Have you checked out your ancestry?

[BinkyBunny]

 So in the “Yep, it’s me post”.  I noticed a great discussion started about finding out about family trees— some mentioned using ancestry. I am assuming ancestry.com.  So I thought I’d start a new thread so we could have fun really getting into it here instead. 

I have used Ancestry.com – Great program! Though it can be expensive but it is amazing at finding information.  I found my grandfather’s and grandmother’s death certificate — extremely helpful because my mom always had said her mom had thyroid cancer and so during my regular doctor screening, i would get my thyroid checked.   But on my grandmother’s  death certificate, it stated she died from colon cancer.   And it wasn’t shown as a secondary result of a primary cancer — so that is great information for me to let my doctors know about when discussing family illness.  

I also was able to discover some juicy family secrets– one of which was that none of my relatives would ever speak of about great great grandfather as he  was supposed to have had some wild affair with my great great grandmother. (who never married and just had her children take her last name instead of his because I think he had a family)    Anyway, I knew that if someone was going to have an affair back then,  you couldn’t travel that far — especially since they lived in a a poor area.  More likely to travel by foot or horse.  I knew the last name and it was an unusual last name — easier to find, and so I checked the census of the surrounding neighborhoods, and found someone by that name a few houses down from my great grandmother.  Still working on piecing that scandelous puzzle together.   

And one of my great grandfathers may either be Italian or Spanish.  I still have yet to move forward when I can get more time!  I can’t wait to look further into that. . 

My husband found out one of his ancestors was an escaped indentured servant and steve found his “Wanted” poster.  

 

So have you done any ancestry searching? If so, has anything surprised you?  Helped you?  Shocked you? 

[LittlePuffyTail]

I would really like to, I think it sounds very interesting, but I doubt I have enough information about my family. What info do you need to start?

I don’t know very much about my paternal side. My grandfather died when my Dad was 16 and alll I know is that he came here from Scotland with his family. And now, with my Dad and grandmother deceased, I really have no way of finding out anything. My Mom is adopted so I really know nothing about my maternal side either.

[Sarita]

I haven’t but with all this talk I would love to. Especially my Mom’s side – her mother died when she was a baby of tuberculosis and we don’t have tons of info about her family other than they may be from Czechoslovakia. That’s where my grandad was from. Her maiden name was Leciscin or something like that – terrible that I don’t really know how to spell it. Some marriage or birth certificates of my Mom’s family members say they were born in Austria or wed in Austria though and that totally threw me off.

My father’s side we know a bit more but not much – we know they are from Italy and we have relatives there but my last name is like Jones in Italy – very common.

I am going to sign up now that’s for sure.

[Lagomorphic]

Ohhhh, I love this topic!  I’m related to the first man hanged in the colonies (for murder), John Billington.  His son Francis almost sank the Mayflower because he shot a gun near a keg of gunpowder. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Billington

http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/Passengers/JohnBillington.php

[Joyfull_music]

I know bits and pieces of my family history. Like being very distantly related to Martha Washington through a marriage. My paternal family also owned a massive plantation in Georgia. But mostly I am descended from Irish immigrants several generations ago.

[Elrohwen]

Fun thread!

I got into ancestry.com a bit recently. I traced my paternal grandfather back to Belgium – I knew that’s where his family was originally from, but not how many generations ago.

Both of my maternal great-grandparents came directly from Poland, which I knew, so ancestry wasn’t much help there. I never did find out where in Poland they were from.

I traced DH’s mom’s family back to Finland, and his dad’s family back to Germany (we have a very German last name, so we kind of guessed that).

The only really surprising thing was that I could trace my maternal grandmother (the only grandparent who is alive that I communicate with, which makes it cool) back 15 generations. Many members of her family came to Quebec in the 1600s (one was born there only 35 years after the first child born in Canada). It’s pretty cool! They were mostly from Normandy, France, though a few other regions of France (and a little Belgium) are represented as well. I found some good pics of my great-grandparents and even my great-great-great-grandfather that other people posted (everybody had so many kids, that it became easy to track down other family trees with the same people on them). It was pretty cool to see how all of these people lived near each other in Quebec, then moved to northern Michigan (where my grandma still lives). I’ve only found one couple that is common between multiple branches of the tree, even going back that far, which surprised me (I figured with such a small population, there would’ve been many common ancestors).

I still haven’t found out much about our Native American heritage. I know my great-great-grandmother was Indian, and my grandma and cousins have Indian cards (which you can get for direct heritage and it gives you access to health care, etc). I thought I would find more, but it seems like everyone had French last names, no matter what race, and everybody put “white” on the census. There are branches that I can’t find any more info on, so those might be the Native American lines, but I’m not sure. I did find one woman, from about 10 generations back, who was listed as 1/2 Indian, which was cool. I want to figure out just how many of them were native to the area.

[LoveChaCha]

I think that I might be signing up for a month of the WORLD edition of ancestry.com lol.

From what I know of my family:

-Mom’s side-
~My great grandpa is half Cherokee Indian
~I have a ton of family in North Carolina.. in a small town.
~My grandma is full blood Japanese, My grandpa is half Chinese, half.. European stuffs (English, Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, I think I’m missing one here). My mom did not look one particular heritage.
~My German uncle married a woman that could not have children.. so he had an affair with a Cherokee woman o_O
~Great grandma’s family worked in Hawaiian plantation
~My mom’s maiden last name is Anglo-Saxon.. and my boyfriend likes to joke about how the Anglo-Saxon liked to piss other people off during their time

-Dad’s side-
~My dad was born in the Philippines, where my grandparents met. My grandma’s family owned a restaurant (I believe they were well off, even with 10 children) and my grandma served my grandpa alcohol. He was in the service at the time.
~Grandpa was born in Hilo, Hawaii. I believe his parents immigrated from China. They worked very hard to become citizens.
~My grandma was Filipino, with some Spanish. It is not uncommon to be mixed in the Philippines.
~My grandma’s brothers were in the Filipino mafia
 

I’m pretty mixed  I really want to search more of my ancestry further back, but my last name is very common among other Chinese

 

This is grandma:

She had a lot of men going after her 

[Helenor]

I don’t know if ancestry.com would work for me. My parents moved from South Korea not too long ago. All my ancestors’ information is probably all there. Thing is, I can’t read much korean, so unless I can convince someone to get my family tree and translate it, most likely all the ancestry information will be lost to me. (I know my family has a family tree back in korea, the family back there even designates a certain middle name character for each generation. I got excluded from this cause I’m a GIRL. grrrr. I’m just a tad bit resentful about that. Apparently once I get married, I’m no longer part of the family, according to the family patriarchs in korea)

I know on my dad’s side, I descend from some chinese ancestor way back that moved to korea. My mom’s side, I have some famous ancestor (in korea of course) named Po-Eun who got his head chopped off for refusing to work for a king when he already served another one.

LoveChaCha, your grandma was so beautiful! I can see why she had men after her!

[peppypoo]

Helenor – ditto for most everything you said, but for Taiwan instead of Korea. I didn’t know Koreans did the same generation name thing! My parents actually gave me and my sister the generation character anyways, but I know my aunt on my dad’s side doesn’t have it. Yay patriarchal customs, lol. I didn’t even think about the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to trace matrilineal descent, but that’s probably very true for me too.

[edit] Oh I forgot that I do have a story!  Ten patrilineal generations back from my dad, my great (great)^9-grandfather was the first to immigrate from southern coastal China to Taiwan.  Due to misfortune, he became an orphan at an early age, so he moved in with his older brother and sister-in-law.  The sister-in-law really hated him, so she cooked his least favorite food every day – daikon radishes.  I guess the guy got fed up after a while, so he decided to leave and found a ship to take him to Taiwan.  And that’s how we ended up on the island!  Just by rough estimation, this probably happened in the 1600s or so, which is pretty cool to think about.  Because of his dislike of daikon radishes, to this day my family never sets out food with daikon radishes for the traditional ceremonies honoring our ancestors, haha.

[Elrohwen]

Peppy, cool story about your ancestor!

Brit, your grandma was gorgeous!

[LoveChaCha]

LOL Oh gosh Peppy! that is so awesome
Do you like daikon radishes?

Helenor – I wonder if I am related to any Asian celebrities? LOL

[peppypoo]

LoveChaCha – I loooove daikon radishes, haha. Especially lightly fried Chinese style daikon cakes….oooomg so good .

I don’t know how true the story is; I guess it’s just one of those oral history things that gets passed down through the generations, so it’s probably been fudged here and there. I thought it was still pretty cool though!

I actually have family members on either side that keep up a big family tree book, but it’s just names and birth/death dates and I can’t read most of it anyways so it’s not really of immediate use to me. I guess it would be helpful if I wanted to go back to Taiwan and track down records someday.

[Elrohwen]

So in the last half hour I’ve made it back quite a bit further on my grandma’s side – before I had only done my great-great-grandfather’s family and traced it back to Quebec and France. This time I concentrated on my great-great-grandmother. She’s supposedly Native American, though I don’t see it in her pics, and her relatives all seem to go back to France. I guess I’ll have to call my grandma on this one. I’m assuming the tribe wouldn’t have given out Indian cards without some geneology. I could have the wrong people, but I doubt it – these are very very small towns and only one person by that name lived near there, so I don’t think I’m off base (plus, many other people have the same family trees with the same people in them).

Here are some pics! All of these came off of ancestry.com. Some of the people who are also related to these folks have tons of pictures, I guess, and posted them online. They might not be the right people, but I would assume they are since, like I said, they came from an extremely small town and it would be almost impossible to find a different person with the same name.

These are my great-grandparents, John and Bernice. I met my great-grandma, as she passed in 1996 (she was almost 100!) but I don’t remember her well. They look so much like my grandma! My mom confirmed that it is definitely a picture of grandma’s parents. Everyone I’ve found has been from Bernice’s side. I know John’s parents’ names, but nothing else about them, so that’s something else I’ll have to call grandma about.

 

Here’s a much younger picture of them:

 

Here are Bernice’s parents, Frank and Zoe. Zoe should be an Indian if my dad has told me the right things, but she doesn’t look like it, and I can’t find any evidence in her family tree.

 

These are Zoe’s parents – Eligh and Mary.

 

And Frank’s parents, Francois and Harriette:

[Elrohwen]

Another funny thing I’ve learned – so many women in my close family tree were named Bernice! My one grandma, her mother-in-law (so grandpa’s mother) on my mom’s side. Then on my dad’s side, my great-grandma is Bernice. My dad is Bernard, and my grandma said she always hated the name, but promised her mom she’d use it because she had lost a sibling with the same name.

[BinkyBunny]

Wow that is some interesting stuff Elrohwen. What’s really great about ancestry.com is that others are working on it an so sometimes you can reach all you can by yourself, take a break and you can come back and see that there are more “hints” that others have put in as they work on their family tree and it branches out to yours. (hints: is are new information that may nor may not be related, but because there is some possible tie, you check it out and see if it is legit for your tree.

I do understand though that this doesn’t work for everyone. I do wish ancestry could branch out more. It was useless for my one of my friends who is first generation American.. I also watched one of those ancestry shows (where they focus on someone well-known), and it I think they were helping find a Chinese American’s ancestors, but the details of his past were on some ancient scrolls that he could only see by flying there.

Which brings up an interesting point — I wonder how other countries keep records of people.

How do other cultures keep records?

[skibunny8503]

Wow I didn’t know so many people were into ancestry!  That story about the Mayflower is pretty interesting!  I absolutely love old pictures, there’s something about them that are timeless.  I think the old pictures come out better than the digital ones today (at least on my camera haha!)

BB, when I first started I was working on both sides, which is was to much to handle!  So I just focused on my mom’s side and still have to work on my dad’s side.  But I started doing my dad’s maternal’s grandparents and they were from Italy.  I thought I found a passenger list of them but that was all I could get.  My husband told me that for Italy they keep all their records there and you can’t really find anything online.  You have to submit something to them to get information about a person but you have to know their birth & death date and maybe something else and it has to be written in Italian.  Does make sense to me if you’re trying to find out a birth date but need it to get the information you’re kind of screwed.  

I found so much information about my mom’s side.  Most were farmers, laborers, nothing too special I guess.  My 3rd great grandfather John Bole, was in the civil war and was from Ireland.  I think it was a 6th great grandfather was in the Revolutionary War and he’s actually buried not to far from me.  My grandma kept a lot of obit newspaper clippings, so I was able to punch in a bunch of info by that a lone.  She didn’t know too much about her grandparents.  I’m even surprised when I see a death certificate and it says the parents unknown and the person’s child that filled out the information.  It’s like they didn’t talk about relatives back then. 

Then when my grandma told me my great great grandpa was adopted and Parke wasn’t his actual name I was completely shocked!  When were you going to tell me this?  I guess they didn’t think I’d care.  She had a paper from 1892 that stated he changed his name and had a seal on it.  It looks really good for being that old.  I’ll repeat myself on here (I said a little bit about it on the other post); my grandma always thought her great grandpa had died in the civil war.  She had this paper saying he was in the war that she got from someone, she can’t remember who though (probably someone researching).  I did months of researching but couldn’t find much.  Finally I got a hold of someone that cleared it up.  He told me he was never in the war.    This man named John Seitz used my 3rd great grandfather’s name (John Stair) as an alias in the war.  And I knew even if he was in the war, just researching when it was over in 1865, he would have made it because he had 2 sons born after that.  I still am researching what happened to him though.  But his wife was a servant and paid an orphanage to take care of her sons (at least John Jr., don’t know anything about Edward).  The orphanage accidently adopted out John.  She fell ill and they finally told her where he was at.  She visited the family and thought the best thing for him was to stay there and she regained her strength afterwards.  She remarried and reconnected with her son later on.  John Jr. changed his name legally to Parke to “honor the family that raised him” before he married Jennie in 1892.
John Jr. was a watchmen at Ohio Leatherworks and when he was about 55 years old got in an accident at work and most of his fingers on his left hand were cut off.  There’s a picture of his hand where you just see a nub.  His daughter-in-law was supersticious and wouldn’t look at him while she was pregnant in fear of her baby haivng some deformaty or something I guess.  

This is Mary (his mother), Jennie Bole (her father was the guy in the civil war) and John Jr. with one of their kids (not sure who).

 

Jennie and John (notice his left hand)

[skibunny8503]

Oh I gotta add; http://www.familysearch.org is an awesome and FREE site to use!  It’s the morman church and they have a lot of records.  I don’t think Ancestry has death certificates at least I couldn’t find any but familysearch does.  It’s really helped me with some family members. If you don’t know parents names then just go to a child’s death certificate and most of the time (not always) they’ll have at least one parents name and you can find out how they died.  Oh I had a great uncle that he was 30 when he died because he went to get some water at night and tripped and fell down the stairs, cracking his head and died instantly!  He had a wife and a baby.

[LoveChaCha]

BB, I’m 3rd generation Asian American, so I’m sure I’ll find something.. hopefully!

Everyone’s ancestry is so interesting Yay! Must read more!

[LittlePuffyTail]

Everyone’s families are so interesting! Thanks for posting all the old photos (I LOVE old photos).

 

I really would love to find out about my family as I love history so it would be like learning my own history, which is totally cool.

Can you start searching if you only have your grandparents names? I wouldn’t want to pay and not be able to find anything.

Skibunny- Thanks for posting the link to that site. I’m going to check it out. I suspect I will have a hard time though…my last name is Smith…I think there might be a couple of those.

I had done a search like this on my horse which I found extremely interesting. She’s registered so I can go back about a hundred years to learn about her ancestors and some of them have pictures. It was so much fun. I would love to print all the pics and make a big mural of her family tree.

[Elrohwen]

LPT, the first 14 days on Ancestry is free, so you can sign up and do all the research you want, and just cancel before you have to pay anything (if you decide you don’t want to pay).

I started out with only grandparents’ names, and a vague idea of my great-grandparents’ names (at least first names, and my grandma’s maiden names) and went from there. If your relatives have been in the US or Cananda for a while, and your name isn’t too “normal”, it shouldn’t be too hard to go back at least another generation or two.

[skibunny8503]

Posted By LittlePuffyTail on 05/11/2011 04:08 AM

Everyone’s families are so interesting! Thanks for posting all the old photos (I LOVE old photos).

 

I really would love to find out about my family as I love history so it would be like learning my own history, which is totally cool.

Can you start searching if you only have your grandparents names? I wouldn’t want to pay and not be able to find anything.

Skibunny- Thanks for posting the link to that site. I’m going to check it out. I suspect I will have a hard time though…my last name is Smith…I think there might be a couple of those.

I had done a search like this on my horse which I found extremely interesting. She’s registered so I can go back about a hundred years to learn about her ancestors and some of them have pictures. It was so much fun. I would love to print all the pics and make a big mural of her family tree.

You’re welcome!  Are your grandparents still alive?  If not then I’d start with their death certificates first to see if their parents’ names are on that record.  If your grandparents or anyone in your family that’s older like an Aunt or Uncle that might know something; ask them about the family.  I was even surprised how my mom knew a bunch of stuff.  And if you’re lucky someone might have old records.  I also love going to the genealogy section in the library.  If your grandparents have passed away look for a obit at the library (if they died around you).  You can even try to contact libraries out of state.  Some people will look up stuff for you.  Even probate court too.

Oh boy you’ll have fun with looking up Smith haha!  I was so surprised when looking up some people that I thought their name was unique but I would find a bunch of people the same name even their spouse’s first name could be the same. That’s really cool with your horse, I didn’t know you could do that (but I don’t own a horse hehe!).

Here’s some other sites I’ve used:

http://www.usgwarchives.net/ (click on the state’s table of contents, not the state link)

castlegarden.org/ and ellisisland.org are both immigration records (I haven’t found anyone for me but maybe someone else might find something)

http://www.findagrave.com if you know where someone was buried at they might have information submited to that site

www3.familyoldphotos.com/ I actually found my cousin’s great uncle that was in a conventent store picture (he was in the back and you could hardly see him but it was cool)  You can look up by last name and you might get lucky and find pictures of your relatives!

[LittlePuffyTail]

Skibunny- My paternal grandparents are deceased. My maternal grandparents are still here but I’m less interested in that side because they are not my blood relatives. I’d still like to do a search but I’m more interested in my Dad’s side as I’m curious about our Scottish Heritage.

I played around with searches on a few sites but really couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t find their death certificates, even for my grandmother who had a more unique last name “Paris”. It’s very difficult as I’m not really close to my Dad’s living brother and sister but I’m sure my Mom knows more than I do so I need to take her out for coffee and ask some questions.

[jerseygirl]

I’m apparently related to Prince William. My wedding invite must have got lost in the post.

I only just found out day before last. It’s something like 9th cousin?  I really don’t know how all the 2nd,3rd,4th etc stuff works. I knew the was some minor nobility on my maternal side but didn’t know of any connection to the current UK royals. My Mum and her Mum are really good with family histories so I should pay more attention. A distant relative has researched it extensively so much of the info is readily available.   

I watched some of the various versions of  “Who do you think you are?” and found them pretty interesting. Last ones I saw where American celebrities but I didn’t see all 6 in that series. The one that’s stayed with me the most was Lisa Kudrow’s story. She travelled to Belarus to trace family members that were executed in the holocaust. Some of the stories related were just too awful.

One thing I do find irritating with the program is they go all out following the line that has connections to significant historical events or persons. I understand it makes better TV, but little is mentioned of other family lines and I think they’re just as significant. Probably interesting too.  I suppose it’s a lot of time and money going into the research and they need to keep it limited.

Another thing I’d like to see is the program featuring everyday people/families. Not just celebrities. Why not look into where they come from and fly them around the world?

[LoveChaCha]

Posted By jerseygirl on 05/13/2011 01:29 PM

I’m apparently related to Prince William. My wedding invite must have got lost in the post.

I only just found out day before last. It’s something like 9th cousin?  I really don’t know how all the 2nd,3rd,4th etc stuff works. I knew the was some minor nobility on my maternal side but didn’t know of any connection to the current UK royals. My Mum and her Mum are really good with family histories so I should pay more attention. A distant relative has researched it extensively so much of the info is readily available.   

I watched some of the various versions of  “Who do you think you are?” and found them pretty interesting. Last ones I saw where American celebrities but I didn’t see all 6 in that series. The one that’s stayed with me the most was Lisa Kudrow’s story. She travelled to Belarus to trace family members that were executed in the holocaust. Some of the stories related were just too awful.

One thing I do find irritating with the program is they go all out following the line that has connections to significant historical events or persons. I understand it makes better TV, but little is mentioned of other family lines and I think they’re just as significant. Probably interesting too.  I suppose it’s a lot of time and money going into the research and they need to keep it limited.

Another thing I’d like to see is the program featuring everyday people/families. Not just celebrities. Why not look into where they come from and fly them around the world?

 

skibunny and i will remind each other that the show is on.. hahaah. i wish the show ran longer

o_O;; you are related to prince william? what?

[BinkyBunny]

Posted By jerseygirl on 05/13/2011 01:29 PM

One thing I do find irritating with the program is they go all out following the line that has connections to significant historical events or persons. I understand it makes better TV, but little is mentioned of other family lines and I think they’re just as significant. Probably interesting too.  I suppose it’s a lot of time and money going into the research and they need to keep it limited.

Another thing I’d like to see is the program featuring everyday people/families. Not just celebrities. Why not look into where they come from and fly them around the world?

I know…that drives me crazy too.  I find that show so interesting that I could watch it for longer….meaning they could make it longer.

I also would like for the celebrities family members to join them and learn along with them. I don’t like that they can’t discover along with the people they care about.  Though they show the family members in the very beginning and end, I have a desire to see the family to disover together and share the annitial surprise and heartbreak. 

I also would really like to see more “everyday” people/families.  It really doesn’t matter to me whether it is a celebrity or not.  The interesting part is the journey, regardless of who it is.  That’s why I have found this thread so interesting already!

[LittlePuffyTail]

I’m apparently related to Prince William.

That’s crazy awesome!!

[Author]

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