I found out I was descended from…Thomas Jefferson!
I went on Ancestory.com and discovered that my ancestors were… Conservatives!
I’m my own grandpa.
Hey, good to know about the familysearch one. Within 2 minutes I did, indeed, find info that wasn’t on Ancestry. However, I do not exist at all on the familysearch one, lol. Interesting indeed!
and now the site won’t load, lol. Guess we killed it!
Don’t give up though. Same basic story, my family came over from Poland in 1903. The current living generations, Mine/Moms/Grandmas don’t speak Polish, but my mom and her cousins even found my ancestors signatures from entering at Ellis Island, among other things. No idea what service they used.
My great great grandmother was so virtuous she was rewarded with a two week pregnancy. The woman was practically a saint.
Ancestry handles that, actually. I have two current first cousins who are married (note that I’m from Minnesota, not Arkansas). I had to poke at a bit to figure it out, but it works fine.
I discovered that at least two of my ancestors married a sister of their first wife after they were widowed (no Mormon’s that I know of).
And a great-grandfather’s second wife was the widow of the one of the brothers of his (great-grandfather’s) daughter husband, so my grandfather. So while I’m not my own grandpa, I am my own cousin or something.
Ellis Island can be a great way to find what town they came from too if they arrived from 1892-1924
Play with the spelling a lot though, If they aren’t on there look at Canada’s records. I found out one side was denied at Ellis so they took the boat up to Canada and they snuck in.
That bit of info cut down on the racist remarks at reunions a lot 
When I was doing family research, I found that my great-grandmother was a boy when she was young…
I just learned that someone with my name was born in 1830 in Quebec. You guys know what that means, right? I’m an 182 year old vampire. NBD.
A lot of Poles took their American equivalent for a first name, but on a census it could turn up as the original spelling. It took forever to find my wife’s grandfather, who went by ‘Lorenc’ (Lawrence). I found him on a census under Wawrzyniec. And it only took me five years and a flash of insight. :rolleyes:
I really think that everything that exists on familysearch.org exists on ancestry.com If you can show me something that doesn’t, I’ve yet to see it.
Now, it can take some work to find it on ancestry, as they have sooooo much info they might not show you what you want until way down the line.
I have a paid access from home to ancestry.
And, yeah, if your relatives came from Europe, especially Russia/Eastern Europe, then you have to be creative with names.
I recently found some info for a friend about his relatives from 1910 Massachusetts(they came from Russia/Poland), and “Andrews” was “Andros.”
I found this one Family Search “California, San Joaquin, County Public Library Obituary Index, 1850-1991” that doesn’t seem to be on Ancestry. It might very well be, but I didn’t see it.
I wonder how long before there’s really only one or two good places to search. I don’t do much at Family Search right now, but I might have to cancel my subscription at Ancestry for awhile. I’ve actually backed off doing much research lately, I think I burned out a bit. That and I started butting heads with another researcher on our family name and I really don’t want to deal with it so I’ve stopped totally dealing with that name.
**Chefguy **- I looked at the links you provided, and at first glance, it appears you need to know specifically where your family came from or what church they attended, or what ship brought them to the US and to which port. Unfortunately, no one older than my generation is alive from that side of the family and none of us know. There are some old photographs of people in traditional garb in what looks to be a very poor setting - like a dirt-floor shack sort of abode. I expect that’d be pretty tough to narrow to a region.
I’d spend a few bucks if I thought one of the pay-for-info sites would help, but I kinda suspect not. I wish I’d cared enough when they were all alive to get the stories. Oh well.
One thing I did see from the 1930 census - the census taker screwed up. My Aunt Stella’s name in Polish is Stanislawa, but in the census, she’s listed as Stanislaw and as a male. It confused me at first and I called my mom to find out if Dad had lost an older brother. Plus my dad’s name is spelled wrong.
The same census data for Mom’s side wasn’t as helpful, only because Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Tony were no longer living at home, so only my grandmother and her younger brothers and sister showed up. One family mystery will never be solved - what happened to Uncle Joe. He was mentally disabled. Went to his job one day as usual, never showed up at work and was never seen again. This was all before I was born…
If your family tree doesn’t fork… you might be a redneck. - Jeff Foxworthy
Mrs. Geek is very much into genealogy and she has uncovered all kinds of family secrets. Of course you have the marriage dates and birth dates that aren’t quite as far apart as they should be. She has also found a few things that were a bit more shocking, like children that were committed to an asylum after the first wife died so that the guy could start fresh with his second wife, criminal records that no one ever talked about, and one guy that traveled a lot back and forth between Canada and New England with marriage records in both locations and no divorce records in either.
On my side, my grandfather and his brother moved and were missing from one census. From earlier census records and old newspaper articles, Mrs. Geek was able to piece together the real story. It turns out that they started a fire in their restaurant that pretty much burned down the entire downtown area of the town they lived in, and they probably skipped town pretty quickly to avoid getting lynched.
Funny how no one ever mentioned that story when I was growing up.
Ancestry.com has one record showing that I was born 13 years before I actually was. My IRL name is pretty unusual and the town I grew up in is very small (both details included in the earlier record of birth). I am certain that there wasn’t another one of me running around before I was born. But it does explain why the AARP keeps sending me stuff.
I recently discovered that I am a descendant of…
My mom! Who would have thunk it?
Also, apparently my parents apparently had sex sometime in the year before I was born.
First Cousin marriage is legal in many states even now. And not just the ones you would sterotypically think of.
Her mummy was…
Her earliest ancestor of the same name had mitochondria.