I read and posted in Eve’s thread about relatives witnessing history. I thought about my family, and how we never really knew anything about my father’s side of the family.
I posted on the boards at www.ancestry.com about a year ago. I always wondered if anyone ever knew something, but no one ever replied to my post. (I have a really odd last name, and I’ve never met anyone else with it.) So, I double-checked on Saturday to make sure no one had replied. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
Sunday morning, I got some coffee and surfed the boards. I checked my email, and there, out of the blue is an email from my cousin, whom I’ve never even heard of. He was checking to see if I ever found out any more info, and wanted to give me everything he found!
My father has not seen anyone from his side of the family since he was a teenager. He has a brother, who has three sons. The two youngest sons have recently started chasing down our ancestors. They’ve found a lot of stuff. Really cool things, like my great-great-great-great grandfather was friends with Daniel Boone and he travelled to establish the town of Boonesboro, Kentucky.
Other cool stuff includes:
The original German version of my name means “of glorious renown.” Woo! I’m glorious. It’s been traced back as far as 696.
I am (more than likely) related to Bishop Rupert, who founded the Monastery of St. Peter and the Benedictine Abbey on the Nonnberg.
I am related (by marriage) to someone with the first name Grizzella, and someone else with the last name Shingledecker. Mwah ha ha ha!
Apparently, way back, there are a lot of members of the Church of Latter Day Saints in my family. (Thank goodness, too, since they apparently keep great records.)
So, thanks Eve, for sparking my interest and getting me addicted to something else!
Skerri, if you’re ever interested in researching your ancestors and don’t have the time or patience to do it yourself, I know someone who’ll do it for you. Geneologists will trace as much as is humanly possible of your ancestry, and in some cases that includes contacting churches in the Old Country and getting grave markings.
Anyway, if you or anyone else is interested, please email me…
That said, how cool for you! Related to a bishop! And don’t fret much about the names - I am related to Butts and Shufflebottoms. No, seriously.
I’ve been interested in finding out more about my family tree, given that I know absolutely squat about it. Unfortunately, I can’t ask any of my relatives because, well, they’re pretty much all dead (e.g., father and both of his parents), or have completely disappeared and I haven’t heard anything for many, many years (e.g., mother, brother, sister). I know the names of the mentioned individuals…and that’s it.
And my last name is Smith. Ha! Good luck trying to track that down…
Yep, it’s an addiction all right. Once started, it’s impossible to stop.
Just when you think it’s safe, someone contacts you with another piece of information. Just last week I heard that my husband’s original immigrant ancestor may have arrived here after being convicted of murder in England. Now I must know for sure. And I thought I’d let that side of the family go for a while. Guess I’ll leave my own ancestors dangling in Poland for a while.
Well, Eve, after meandering through several generations of my family, I have found an actress. (Well, one you may have heard of somewhere, at least. I haven’t!)
Her name was Hazel Coyan Timberman. She was listed in a book called “Who Was Who On Screen”. I get the impression that she was just a bit player. This is from her obituary :
dantheman, I appreciate the offer. I would love to have a couple of pointers, but right now I can’t afford to compensate someone for the work. I’ll keep you in mind, though.
Zebra. you are such a dork. So, how does Grizzella Shingledecker sound?
My mother is Icelandic and geneaology is a huge thing over there, so there’s no question as to how far back I can trace my ancestors up there… but, on my father’s side of the family, we can only get as far as the original Russians [on his father’s side] that came here around the time of the Russian Communist Revolution and probably not much further back on the Finnish side… at least we have the maiden name of my Finnish grandmother, but all we have for the father’s side is the Ellis Island bastardization that is my last name. Oh well… every few years somehow we run across an older person who happens to know what the original name is, but, for some reason, we can’t keep a written record of it. I doubt I have many if any relatives left on the Russian side. It seems that most people who know of the name were Holocaust survivors.
Churches in towns where relatives passed away or were known to have lived - they’ll often have all sorts of useful information, usually available rather cheaply (perhaps free)
The Mormons. Believe it or not, the Mormon Church is very very into geneology. They have scads of records.
It’s also helpful to find out what town ancestors originated in over in the Old World (or Africa, or Asia, or wherever). If you know the town, you can contact its church for info, too.
I started researching the roots on my mom’s side of the family a couple years ago. It was the perfect form of stress relief from a really lousy job situation I was in. On the downside, I made the unfortunate discovery that, despite family history, we couldn’t possibly be direct descendants of General Richard Stoddard Ewell for the simple fact that he never had any children.
Mom is now very disappointed and now wants to know exactly WhoTF originally owned the antique furniture she’s been taking care of all this time.
My dad says Nathaniel Greene is somewhere back in the family line somewhere, but at this point I don’t even know my great grandfathers’ names, so I’m not going to be proving that anytime soon.
Here’s one of the new things I’m working on, DNA. Although I don’t recommend it unless you have a good grasp of what you might gain and how it works.
I really hit a solid wall a few years ago with my surname. I only got back to c. 1853 in TN. I think I found Elvin in 1870, I found him twice! in 1880 and he was dead by 1900. I looked through the entire 1860 census of Tennessee where he was born and no such luck. So I decided to try this out and see if I got lucky. If not then the only thing I can do is fly to Tennessee or hire some genealogical researcher there. And then I can use it for later generations since my Y chromosome will probably snag any cousins with direct male lines since 1500.
I must say the results aren’t that exciting but if I meet a few cousins this way which help me break this wall I will be very very happy.
It’s the LDS archives online. My father’s side is in there all the way back to the 1500s in England. My mother’s side has very common names so it’s a lot more difficult. I have been going through ship passenger lists, which are all over the net, too. Interestingly, I found the site because my father did a story on Mormon geneological record keeping (in vaults in mountains, that sort of thing) when he was a reporter way back when.
The LDS provide a lot of information that other places (likes Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com) charge you for. But they also have a ton of crap that other people submitted. One of their best sources are the IGI (International Genealogical Index). A lot of these are transcriptions of marriage records, baptismal records and so forth. Different places have different batch codes many of which can be found in the link I made.
Watch out for things that some charge for and others provide for free, like the SSDI. Rootsweb.com has it for free. Ancestry.com and genealogy.com charge for it.
Hmm… search out my family history… I’d love to do that. My Grandfather did that on my Mom’s side back to 1801 when they first came over from Scotland as servants (now they’re all lawyers :P). My father’s side… Grandpa had papers and stuff. I know he wanted to trace back but he got as far as his Great Grandma who all I know about is that she was Spanish.
Maybe I should ask Grandma if she knows where anything Grandpa had having to do with our geneology is and I can maybe start to look. Or even keep it for when I can afford to pay someone to look for me.
It’s been traced back as far as 696.