It used to be the done thing a couple of hundred years ago to know your Seize Quartiers, or the coat-of-arms of your sixteen great-great-grandparents, certifying your nobility. Well, many of us don’t have ancestors with coat-of-arms anymore, but if you’re a genealogy buff do you know who all your great-great-grandparents were?
I’ve got my Seize Quartiers, although the generation after that has some gaps.
– 10 of my great-great-grandparents were born in Mississippi. 3 were born in Alabama, 1 in Louisiana, and 2 in Tennessee.
– The surnames are McFATTER, HUDSON, TANKSLEY, SORRELS, FOSTER, BROWN, SMITH, LEA, CHISHOLM, HOUSTON, HENDERSON, NICHOLS, HIGGINBOTHAM, SMITH (yes, another one, from a different family from the first), WATSON, and BLACKWELL. Any cousins out there?
– Due to generational drag, the oldest was born in 1820, and the youngest was born in 1882!
I think I have 15 out of the 16… let me look at my tree a moment.
Thomas Skinner
Rosamond Reece
Charles Frank Clark
Anna Maria Hammarin
William S. Buxton
Jennie E. Blair
Charles Armitage Killam
Ellen Lucinda Farnham
Niklas Ramström (born Ramm)
Anna Cristina Thenell
unknown Backmann
Maria Sofia Isaksdotter Påfs
Thomas King
Anna Rogers
George Edwin Pelton
Ella Frances Emrick
Yeah, there we go. The unknown great-great-grandfather was from Finland, so I just gotta get next door and do some diggin’.
Do you mean off the top of your head or having the info in a file right over … there?
I know all about my g-grandparents without looking it up. Names, locations, significant events, etc. Ditto quite a few of their parents. But I would have to search my genealogy folder to get a complete list of g-g-grandparents. A brain can only retain so much. I am complete thru 3 greats and nearly complete thru 4.
William Turner
Harlettie Louisa Groombridge*
Robert Paterson
Eleanor Dunwoodie
Edward Hanniver*
Agnes Steele*
Nathanial Higginbottom
Eliza Jane Clapton
William Thomas Wilton*
Sarah Ann Constable*
Frank Battersby*
Ernestina Paulina Wandel*
David Robertson*
Fanny Harvey*
George Edward Lowery*
Isobella Johannah Park*
Birth year ranges from c.1813 to 1882. * denotes born in Australia.
I also have Mum’s, and Dad’s if you count Ellen (Surname Unknown) as known.
I can do 8 of the 16, all of them on my father’s side. I believe I have most, if not all, on my mother’s side but I don’t have the file with me. My mother was born in California, my father in Maryland so it’s much easier to do my father’s side. All the ones I have were born in Frederick Maryland except a couple who were born right down the road.
I’ve got Charles Main, Susan Dinterman, Charles Gue, Frances Hawse, Lewis Hargett, Ella Virts, William Kessler and Alberta Castle. I know the names, but I had to look them up quickly just to make sure I didn’t get the wrong generation. The oldest was born in 1869, the youngest was born in 1882 so not that big of a gap.
I can go back one more generation fully, though there are a few dates I haven’t verified just yet. It really helps that Maryland has parents on death certificates with maiden names.
I only know of 7 of my 8 great grandparents. One of my grandmothers was apparently illegitimate, and we don’t know who her father was. However, it seems likely that he was Chinese, having gone to the goldfields in Victoria presumably to make his fortune.
There’s a castle in our ancestral hometown with our name. Pretty clear we were one of many of the families related to the current baron. Don’t expect any invitations though, since we’ve been three generation in the US.
Nope, I don’t even know the names of my paternal great-grandparents, and it seems no one does based on efforts made for my sister’s grade 8 class where she made a family tree. We know very little of my dad’s family, and as far as I know, no one has bothered to try to find more out (I know I’m not interested).
We do know my mother’s side of the family back to the 1640’s or so, though.
Gramp Niklas died before Hitler was even born, so there goes that theory.
Actually, the whole history of that name is kind of interesting; his father was a farmboy from out in the sticks of Bohuslän named Johann Andersson. In the 1830s he signed up to serve in the Swedish Army (I’ve seen the original contract) and got stationed in the sticks of Västragötaland in a place called Ramnered. Back then they would officially assign surnames based on where you were stationed, so Johann Andersson became Johann Andersson Ramm. Niklas was born a few years after that and was given the surname Ramm, but changed it to Ramström shortly before moving to Stockholm in the early 1860s. Don’t exactly know why, but it had nothing to do with anti-German hatred, for sure.
There’s actually a big thick book of my father’s line (Huguenots who came to Virginia in 1700). I know who my ggparents are, and all but two of my ggparents, whom I could reasonably easily find out.
I have 15 out of 16, the missing one being due to an illegitimate birth in 1849. Just getting 15 required years of research, several lengthy trips, and DNA testing.
The 15 represent six different nationalities. Their birth years range from 1830 to 1865.
Mississippienne, you mentioned the name Higginbotham and roots in Alabama. You aren’t related to this fine gentleman, immortalized by the famous photographer Lewis Wickes Hine, are you?
Heh, good eye! Yes, it seems Shorpy Higginbotham and I are distant cousins, both descended from Robert Barkley Higginbotham and Nancy Blankinship. His branch of the family moved directly from Virginia to Alabama, while my grandmother’s branch took a more leisurely route through Tennessee before coming to Alabama a couple of generations after their cousins.