Anybody doing genealogy?

I suppose that's it -- I knew 3 of my grandparents, so tracing people back in THEIR lines seems a little more personally connected. When I see pics of my grandmother's grandfather from the 1870s, I can see features in his face that made it down to her (and even some to me). I can imagine what he probably sounded like talking.

But when I see people in the branches that lead only to the grandfather I never knew, it's much harder to really get a sense of the resemblance. I know intellectually it's no less significant but it just seems more abstract.

 

A couple of amusing notes:

-- I did print out (in about 2-point type) a "pedigree" version of my entire tree, and as I mentioned above, it continues up in a uniform expansion for 4 generations (I have names and dates for all 16 GG-GPs, then gets spotty at the next generation (missing about 10 of 32), and after that, it's only the two New England Yankee branches that continue climbing and branching out for dozens and dozens more generations.

-- In news which should be a big hit among my grade-school nieces, apparently their 11th great-grand-aunt (by marriage) was none other than Matuoka Pocahontas Powhatan.




One of the New England branches fed back into a family named "Rolfe," and made mention to an ancestral estate they owned in Wiltshire, England, I started looking at the lists of descendants right around the year 1500, saw a "John Rolfe" with a large number of "historical references" to his name. The name rang a bell ("The New World" was on cable the other night). Sure enough, it's the same John Rolfe.

 

I've tried it, but records only go back so far in certain parts of the country. I'm sure some of my people shot at the census men, as family histories were only kept in family bibles. That's of no help to me now. I also had ancestors who were Cherokee and were relocated during that whole Trail of Tears thing. No way of ever really knowing where I came from in that respect.

Good luck, and keep searching. It's a fun hobby. Wish I could find more on my people.

 

One fun update: Through my DAR-pedigree New England Yankee family, I traced back to (sure, why not), European royalty (Henry VII is my 15th GGF).

The amusing result of all this is I am a 13th cousin, once removed, of the Queen (14th cousin straight up of Charles).

I believe this places me at somewhere around three billionth in line of succession to the English throne.

 

Our family last name is pretty unique...so much that we all know we are related, whether it be the U.S. or Canada.
Our family traces back to the 1600s with one kid that came from France to help found Montreal (St. Catherine's). After a few generations, branches moved out into Michigan via Windsor/Detroit or Sault Ste. Marie Ont./Mich. The only different is that the Detroit side kept the C to begin our last name, the Upper Michigan side had it switched to an S.
I have the history of our part of the family all the way back to the original guy that came over from France, and his grandparents, but I have never gone further back.
Hmmmm, I may have to start digging. My interest is piqued again.

 

Dragging this one up after nine months off, I have continued to dig into the endless spaghetti-bucket and it seems every week or so I come up with something new, amusing or embarrassing.

Today's gem:

on the heels of yesterday's:

The key into THIS particular genealogical mother lode is that 42 of the 43 presidents are descended from King John of England (1166-1216), so if he is in your tree too (which he is for many thousands of people in the English-affiliated world), you are related to all of them, too.

BTW, King John is the asshole/villian in virtually all the Robin Hood stories, so there is that. I had known he was in my tree for several months now, but only found out about the presidential connection in the past several days.

Especially amusing while watching the 2010 "Robin Hood" movie with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, is in that movie, King John (Oscar Isaac) is basically a sleazy horndog abandoning his faithful wife for a fling with the cutie-bootie young Princess Isabella from France (who spends a good part of the movie flouncing around nearly naked).

Presuming all this genealogical stuff is correct, they're my 24th great-grandparents.

 

How did you get past any roadblocks as you did your research?

Did you do all this on Ancestry or use something else to get that far back?

I've been able to go back about 3-4 greats, but trail goes cold about there. Any tips?

 

Check with your library. Many libraries have genealogy resources that they allow their patrons to use, including census data.

A lot of my research has been done by typing people's names into Google, along with dates that they lived or places. You'll be shocked by how much info you can dig up just from this and from other people who have put their family trees and histories online.

If you know that your ancestors came through Ellis Island, the Ellis Island foundation has records for most immigrants that has some good basic info.

One of the most random places that I found some info was on a blog. I typed in my great-grandmother's name and was shocked to find a blog post that included her wedding photo and a long description of the family history, including talking about visiting my mom's homestead back in the 1970s.

Also, thanks Machine Head for the link to the Swedish site. I'm completely stonewalled on that side of the family. Looking for any similar sites for Scottish history. Dad's grandmother was a Stewart, but anything prior to them coming over from Scotland is a mystery. My aunt and I have been talking about spending a month over there doing research. (She's really having to twist my arm.)

 

Ancestry.com has a lot of this stuff, but I lucked out in particular because the one branch of my family (out of eight great-grandparents) which did NOT originate in Ireland traces back to one of the major families in Colonial New England, and a cousin of my mother, applying for the D.A.R., already did quite a ton of this stuff 30-40 years ago (when you had to go to libraries and grind through microfilm, etc etc).

The DAR is fairly rigorous in requiring documentation for Revolutionary-era ancestry, so my mom's cousin had already put together a couple of 50-pound legal file-boxes of stuff to trace those families back. (She got in, I guess.)

As it turned out, some of the leading colonial families had also been pretty big stuff back in England, members of the aristocracy, etc. so THEY were the families it was possible to trace back into noble and royal lines of descent and that's where all these famous connections come in.

For the other 7/8ths of my extended tree, who were mostly peasant farmers and minor landholders in Ireland, the pickings are much slimmer. I keep getting told at some point if I am really serious about digging into the Irish branches in the family, I am either going to have to go over there for a few weeks or hire somebody else to do the research (which can cost just as much).

 

Hank, there are tons of resources out there other than ancestry.com. Don't get me wrong, that site has been a help to me, but going broader in your search will yield results I would bet.

Here's one link:

http://www.cyndislist.com/

As Wenders said Google searches work. I found a Norwegian genealogy message board asking whatever happened to my great-grandfather after he left Norway that way. Google Translate via copy and paste let me figure it out.

Wenders, I posted on the Swedish message boards on ancestry.com when I had questions when working through the records on the site I linked earlier. Good folks there, happy to help out with translations or anything they can.

I'm in my cups watching this stupid snow right now. I'll post more tomorrow.

 

Another thing is -- to access most of the records on Ancestry.com, you have to pay. And it's not cheap. I've got my entire family tree, both sides, back a long, long way and never paid a dime to Ancestry. It's all a matter of knowing how to research (which all of us should be able to...this is why I'm heading up this project because I have the research skills in the family) and finding good resources. And there are a lot of resources out there aside from Ancestry.com.

 

I've done pretty extensive genealogy on the majority of my family lines, with success ranging from great to spotty.

I share grandparents with Benjamin Franklin, making him a great------uncle.

One line goes back past Charlemagne, and another were kings and queens of Ireland.

Truman Capote, Phyllis Diller and a former all-pro NFL player who shares my last name are also among the notables.