Army in every war America has been involved in. We have most lines back into England, Ireland, or Scotland...it is his Mom's Dutch line that I am a bit stuck on right now.

Other cool stuff--
Husband's Family--descended from the guy who hid the Connecticut charter in the Charter Oak. descended from the founders of Brookville PA including the first white woman born in the county.
My Family--descended from someone who ran an underground railroad stop in New Castle PA. Possibly descended from a Scottish Laird (am pretty sure, just need better documentation before I will add it)

I am hitting the point where I am going to have to pay the extra money on Ancestry to get to the European records.

The best part? my 8 yr old DD is fascinated by this, and it is really promoting a love of history in her.