Magnus Heinason (1548 – 1589) (Wiki) is my 10th great grandfather according to Geni. He was a pirate but the evil English got their grubby hands on him and had him decapitated. His son Rasmus Magnussen (Wiki), my 9th great grandfather, was also a pirate, and had been a captain for the Dutch forces in the Dutch War of Independence before that. He fathered his last son when he was 103. The son was also a pirate. Come to think of it, pretty much all of them were pirates.
Possibly. He did come from Minsk.
Our house was converted from a hovel to a house in the 1600’s - we have that deed, and relatives streching back to the 1200’s. One dude got hanged as a highwayman - we have a portrait of him - head shaven awaiting his death and another went off to South America as a horse dealer. Family lore has it that there’s a whole village of lookalikes in Venezuela.
Mine is boooring. All my known ancestors were Jews in Russia or Lithuania. Someone actually wrote a book tracing my maternal grandmother’s family back to some place in Russia in 1940. I read the book and it is pretty boring. Someone else has complied a family tree that goes back as far as he could. It is online searchable and I discovered that a college friend of mine was actually a fifth cousin. The same guy tracked down, after a long and difficult search, what actually happened to “lost” first cousins of mine whose mother disappeared with the kids after divorcing my uncle. One of them died while climbing a mountain in Peru in 1970.
Not too much. We’ve been able to verify that my ancestor, Daniel Malone, came over from Ireland during Cromwell’s invasion in 1649. He was given the choice of leaving for America as an indentured servant or die, so I think he took the better choice.
Another ancestor, Thomas Jefferson Malone was very much on the Southern side at the start of the Civil War. But his wife was an abolitionist, so they divorced. He went off to join the Confederate Army, but died three days after enlisting of cholera caught at his first encampment, never having seen any action.
I’m related to the Spencers (that leads to Winston Churchill’s mom, and so to him.) Some umpty-ump cousin though.
My great-great-uncle was George Washington Ferris, inventor of the wheel.
One of my cousins thinks she’s traced our line back to John Spencer, one of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible.
And abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens is in there somewhere.
On my mother’s side, one of her grandfathers was hanged as a horse thief in Ireland.
A cousin on my paternal grandmother’s side researched the family history many generations back and found a several-times great aunt and uncle killed the same day (February 21, 1676) in Braintree, Massachusetts.
According to the town history, he “was killed by Indians while standing in the doorway of his home” and she was “shot accidentally by Capt. John Jacob when he discharged his gun in the room below her, the ball passing through her bed. The incident occurred the same day her husband was killed by Indians. Capt. Jacob and several militia men had come to their aid following the attack”.
A few of my ancestors came over on the Mayflower. One, John Howland, fell off mid-voyage but grabbed a rope and was pulled back on board. (In high school, I discovered that one of the teachers was a distant cousin.) Howland had ten children, who all lived to grow up and have children. He had more than eighty grandchildren.
Another ancestor accused a neighbor of witchcraft. (I’d always heard that she was the accused one, but apparently not.) She was told she was wrong, so at least nobody died because of her.
My grandfather was married three times. He and his first wife divorced because she didn’t want children. (In the 1920’s, it didn’t occur to him to ask her about that before they married.)
My great-great-great grandfather was born in 1828 a slave in VA. At some point he moved (probably via a slave sale) to Perry County, AL. His great-grandson is the father of the late Coretta Scott King, my late grandfather’s niece and my 1st cousin 1-time removed. The King children are all my 2nd cousins.
I have two relatives in my paternal line that can be traced back to Africa. One was born in 1848, exact location unknown. She was captured by slave traders and purchased in Virginia by a planter with the surname McMurray. The other was born in the late 1700’s (exact location also unknown) and sold to a white planter in South Carolina with the surname Tubbs. Unfortunately, my ancestral line goes dark at this point.
On a voyage to New Amsterdam, a 10th great-grandmother was shipwrecked on the Jersey shore, attacked and almost killed by Indians, rescued by a friendly Indian. She and her husband joined Lady Moody’s Gravesend setlement and were among the first settlers in New Jersey. She had over 500 descendants when she died in 1712.
Not in my line, but a great-aunt’s grandmother watched her mother and sister hanged in 1870s Texas. She was spared since she was a child. A rather infamous incident since women were seldom hanged. The event is still debated in Parker county.
I’m a direct descendant of a Danish king, and a Portuguese king by extant, through a prince’s bastard child circa 1450. Don’t have the exact year at the moment.
And I narrowed it down thanks to the annual Christmas missive from my 93-year-old uncle that William Gilbert the silversmith was my great-great-great-grandfather.
Years ago, I discovered online that Grace Hopper, an early and influential computer scientist, was a fifth cousin of mine, based on our shared ancestor whose family name I bear (in modified form). I can’t seem to find it now though. Ancestry.com has hoovered up a lot of genealogical information that used to be free and put it behind their pay wall.
Do you know what tribe or tribes?
She was also a Google Doodle 12 days ago.
You’re related to my husband, who is also descended from John Howland! I’m also descended from a few Mayflower passengers, but we haven’t been able to tell if we have common ancestors or not!
None of my family was rich or famous. I am not related to royalty of any nation.
While I have the Irish sir name of Shea it was derived from a a French name that started with chez and was about ten letters long. They had to leave France for Ireland when my ancestor got into a dispute over the ownership of a horse.
If your ancestors hail from Britain, and London in particular, don’t forget to check the Old Bailey Online website, which features a fully searchable database of all the criminal cases tried in London’s largest court from 1674 to 1913. Lots of black sheep show up in there.
My ancestors come from England, Ireland, and Scotland.
Also, mental illness runs rampant on my mother’s side of the family.
I was distantly related to John Ritter and thus his kids but that’s by marriage. My Grandmother’s sister married a Ritter. I’m not sure how close the connection actually is from there, but my Dad and his sister remember John’s dad, Tex, coming through town.
My great-grandmother died in 1918 flu. Her husband remarried pretty quickly, but the kids were horrible to the 2nd wife.