Swmbo likes the show Who do you think are? and Finding your Roots on PBS .
We will dvr it and watch it together. I like innocuous TV.
I always thought that an attempt to find my ancestors would be a difficult as my surname is so common etc. I have always had a vague idea going to my great grandparents.
So I tried the 14 day trial at ancestry and was astonished by the wealth of info that I complied. I also used familysearch for more leads and records. I made only one wrong turn durung the search
I was able to trace my surname ancestors back to Perthshire, Scotland to the early part of the 19th century. My surname ancestry in the US dates back to the min 19th century when a young boy of 11 and his older brother of 13 came over in the company of their aunt to NYC.
My paternal side grandfather wife was from Mass(early census records in Roxbury) and her family goes back to Conventry Eng. Most of the records of the church in Conventry were damaged or lost in the blitz during WW@ but I was able to find some that were salvaged by the LDS folks.
My paternal side grandmother family is from Lake Como area of Northern Italy. I have their arrival record of 1895.
I have arrival records for my maternal side grandparents. Lineage is Polish and part Russian. They arrived 1900-1905. I have the arrival record of my grandmother as a teen girl travelling alone to live with an older sister .
The amazing part of this is the power of the internet. That made this seemingly difficult task not so cumbersome. I also have a 2nd cousin who is a genealogist who provided hints and my brother who is a professional investigator.
I now look for leads from other free sites on the net.
These sites will charge for world-wide searches but from the info that I gathered, it would only possibly be an option for my Italian ancestors. I have scanned over 70 documents and have 40 people growing on the tree so to speak for the chain of title to my life.
Also used the exercise as an extracurricular school activity for our son, at one point, he asked about his living relatives as opposed to his dead ancestors and I was able to produce a youtube vid of one his cousins who just completed his first year at MIT and is the rowing team.
There are still some paths that I would like to follow but don’t know what direction to take besides paying someone.
So the farthest that my ancestors go back to arriving in the US is a 10 year old boy who came over here I 1846.
I recommend this search to anyone to try. There are many records scanned and on line. Census, marriage, arrival, military, city directories etc
I traced part of mine back to 1519 Germany. Once the jump was made back across the Atlantic, the old records were pretty detailed. Hard to know for sure if they are completely accurate, as there was a conversion from the Grau German name to Gray when the first one got here back in the late 1700's, but assuming it's all correct, pretty amazing. And didn't cost me a dime, and maybe a couple hours looking.
This is both a fun and frustrating hobby. I've worked at it off and on for about 30 years. As you point out, the internet has made it all so much simpler. I've also done a lot of research for friends and neighbors. They are usually shocked at how much info I can hand them only 24 hours or less later.
I have 3 of my bloodlines traced back pretty far. The 4th bloodline stops when it is discovered that my 4th or 5th great-grandma came from Oklahoma and was one of the survivors of the Trail of Tears. The Dawes roles are not complete enough to confirm that however. The only thing known is that she was full Cherokee.
On my namesake's side of the family I have it all the way to before the Revolutionary War. One of my ancestors was said to be a Lt. in that War but nothing else is known about that. Before the War [circa early 1700s] I have a number copies of land deeds. Some of them transferring some cut-outs to sons and their wives and stuff. Being written in that old script I had to get a book to learn how to read it. I have to say they truly held writing something akin to art. Not only is it esthically pleasing to the eye, the language itself is masterful.
I can consider myself highly educated but have to say that their mastery of the language shames me. It would take me years to write with such eloquence and style.
The main thing I've found out is my tree doesn't fork enough.
One thing I've run into is that lots of people make faulty assumptions on family members, and then that bad infomation spreads like wildfire through the genealogy sites.
Ancestry.com has this feature "find famous relatives". I don't tust all this information, but it claims that Chauncer is my 22nd great grandfather. My high school English teachers would dispute that claim.
Don't you mean Chaucer? 🙂
Yeah, him.
It is a wonderful site, and the Internet does provide many answers, but my goodness it can be frustrating. I just found out last year that I had Irish great-grandparents (Murray and Kelly), and I now have a copy of their marriage certificate.
Too late now, but I've often wondered if anyone in the family knew that my other great-grandparents didn't get married until after they had seven children, and I know why: Edward Bruce had a first wife and two kids with her, and not until she died in 1903 was he able to marry Jessie, the following week. Somehow nobody mentioned that part when we went over the family history.
Neat stuff, all.
I got interested in my family tree when I was in college. I asked my father. He knew that my great, great grandfather settled in the USA in 1849 and wasn't sure where he came from. Somewhere from the Black Forest of Germany he seemed to remember being told. I went to the graveyard where he was buried with piece of paper and crayon and was able to figure out that he came from a small town called Rot. It's about 10 miles east of Heidelberg. There is a golf course there which has PGA tours I believe. Golf Club St. Leon-Rot.
The German govt don't have records that go beyond the 1860's. At least in this area. But the churches do. They have very good records.
I took my mother and father to Luxemburg and Germany in 2002. We visited a church in Rot and lo and behold, there were some Legs ancestors buried in the cemetery. With the help of the church, we were then able to retrace the rest of our family tree back to the 1480's.
My mother's family came from the Luxemburg area from around the 1860's period. The only thing we know is that they came from the 'linster area. Junglinster, Bourglinster and another 'linster village that I can't remember right now. They are located about 15 miles NE'ly of Luxemburg the city. Her maiden name is not a very common name. We did meet a family with the same name in one of the towns, but they did not know too much.
The Mormon Church of Utah has done a significant amount of family tree retracement and might be worth looking into if anyone is interested.
So, Bruce, do you come from a Small family....pun intended?
Forking ancestors
My little sister is really into this genealogy stuff. Have to say I'm mildly interested too, but would much rather know who my great-grandfather was, than finding out who my 9th great-great-great etc, grandmother was, Your 9th great-grandmother was 11 generations before you. You have 1,028 of them. Who cares what they did or who they were?
That said, I'd really like to know some detail about my own great grandfather. I don't even know his name. Pretty common for most North Americans. Very few North Americans can trace things back more than 2-3 generations.
In contrast to that, I once worked with an Ethiopian (actually Eritrean) guy name of Ytbarek Cuddus. He was a first born son, and born not only in the same village, but in the same house, same room, and the same bed, as his fathers and grandfathers going back 4-5 generations. They were all named Ytbarek Cuddus, Cuddus Ytbarek, Ytbarek Cuddus, Cuddus Ytbarek, etc etc. Cuddus was a real good guy. Must have got it from his kin.
Pun recognized, but no, the Smalls all had large families, the men were mostly alcoholics, and loved bar room brawls. The kids ran in terror when they came home. Very sad. Several of my uncles lied about their age to get into WWI, and were killed. Tough bunch, all. Not afraid of anything.
