Family genealogy has had some new information added since the last time I checked. On my mother's side of things I knew that her father's father fought for the Union being a native of Ohio. Also, on my mother's side of things I knew her mother's father's father fought for the Union being a native of New York living in Illinois at the time. My father's mother's side has had a huge amount of detail available for at least 45 years. My grandmother's parents were born in the same small area of Virginia that their ancestors had occupied since about 1740 or so. The divide line created by West Virginia coming into being fell only a few miles to the east of their homes. Something I read 40-plus years ago suggested that cousins fought against cousins during the Civil War (or whatever you call it). Finally, it has been documented that my great-great grandfather and his younger brother fought for the Confederate States of America in the Virginia Infantry. The younger brother died in a prison camp about two months before Lincoln was assassinated. BTW, that side of the family is my link to being eligible to join the Sons of the American Revolution and, now. the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
It was not uncommon for relatives fighting each other, depending on their geographical locations.
I enjoy helping others track their genealogy. A nurse that I see twice each week is related one way or another to about half the people in her home community. I recently gave her about sixty pages of the skeleton of her family tree, both mother and father, going back several generations. She can do cousin research on her own, now. Last week she asked about trying to go back one more generation from a specific great-grandmother. Thanks to Family Search (LDS) and census records I will have a few more pages for her this week. Great-great grandma had the same first name as her daughter which complicated things a bit. Her birth name was Pabst so family gossip was that they were related to the beer brewer. Maybe several generations further back. Her ancestors Pabst ancestors were from France, while the beer brewer's ancestry was Prussian.
A young lady who works for me daily lost her mother's father's mother recently. I discovered she knew very little about this side of her family. A few days later I provided her with about 15 pages tying her family tree skeleton together and added links to two other local families that are her relatives on that side.
Then I assembled about sixty pages of the big family tree skeletons that address her father's side of the tree. This included her link to a Revolutionary War soldier from New Jersey who joined with Maryland forces.
That is fascinating. On one side of my family they had records for many generations. But at some point the Baptist hospital burned down in Memphis and the DR. Lost everything up to a certain point in time. My Great Aunt has been putting some of that back together over the years. She said she came across some evidence that my step dad was related to us way back somehow which was interesting. My brother is the keeper of one line of ours. Wow what you find out sometimes is not what you expect. When I was 2 my dad took me up north to visit some relatives. All I remember is what shows in a picture which was me riding on a saddle of a big dog lol. Now that side fought for the union New England. My grandmother was a Johnston somehow related to Albert from Mississippi died at the battle of Shiloh . Which according to history military scholars was that if he had not been wounded and died would have changed the old trajectory of the war and what we now live in the good ole USA . The union was pinned down the river and when he died the replacement hesitated and stalled and that allowed reinforcements and a way for the union to retreat. But what if frogs had wings. I have studied and seen enough military campaigns to know the what if’s are just that. My wife wants to do her retracement like you have done as well as have mine done for the girls. I told her she doesn’t want to know about the crooks and nuts far back on my side lol. But I think it is great.
One of my great aunts was in DAR and interested in history. She traced our Brown (!) and Sheldon family lines back to the New England colonies. This was in the 1950's and 60's when to find records you had to drive to each courthouse in the several states they had lived in, moving westward.
It's easy now, if you believe the accuracy of what someone else has submitted to the big data bases. I recall back a few decades seeing a mess in the LDS data in one of my ancestral lines.
A couple members of my family have done studies of the maternal side of my family. It very quickly becomes a cluster-F of people coming from various reaches of the British Isles, landing in Ontario, marrying, and then scattering to the far corners of Canada.
I recently asked my father about the paternal side. He, basically, has no idea. Not a real tight knit group.
Yes. One must view all data as being only as good as the work ethic of the person assembling that data.
A fellow who lived a half-mile from us when I was a kid has magically been transported to be part of a family in Emporia, KS. One hundred percent false information. But, Willard is not the most common first name, so they jumped to a conclusion that was wrong.
In another case, a local family had a situation come up over a hundred years ago where dear ol' Dad left to do something one day and never came back. About 25 years ago one of the family members received a letter from some people in British Columbia, Canada saying they were pretty sure they were related. It seems dear ol' Dad went to Canada and eventually remarried. One son is a result of that marriage. A different son, born ten years earlier, shows up as being born in Canada to Dad and his first wife, who never left Kansas. That son definitely was born, lived and died here.
There is a website that is an amazing source of family information: findagrave.com
Searching by name can be very frustrating unless the deceased relative is Elmo Skeezix Oxnard.
But, if you begin with a specific cemetery where you know certain relatives are buried, you can end up almost anywhere in the family tree. Typically, you can go from the specific relative to the spouse or parents or siblings or children. Clicking on any of those relatives will take you to wherever they are buried and a new set of information. The key is that all information is uploaded by volunteers (sort of like Wikipedia) so some families have very little information to find while others have many generations, photos and obituaries.
