Let's talk Genealogy!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

The most interesting thing I’ve got is a gg-grandfather’s civil war pension file. My mom’s cousin said he’d gone missing for some time and it just wasn’t talked about in the family. That pension file was one of the best $75 I ever spent. There are tons of affidavits in it regarding his disappearance and mental health.

According to the affidavits, he would often say he was going to leave the family, then go to town or whatever and come back. One day, he just said he was going to town for tobacco (really) and never came back. Some neighbors saw him a few months later at a fair a ways a way and that was the last anyone saw of him. After X number of years his wife filed for a widow’s pension and that’s how all this information came to be documented. There’s an affidavit from his brother’s widow saying his brother said he should have left her years before he did. Stuff from neighbors who knew the family back in Indiana saying his mother and two of her brothers were insane (which led me to find out his sister hanged herself at an asylum in Indiana and his mother wandered out of the house one night and was found dead in the orchard the next morning). Lots of juicy stuff.

14 years after he disappeared he sent a letter to his brother in Oklahoma. Brother has died but has the same name as gg-grandfather’s son, and the letter makes its way to the son in Kansas. Turns out gg-grandfather was living in the old soldier’s home in Indiana at that time. So after the truth came out there’s a letter in the file basically de-briefing him to make sure he is who he says he is, so it says all the towns he lived in all those years, what he’d done for work, where all his brothers and sisters live, etc.

After the family found out he was alive he went back to Kansas to live with them for a few years, then took off for the soldiers home in Leavenworth where he died some years later. My great-aunt (100 years old) remembers him churning butter on the porch.

22

My surname is German, and is unusual even in that country (roughly translated, it means “Teamster”). My g-grandfather came to this country in the late 1850’s as a teenager.

Now our name is so unusual that I always thought that anyone with the same name must be related. This is where it gets tricky. There was a family of about 11 kids in Germany, a little later, and several of the sons of that family came over here and begat lines of offspring who are now mostly in southern California and in Utah. But none of us has been able to trace the connection between my ancestor and theirs. He might have been the oldest brother or half-brother (it would have been by several years), he might have been an uncle, or he might be unrelated. Someday I’m going to have to go to Germany to see if there is any more information, so if anyone has any experience doing genealogy research in Germany please let me know. I’m not expecting much, if for no other reason than that the war must have destroyed a lot of records. I know the other family is from Brandenburg, so that’s where I would start.

When I retire, my dream is to take a cross-country genealogy trip to all the places in this country where my ancestors set down roots and stayed a while - Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Michigan, and then further east, mostly in New England. I want to have the leisure to follow leads that I find wherever they take me, as long as I can drive there. A friend of mine who is much more experienced in this than I am says that there is only so much research you can do remotely, and what you can get from viewing gravestones, researching wills and estates, and looking up old city directories, will fill in lots of gaps. So that’s what I want to do. I wish there were someone else in my family who shared this interest, since it would be a lot more fun doing it with someone than alone.

And then I don’t know who to leave the information with when I’m gone. So far no-one else is interested. Oh well, there’s still time.

23

Roderick, sounds like DNA might solve your mystery. Y-chromosome testing can determine if two men with the same surname are related or not. If you’re a direct male-line descendant, or know someone who is, you can compare your results with the results from the other family and see if there’s a match.

24

Cool post. It reminds me of this thread.

Something I’ve wondered about upon occasion is my paternal grandfather’s paternal grandfather. Supposedly he was killed or died of disease at Vicksburg, though there’s not a grave for him in the Confederate cemeteries there. There is however somebody who had his name (his first name was John but his middle name, Weston, was a bit more distinctive- the surname is “average”- not particularly rare or common) and was roughly the same age (5 years younger) appearing in Arkansas and later Oklahoma after the war. I’ve wondered if perhaps he abandoned his family. More likely it’s just a same name coincidence, but new identities back then were as simple as moving.

25

Mine too. Apparently it was fairly common at one time when people didn’t move too far away from where they were born. On my mother’s side you can follow either my grandmother or my grandfather back up the family tree and arrive at the same two couples. Another of my ancestors married a local woman and when she died he married her sister. Then when the sister died he ended up marrying the sisters’ niece. Keeping it in the family I suppose.

Oh, and about the names-we’ve got an Orlando, a Leonidas, and not one but two Napoleons. One of them is even a Bonaparte! (His middle name anyway.)

26

Oh my gosh, and I’m jealous of you! I opened this thread so I could vicariously enjoy tales of other people’s genealogy success. On my father’s side, all four great-grandparents were immigrants, and they firmly believed they had been born of the sea (like Venus, I suppose) when they set foot on American shores. Having escaped poverty, famine, refugee camps, and religious persecution, they steadfastly refused to talk about anything about themselves or their families that predated their immigration.

On the other hand, they all loved their experiences in the US, which is impressive when you think that they arrived with nothing and lived in what I would consider poverty (although apparently a walk in the park compared to their childhoods) and slowly built some assets, just in time for the Great Depression. All of our good family stories are about this time in American history, and they’re pretty interesting. But they go back to 1922, and that’s it.

There is one story I would love to track down. Only one family member, my uncle, seems to have heard this story, but he claims that after the grandfather died, the grandmother mentioned that the grandfather had a brother who was coming over at the same time, but had gotten passage on a different boat which would have landed him in the US a few weeks after. They were supposed to meet up in the US, but my g-grandparents never heard from him again. I don’t even know where I would start with this, maybe someone has some ideas?

Factors:
– They may or may not have come through Ellis Island. My great-grandmother used to say Ellis Island, but we later realized she used “Ellis Island” as a synonym for “Customs”
– We don’t know where the boats departed from, or if they departed from the same place. We think the family had been living in a refugee camp in Hungary, although they were not themselves Hungarian.
– We don’t know my family’s original surname, only the name they took after arriving in the US, which is fairly unusual (I think at the time they thought it sounded American, but it doesn’t).
– I know my g-grandfather’s first name (John) but that could be Americanized. No idea if his original name was John, a variation of John, or a completely different name.
– My uncle thinks my great-grandmother might have mentioned the brother’s name as Fred or Frederick, but he’s not sure.

27

Check your local library. My offers complete access to Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest from within the library. The Heritage Quest is also available from my home, I just have to plug in my library card and whammo the entire US census scanned for free and many of it indexed.

Familysearch.org has the complete 1880 US census and the 1881 Canada and UK census for free.

And USGenWeb (links at rootsweb.com) has a lot of stuff broken down by county. I’ve transcribed quite a bit for them. Including censuses and cattle marks.
One of the things I really enjoyed doing was taking a picture of various ancestors faces and making them into a visual family tree. It was neat to watch how faces changed as you moved from line to line. You could definitly see how in one family eyes were like this and in another they were like that.

28

There is a cheaper way.

Join up with the National Geographic’s Genographic project. (It’s on their web site.) My initial DNA test was about $100, but it tells about “deep roots” ancestry, not current racial makeup.

However, after you get your results, it links you to a geneology project website (I think it’s called Family Tree, or somesuch) that offers testing for African American ancestry and Native American ancesty for $69 apiece. Haven’t done it yet, but it looks like they read the results from my National Georgraphic sample, not asking me to send in a new one.

It might be an option for you.

29

My Aunt did an insane amount of geneology research on my mother’s side.
Then she wrote it all down in a ~10 page book for me and my cousins.
Cool stories:
*Oldest ancestor she found lived in Birmingham 450 years ago.
*One of that guy’s decendants was born in England in 1676, but died in Virginia in 1733.
*We have pay records for that guy’s son from the US side of the Revolutionary War, including ones from Valley Forge.
*We have ancestors on both sides of the Civil War. One Southern soldier reported in Northern uniform in place of his Northern relative when the Northerner was too ill to return from leave.
*My great-great-great grandfather, after being raided by Northern troops, became a Confederate scout and spy, “disguised as a woman going through the lines selling pies.”
*One ancestor was a wagon train scout, and another took part in one of the first Oklahoma land rushes.

30

My parents are really big into genealogy. My mother had all of our grandparents and some of our other relatives tested a confirmed a story that had long been told. Apparently, one of my female ancestors was a slave woman of mixed African/Native American heritage. The story was that she was traded for some blankets and then later married, but my mother was never able to establish if the story was fact or fiction until she did DNA testing. The tests not only told her what part of Africa but also what tribe the woman was probably from.

31

Like my grandfather - Jasper Nimrod [Surname]. And his brother - Chalmer Nimrod [Surname], Jr.

32

As a followup to what Sampiro said, kinships between Southern families could be labyrinthine and perplexing, but actual inbreeding doesn’t seem to have been as common as people think. Especially for early settlers, there were only so many families in the same area from which to draw marriage partners.

Some of my own ancestors, John and Verlinda, produced nine children in mid-19th century Mississippi. Their daughter Amelia married Mac, and her sister Margaret married Bee, Mac’s cousin. Then their son John married Betty, and his brother Hugh married Betty’s cousin Marcy. So Amelia and Margaret’s children were double first-cousins, and John Jr. and Hugh’s children were first and second cousins.

Two other sons of John and Verlinda were Norman and William. Norman’s daughters Louisa and Amanda married Donnie and Sylvester, who were brothers. William’s daughters Anna, Ella, and Lela married (respectively) Jesse, Samuel, and Jason, three more brothers of Donnie and Sylvester. All these people had SCADS of children who were double-first cousins, first and second cousins on multiple sides, etc. There are about five families in my mother’s hometown who intermarried so often that I went to high school with lots of kids who were my second cousins on one side, third cousins once removed on another side, etc.

I love the looks on people’s faces when I tell them I once dated one of my cousins! His great-uncle was married to my great-aunt and we had cousins in common, but we didn’t share a drop of blood.

33

Obviously, that last post was mine, not Adam’s.

34

One of my father’s cousin’s did an immense amount of family research. It was his main hobby. So I don’t have to do a lot there.

And about 120 years ago a maternal relative did a similar amount of work on that family up until that point. So I know that my oldest ancestors in this country came in 1722. A son was court-martialed during the Revolutionary War, as he wouldn’t fight alongside the Frech troops that came, they being Catholic and he a rabid Protestant. Later he was pardoned.

A relative of that line, named John Adam Kasson, held several high offices, being Postmaster General, and ambassador to Austria-Hungary. He was the author/editor of the book commissioned by the government to commerate the centennial of the US Constitution, in 1889. If I figured the lines correctly he was a third cousin five time removed, which means his great-great grandfather, and my seven greats grandfather were the same person. Not what you would call a close relationship.

My maternal grandmother’s maternal grandfather was a Union soldier, and incarcerated for a while in the notorious Andersonville prison. Her other grandfather fought for the Union as well.

35

Speaking of genealogy, does anybody know how I would find which unit my grandfathers served in during World War I? There are many resources for finding Civil War regiments but WW1 is evidently still sealed.

36

I’m lucky; someone has already done all the legwork on my surname. The Story of Gabriel and Marie Maupin: Huguenot Refugees to Virginia in 1700 is a fairly complete listing of my line all the way back to France in the 1600s, and I’m on page 132!

37

That’s weird. My Grandmother’s brother was killed in WW II, and I’ve been able to find a fair amount of info and get copies of a number of records and reports about him and his service. From what I’ve seen a lot of unit reports and the like (when they still exist) are available, although it can be complicated and time consuming to get ahold of them. I’d have thought that with the WW I records being a lot older there would be less reason for them to be sealed.

Have you tried getting their personnel files from the National Archives? There’s also info here that may help.

I don’t have experience with WW I records (and I’m nowhere near an expert with WW II either). But from what I’ve seen looking for WW II, there’s been tons of info preserved, but it’s stored by various military and government facilities all over the country. It can be really difficult to figure out where to go, how to get it or even what’s available. I found many WW II resourced - online forums, memorial organizations for the various Army Air Corp Units, etc. Fortunately there are tons of others who’ve been down the same road and were able to point me in the right direction. There’s got to be the similar resources for WW I as well.

It can be difficult getting started if you don’t have much info on his service, like his service number or unit. But

38

One advantage of coming from an LDS background is there are a ton of records kicking around in my family. I have quite a few lines going back 17 generations or more. The problem is I have a hard time finding any new unexplored territory. What my wife and I have been doing is researching the hometowns, etc. of my ancestors. It has been fascinating.

I love teaching my kids about some of our famous ancestors - even though not all of them are reputable. Some of my ancestors include John Alden, Pricilla Mullins, a couple of Narragaset Indian leaders, Pres. John Adams grandmother and Geoffrey Chaucer. I also tapped in to a royal line or two in Europe, so those lines are well documented and deep. It’s like reading an index from a European history textbook.

My current project is recording, retyping and making electronic copies of my great uncles letters from WWII, before he was killed as a pilot over Palau.

And Mississippienne, the LDS library’s IGA is about as accurate as any genealogical source in the world. THe people who work on it are very well trained and are very good at sourcing their materials. It is true that there are members of the LDS church who rely on “folk pedigrees” (some of my worst nightmare stories, however, come from non-LDS individaula), but the stuff that comes from the LDS Family History Libraries is amazingly accurate.

39

To expand on what others have told you:

When you interview relatives, get ALL the information so you don’t have to keep going back. People start getting testy. In addition to first and last names, make sure you get maiden names and middle names. Middle names can often be family surnames, like mine is, or can be named after a sister or aunt. Trust me, this can become relevant.

Make sure you get all the names each person can remember, including cousins, etc. and deceased relatives, and their relationships to you.

Get birth dates, death dates (or at least years), baptism dates (if possible).

Get places of birth, including county names. If in another country, get province or state names. “Germany”, for example, just ain’t good enough. Also find out what other states/countries they may have lived in. This can provide an idea of migration patterns.

Once you have all that info, start tracking down death certificates. These have a remarkable amount of information. Cyndi’s List, USGenweb and Rootsweb all have information on how to find these. Generally, county clerks have access to archives for birth, death and marriage certs and will send you a copy for a fee.

For military members, try to get pension records from the National Archives.

There are many other sources of info, including censuses, applications for citizenship, declaration of intent to file for citizenship, draft registrations, wills, probates, etc. All of it can contain valuable information.

The aforementioned Cyndi’s List has a wealth of links to family research sites, ship registries, Ellis Island, veteran’s organizations, etc. USGenWeb is a terrific resource for states and county research. You can post queries for people searching the same surnames as you, and volunteers do lookups in genealogy pubs.

Just make sure you don’t publish anything to the web unless you have backup for what you have found. There is a lot of erroneous information out there. I had a young woman send me some information that was mostly crap, and despite my plea not to publish it, she did anyway.

One of the great things about this hobby is that it forces you to learn geography, history, and many other things you probably never knew. The best part, however, is in driving your family crazy with your constant babbling about your latest finds.