Anything/one interesting in your family tree?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just curious. My only “claim to fame”/anyone/thing interesting I know of is that a great, great, etc…“Aunt” of mine (that was how I have seen it traced in the maternal geneology…at any rate, a distant relative from Tennessee (actually born in Virginia, I think) who shared the family name my great-grandmother brought with her to Texas before the turn of the century) married Andrew Jackson.

Rachel Donelson Jackson, Donelson (sometimes spelled Donaldson) being the family name.

Brief overview:

One branch of the family ended up “immigrating” to Texas and settling in a town called, variously, Donelson, Donelsonville, and La Donia (sp?). Never been there but it is where my grandmother was born and I have photos of a house and people dating back to the late 1800’s, including one which includes my grandmother as a toddler, her mother, and an old woman who was either HER mother or her mother-in-law.

My aunt’s first mother-in-law was into genealogy and so, despite not being a blood relation and despite the marriage between her son and my aunt not lasting, undertook research into the Donelson clan, traveling to the town in Texas and finding a graveyard and records and to the Hermitage in Tennessee and surrounds.

Sadly, her work was lost when she died at 106. I’d known her since age 6 and had stayed in touch to the end, but BY the end, she was a bit forgetful and though I raised the issue of wanting to see her research, she’d always forget by the time she answered my letter. (she’d been mostly deaf since I’d met her, and we wrote letters back and forth for years). Her son, when I spoke to him afterwards, had no idea where any such papers might be. :frowning:

I have a few bios of Jackson, including one from the 40’s, bought mainly for the info on Rachel and the other Donelsons who were very involved in his administration. (no fan of Jackson’s politics overall, me…apparently she saw something in him as a man…I must reiterate that I am only related to him by marriage! ;))

SO, that’s my offering. Could be other cool things, but for now I have little time for genealogy. What’s yours? Doesn’t have to be anyone famous or any earth-shattering thing…just anything sorta cool and interesting you know about those who came before you. :slight_smile:

2

One of my ancestresses was hung for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.

I’ve got one revolutionary war vet ancestor, who fought at Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill, really) for the americans, two War of 1812 vet ancestors, and one Civil War ancestor.

3

I was named for (depending on the parent asked) either a grandparent credited as the first psychiatrist in PA or an uncle who served in a small town in France called Bastogne.

One of my distant relatives was hung as a Molly Maguire.

4

My eight-times-great-grandfather was a cousin to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who married a niece of Oliver Cromwell. (Meanwhile, my 8xGGF immigrated to the Colonies, where he was sued for killing a neighbour’s horse, fined for not going to church, and admonished for chaining his wife to the bedpost.)

5

We have pay slips for an ancestor dated both just before and just after the Continental Army’s 1777-1778 winter at Valley Forge. While we can’t know for certain, we believe he was there with Washington and von Steuben.

One of my ancestors was a Rebel spy during the Civil War; he disguised himself as a woman selling pies in Union camps. Near the end of the war, he was caught, both legs broken and he was left for dead, but he survived and made it back to his family. I also have ancestors on the Northern side, but not as interesting.

6

“Hanged.”

Your relatives may have been hung, but that’s not likely to have killed them.

7

Great-uncle Charlie Root, the only member of our family ever to get to pitch in a World Series. Where he achieved notoriety of a sort as the pitcher of “The Called Shot.”

I never met him but apparently, he said…it happened more than once, and how come he was the one who had to get infamous for it? At the expense of the rest of his career, which was actually pretty good.

8

Let’s hope not! (or anyone ELSE!) :smiley:

Some very interesting and entertaining reports already, just in the time it took me to start the soup! :slight_smile:

I’m sure I had relatives in the Civil War (have some Confederate currency…being a 3rd generation Texan and from Tennessee before then, likely they would have been on that side I guess) but no names I could put a finger on. But I had ancestors in every OTHER war, including the “Indian Wars”, so it stands to reason.

On my paternal side, I know even less, since my parents divorced when I was 3 and I’ve had no contact with that side of the family since. All I know is that he was born in West Virginia in 1940 to parents who immigrated from the UK the yr. before (his father was from Scotland, his mother England), he was a Marine and went to college (don’t think he ever went to 'Nam), and I know his mom’s first name and the last name is depressingly common in Britain. Got frustated the first time I tried looking. :smack:

Thanks for all the comments so far. Very interesting. :slight_smile:

9

I’m told that this gentleman is a distant relative of mine, although at the time he was living our line was already established in America so he must be related to me through British kinfolks.

There are two commonly seen spellings of my Dad’s last name; legend has it that several of one particular man’s sons changed the spelling of their last name because their father abandoned the family, ran off to Ohio with another woman and left them with “nobody but their mother to raise them”.

I had at least a dozen relatives fighting in the Civil War, some on each side. One family lost all five brothers to the war.

10

There is apparently a monument in Surrey, England, that has engraved on it the names of my great-grandfather and his brother. Both were well-known cricket players in the 1890’s. Evidently the ability to understand cricket is not hereditary, because after years to trying, it’s still mostly incomprehensible to me.

11

Great Great Uncle applied and received US Patents for coin locks on pay toilets.

My surname contains the letter “W”. Back in the revolutionary war days, the name was spelled with two consecutive “U’s.” A double U.

While there are about 30 English words with two consecutive U’s, only a handful can be considered common.

Sometimes I wish my last name was stilled spelled with two consecutive U’s. But apparently my surname is already difficult to pronounce, and if the “W” was replaced with two “U’s”, I can’t imagine how it would be butchered.

12

Someone who traced one of my Scottish ancestors on my father’s side said we can be traced back to George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron).

On my mother’s side, her mother had two ancestors that came to the US from Ireland to fight in the Civil War and then went back to Ireland, later their children married and moved to the US. Through my maternal grandfather we are distantly related to a former US president, whose branch of the family changed the spelling of the surname to look less German.

13

Wasn’t that Johnny Cash?

14

I’ve done a little research over the last few months and I uncovered a few interesting people through my maternal grandmother’s side of the family. I was down to one ancestor and thought I was going to find a dead tree limb, when all of a sudden, the branches started opening up again.

John Rogers, the first Protestant martyr of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Henry I of England and thus by default William the Conqueror

There are a ton English nobles, and a King of France as well, but I cancelled my Ancestry membership and don’t want to look it up at the moment.

ETA: I’ve gotten as far back as the 800’s on one of the branches on that limb. The other branches on my family tree, my father’s parents and my maternal grandfather’s family so far are short stumps.

15

One of my ancestors was sentenced to death for stealing a handkerchief.

16

My great great grandpa Thomas Welch married a woman from the Chapman familly, which consisted of a long string of daughters. Mary Arminta Chapman, my great great grandma, was towards the youngest end of that string.

Thomas Welch’s dad, my great great great grandpa William Washington Welch, was a widower and in due course took as his second wife an older sister of Mary Arminta Chapman, Ms. Levina Chapman.

William Washington Welch had previously been hitched to a Deaver, Ms. Elvira Deaver. Elvira Deaver’s dad was still on the scene, that being one Reuben Keith Deaver. He, too, was a widower, and in short order he remarried also: to the oldest sister amongst the same generation of Chapmans, Miss Susannah Chapman.

So Mir. William Washington Welch had some relatives who were simultaneously his nieces, his sisters in law, and his aunts.

And they say the South has nothing up its family tree aside from cousins marrying each other!
I’m not even going to tell you about my sister’s divorce. (She’d kill me).

17

I was told someone in the family tree invented the Tillotson carburettor. I don’t know if that’s true.

18

Great great grandfather on my maternal grandmother’s side was a Sergeant in the Union quartermaster corps in the American Civil War, and somehow apparently lost a leg, probably due to an accident, as I don’t know that he ever saw combat.

In the early 1870s he was co-recipient of a patent for an iron toy coin bank in the shape of the US Capitol.

19

Not that all weren’t interesting, but this jumped out…sentence DEATH. Ages, 14 and 19. Crime? stealing (rather ATTEMPTING to steal) 3 hankerchiefs. Jesus jumping Christ. :smack: It’a wonder ALL our family trees don’t end in “stumps”.

In noodling around on-line tonight, I have concluded that my maternal grandmother may very well have been born in Donaldsonville LA, not Texas (can find no record of any such place name in Texas). Still can’t locate a birth record for her, but did for all 5 of her kids, all born in Tx… AND learned her middle name was Loraine and her husband’s was Omar. Loverly. :stuck_out_tongue:

20

I have been told I have William Penn as an ancestor on one side and Sitting Bull on the other, but I’ve never seen any genealogy reports to back up the claims, so I don’t know for certain if it’s true.

One of these days I’m going to have to check it out.