This is one for the genealogists: Who is your most distant great-x-grandparent to have died within the 20th century, that is the years 1900-2000?
Mine was my direct-line matrilineal ancestress, Lydia Golden, who was born in 1833 and died in 1904. She was my great-great-great-great-grandmother! And yes, that is the correct number of greats.
On the opposite side, who’s your closest ancestor to have been born in the 18th century? My oldest great-great-great-grandparents were born in the 1790s, but I bet someone’s got great-great-grandparents or even great-grandparents that were born in that time period.
The furthest back I can think of would be my great-great-grandparents. My great-grand parents died shortly after I was born (in 1979) so I can only assume their parents survived into the 20th century.
For me it’s mostly my great-grandparents. I don’t know the birth and death dates of all of them, but the one who was born in 1842 died in the 1920s, and another who was born in 1866–I remember my grandmother telling me the year–probably died around that time also. The first one I mentioned is my direct patrilineal ancestor and was in the Civil War.
I can trace my patrilineal line definitely back to 1600 and putatively to the 1400s, but nobody was famous or noble or anything. But one ancestor, Adrian Cornelisson van Schaick does get a couple of pages in Frank Harlow’s Old Bowery Days.
On my father’s side of the family, my Great-Great Grandfather Edward (who fought in the Civil War) died in 1920. My Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather Bennett (after whom my oldest son is named) was born in 1788. I was born in 1963. I’m the 11th generation in this country of my father’s line. (Huguenots who came to Williamsburg, VA in 1700).
I’m not sure about specific dates, but on my mother’s side, my Great-Great Grandfather Asa died in the early 1900s, and I don’t know about 1700s guy. They were Welsh who came over in the early-mid 1700s.
Earliest I know about is my gggf, who was born in a Wisconsin zinc mining town in 1847. The family was all but wiped out by typhus, and gggf was adopted into another family that bore what’s now my middle name. He went to the Civil War at 16 and got out not long after. He was homesteaded some land in Iowa, farmed it and lived till 1928.
My maternal grandfather’s grandmother died in 1959. There’s a picture of her holding me, and I am wearing diapers. I have no knowledge of her otherwise. She was the most distant relative I can think of. I don’t know who any others were, never heard them discussed, etc.
On the other side of the family, the research stops at my grandparents. They were orphaned in the UK, emigrating separately to Canada, and there are no details of their families further back than a generation.
I have no living relatives born any earlier than the 1930s. My youngest brother is the family tree person, and he knows fewer of those people than I do! So I have no research to consult.
