Huh, I didn’t know that.
My paternal grandmother died when I was pretty young, so of course it never would have dawned on me to, say, take out a map and ask her. I remember my dad telling me he actually did that as a kid and my grandmother never gave him a straight answer – most of the time she pointed to Austria, but she also pointed to France, to Germany (or what was considered Germany in those days), Italy, and Greece. I think her being illiterate might have had something to do with that.
I think having made a successful crossing of the pond aboard the Mayflower, and being buried at anchor in the new world makes one a pilgrim. Do you mean none of the descendants of MF settlers who managed dry feet went back to England?
When doing genealogy, if you find skeletons in the closet, make them dance.
One of my great uncles and my cousin spent years doing research on my great grandfathers side of the family. Nothing too interesting there.
They were asked to do my great grandmothers family.
They said NO!.
My great grandmother was one of 11 children of my great great grandfather and his wife. What my uncle found out was that my great great grandfather had another 20+ children with two other women, and there may be more.
Nobody wants to untangle that mess.
I’ve no skeletons in particular, but my forebears were a ropey lot. They were at least peripherally involved with Cornish pirates and wreckers on one branch, and Scottish pirates and wreckers on another, and then there are the Scouse slavers, and Vikings.
Family history also says that we descend from one of the Stuarts in exile via an illegitimate daughter. She apparently married an Italian who was so taken with the Stuarts that he changed his name to Stuart. That branch of the family certainly had a strong Italian connection, and were big supporters of Garibaldi when he came over here. This, I think is rather fanciful and just wishful thinking.
My paternal grandmother was one of 11 children, 9 of whom spent time in mental hospitals. (Grandmother was a compulsive hoarder who went to funerals of people she didn’t know to get free food, had a slight problem with pyromania, and when she helped hide eggs for us one Easter Sunday told me “I hid a couple over there in those bushes but be careful, I’ve seen rattlensnakes in that area”- and she was one of the [legally] sane ones.)
What was interesting was learning how far back the insanity in her family went. In her great-grandfather’s will from 1849 he bequeathed a small house and two slaves to be used by his solely for seeing to the needs of two of his sons and a daughter who were insane (which of course could mean anything from chronic depression to manic schizophrenia, but it was severe enough they had to be isolated and cared for separately). The same family included several surgeons and lawyers and one of the founders of Birmingham, AL, and my grandmother was one of the few women in Alabama to do graduate work in Chemistry in the 1920s, but many happened to also be crazy as hell.
Grandmother’s grandparents on the other side had several children by the time they were in their early-30s; she died when the youngest was about a year old, and he remarried 5 weeks later. (No kids with the second wife, who was a few years older than he was- about 38 to his 35 IIRC- so that might be why.) I’d love to know what that was about, though sudden remarriage wasn’t that uncommon (especially when there were small children).
A tip I’ve shared before but will again (because wills are among the most useful documents you can find and many are online):
You can often find wills and other legal documents written by or naming your ancestors by doing the following search in google:
Most wills until the 20th century began with “In the name of God, Amen” and genealogists have entered the full text of many wills all over the net. If your ancestor’s name was Quintilius Zolicoffer it will obviously take less sifting than if your ancestor’s name was Mary Taylor, but even with common names it can have results if you know and enter the name of the county or of siblings or the like. I’ve found several ancestors wills this way.
Regarding slavery, there’s a special guilt to being a southerner and meeting a black person with a surname from your family. In my own family, meeting a black Moore or Taylor has plausible deniability, but a black Stoudemire or Deramus or Gholson from the same tiny community as my ancestors of that name results almost in feeling the need for a geneapology (though more commonly I just don’t mention it since that’s not my own surname- though they owned slaves also, but their descendants are mostly in Louisiana and Texas).
John Tillotson was the Archbishop of Canterbury. His cousin, the other John Tillotson, is the one from whom I’m descended. (Dad’s mother was a Tillotson.) According to a mimeographed genealogy a family member gave me back in the '70s or '80s, John Tillotson the Immigrant was an interesting character. He:
[ul][li]Was sued for killing a neighbour’s horse;[/li][li]Was fined for not going to church;[/li][*]Was admonished for chaining his wife to the bedpost to keep her indoors.[/ul]
How do you research family ties in other countries?
My mother’s parents (or grandparents?) are both from Poland, my dad’s mother is from Germany and his father is from Spain. I know nothing of any of my great grandparents.
My kids have a maternal relationship to John Wilkes Booth (I believe he was a great-great-great uncle).
My Civil War relation is my great-grandfather, who married in the 1890s to a much younger woman who eventually gave birth to my grandfather, who died 5 years before I was born. Anyway, Great-Granddad (GGF hereinafter) was a freshman at the University of North Carolina (as family history goes), when Ft. Sumpter was fired upon. In a fit of Southern patriotism, the whole student body up and enrolled at Raleigh. My GGF, being somewhat of a Piedmont yokel (his family ONLY raised tobacco, not cotton like Real Southern Gentlemen did), was assigned to drive the supply wagon. GGF, full of piss and vinegar, kept agitating to swap places with some of the other volunteers so he could fight the Damnyankees™, only to be continually rebuffed. Apparently he was told that driving the wagon was important and since he had the most experience, he needed to stay there.
Anyway, fast forward to his regiments first battle, and the supply wagon became an ambulance, and GGF got to witness firsthand the effects of Minie balls on human flesh. After the battle he was offered the chance to swap, and he is reported to have told those folks that driving the supply wagon was much too important a job to leave to city slickers like them and he was fine where he was Thank You Very Much.
Now, of course, I don’t know if that’s a true story or not, but it sounds too good not to claim. He did see action at Gettysburg as an Ordinance Sgt., so maybe the supply wagon bit has a bit of truth to it.
Yeah, I’m descended from one (one of the ones Chefguy is). In fact, something told me I’d find you in this topic as soon as I read the OP. 
Renting out ancestors is always a good way to make some dough.
HOLY CRAP THANK YOU FOR THIS TIP! You just helped solve a mystery i’ve been working on !
[quote=“Johnny_L.A, post:48, topic:660004”]
John Tillotson was the Archbishop of Canterbury. His cousin, the other John Tillotson, is the one from whom I’m descended. (Dad’s mother was a Tillotson.) According to a mimeographed genealogy a family member gave me back in the '70s or '80s, John Tillotson the Immigrant was an interesting character. He:
[ul][li]Was sued for killing a neighbour’s horse;[/li][li]Was fined for not going to church;[/li][li]Was admonished for chaining his wife to the bedpost to keep her indoors.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
OK, I looked up a website that was put up by a distant cousin. I found this:
[quote]
Official records reflect poorly on John Tillotson:
[ul]li “John Tillotson, it is well knowne what he is, the town gave him 30s but this winter to make a bane.”[/li][li](September 1650) John Tillotson was sued by James Noyes for killing his mare, for which he had to pay 27 pounds. John did not like this. He was later presented in a public church meeting “for scandalous and reproachful speech cast upon the elders and authorities.”[/li][li](April 1656) John Tillotson was admonished for chaining his wife to the bedpost with a plow chain to keep her within doors.[/li][li](19 November 1657 at court in Ipswich) "John Tilison sentenced to the house of correction, but released and bound to “good behaviour and to live with his wife and prvyde for her acording to his place as a husband ought to doe.”[/li]li John Tilison, upon complaint of Mr. Dummer, fined for false oath, and to pay fees of the Constable of Newbury.[/ul][/li][/quote]
No mention of being fined for not going to church, but the web page is different from the much older mimeograph. I could be mis-remembering, or mis-interpreted his smack-talking of the Elders and Authorities. Still, it seems my ancestor was a bit of a naughty person.
I don’t know what a ‘bane’ is in the first bullet point, or how much 30 shillings is adjusted to today’s dollars.
Looks like our mutual ancestor wasn’t such a nice guy after all :eek:
My favorite name of a direct ancestor:
*
Epaphroditus Howle*
And he had several descendants who had the same name for the next couple of centuries.
In the early days of the net I used Zadok Montague as a screen name (no significance, I just came up with it and liked the way it sounded and figured it was obviously a fake name). I was surprised to find I had a couple of ancestors and several relatives named Zadok (not even that distantly- the last direct ancestor was alive until the 1880s and some of his descendants with Zadok as a middle name lived into my lifetime).
In researching our family tree, the first verified scandal we ran across was my aunt. Then there was the story about my grandfather. Then the rumor about my grandmother :eek: So we have three scandals in just two generations, and we’re afraid to dig any deeper lest we find that we’re all actually not related to each other!
I’ve been doing some genealogy and am amazed at how few of my ancestors fought in the Civil War. For some reason I thought most able-bodied males went off to fight, but hardly any of my relatives did.
I don’t have any Mayflower passengers among my forebears, but do have one from the Gift of God ~1624 who ended up in Jamestown.
the owner and his nephew who ran the place were close relatives to childless Ferris of wheel fame. Van Giesen and Ferris.
I worked for a few weeks for them until, basically, they each started telling me what to do, sometimes in conflict with one another. A former employee came back who was better at everything than I, and they tried to keep both of us. I decided to go back to detassling corn for the rest of the summer.
Good people, really.
If you don’t read or speak the language, your best bet is to hire a genealogist who does. It’s what I had to do for my German ancestors.
And how do you find such a person (I’m interested in my German ancestors) who is reputable? Any ballpark on what kinds of rates they charge?
Roddy