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Krispy Wafer posted:I'm a source-whore nowadays. Gotta have a source. Oh that makes me soooooooooooo happy! I get absolutely infuriated by some trees I see on Ancestry... especially things that are just obviously simple mistakes, but people are too lazy to check. For example, an ancestor being listed as born in Boston, MA in 1523 even though it had not been settled yet and it's obviously Boston in Norfolk, England. I mean, take some time and care and think, people. Maybe that's a topic for a YT video - "Don't Be A Lazy Shitstain With Your Research, Yo".
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Sep 24, 2018 16:21
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At least other people's lovely family trees give you something to try and prove. My wife's family line stops at a flute player for the Continental Army, but there are a couple of unsourced family lines that list his father and a whole slew of other family members. None of those have panned out yet, but it at least provides some hope and a direction. Best case scenario you stumble across a legitimate source to royalty because holy poo poo if there was one group that exhaustedly documented their family lineage it's nobles.
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Sep 24, 2018 17:17
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Little Miss Bossy posted:Oh that makes me soooooooooooo happy! I get absolutely infuriated by some trees I see on Ancestry... especially things that are just obviously simple mistakes, but people are too lazy to check. For example, an ancestor being listed as born in Boston, MA in 1523 even though it had not been settled yet and it's obviously Boston in Norfolk, England. I mean, take some time and care and think, people. I think I’ve discussed this before in this thread, but I’m big into documenting stuff these days, to the point that I’ve been methodically double-checking all of the “received” genealogical trees that people have published. It’s been a pain and I definitely have been taking breathers since even one family from the 1680s takes ages to verify even with all the online sources that exist these days, but I’ve definitely come across things that contradict even those trees (or, more often, an absence of evidence supporting their claims). So yeah, ask me about the many hours I’ve spent “leafing” through the first volume of Hingham, MA’s vital records.
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Sep 24, 2018 17:25
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Even the things people offer as sources are often really dubious, it seems to me. Yes, a child with that name was baptised at a plausible date and place. But I've seen that so many times in later periods, when thanks to census data it can be proved to be someone else. When the same few names were used over and over, it's inevitable, and makes a lot of genealogy pretty doubtful.
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Sep 24, 2018 18:23
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Krispy Wafer posted:Best case scenario you stumble across a legitimate source to royalty because holy poo poo if there was one group that exhaustedly documented their family lineage it's nobles. Yep, I did my Master's dissertation on the nobility earlier this year. ComradeCosmobot posted:I think I’ve discussed this before in this thread, but I’m big into documenting stuff these days, to the point that I’ve been methodically double-checking all of the “received” genealogical trees that people have published. This is something I find really, really important and think it should be the basis of all research. With sites like Ancestry and their "hints" it's just easier for people to click a hint, see the name matches and accept it. It's laziness and appeals to those who want to see how far back they can go. If a client says to me that they've gotten back beyond the 1700s "easily" I raise an eyebrow, because it's pretty much guaranteed there'll be errors. I've had to break that to some clients gently, as well. Telling someone that no, in fact, they're not related to <name of royalty> has resulted in some nasty replies, but *shrug*, they hired me to do a job, and I did it. Oh dear me posted:Even the things people offer as sources are often really dubious, it seems to me. Yes, a child with that name was baptised at a plausible date and place. But I've seen that so many times in later periods, when thanks to census data it can be proved to be someone else. When the same few names were used over and over, it's inevitable, and makes a lot of genealogy pretty doubtful. What kinds of dubious sources are you seeing? Tbh, if it's not a documented primary source or a legit secondary (eg. a published work like Burke's Genealogy of the Nobility) I won't even touch it.
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Sep 24, 2018 18:53
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No, I mean that the sources can be fine (original baptism/marriage/burial records) as far as they go but still not enough to justify people's conclusions, because names were so common.
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Sep 24, 2018 19:12
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Oh dear me posted:No, I mean that the sources can be fine (original baptism/marriage/burial records) as far as they go but still not enough to justify people's conclusions, because names were so common. Oh yeah. Laziness again. Happened with my own FT where I had to tell my uncle (who is an insufferable knowitall) that the research he'd done was actually wrong and the people who he'd listed as our ancestors in fact, weren't our ancestors. He's not spoken to me in around a year because of it. Think he's pissed he spent a bunch of money to travel to Ireland to visit a town and graves that actually have nothing to do with us.
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Sep 24, 2018 19:27
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Oh dear me posted:No, I mean that the sources can be fine (original baptism/marriage/burial records) as far as they go but still not enough to justify people's conclusions, because names were so common. I do sorta fret a bit about (as an example) Massachusetts vital records when they aren’t explicitly grouped by family. Okay, so a kid with that name was born to parents with certain names. The name might be unusual, but how do I actually know it’s my family other than the fact that the received wisdom says it is and the date and place “seem right”? Maybe you have a will that can help? But not everyone died with a will... And then what? As a (particularly bad) case in point, I have an ancestor in the 1780s/1790s, the parentage of which is unclear. He just sorta appears in Kentucky, has kids, and dies. However, if you look for his name you might come across a 19th century genealogy book that has someone with the same name who was born in Connecticut at about the right time with a note that “family tradition says he went west”. Do I connect these two personas? How on earth could I justify it to myself? It seems plausible, but where the hell am I gonna find proof? I suppose these sorts of problems are just the way things are. A related Kentucky branch, the Harneds, was miraculously connected to three brothers in New Jersey to the point that the family association generally accepts it (I still don’t know who made that connection or how). Theory then supposes that these three brothers are PROBABLY related to a Harnett who moved to Long Island in the previous generation, but even the family association is skeptical about that connection, because there’s nothing about the Long Island Harnett having kids or about the parents of the New Jersey Harneds. But that’s how research goes. In short: Ancestors who moved around from state to state are nuts to track. I can’t even imagine how difficult my current nuclear family would be to track. I don’t think we’ve spent even two consecutive censuses in the same city in my entire life.
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Sep 24, 2018 20:28
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Little Miss Bossy posted:This is something I find really, really important and think it should be the basis of all research. With sites like Ancestry and their "hints" it's just easier for people to click a hint, see the name matches and accept it. It's laziness and appeals to those who want to see how far back they can go. If a client says to me that they've gotten back beyond the 1700s "easily" I raise an eyebrow, because it's pretty much guaranteed there'll be errors. I've had to break that to some clients gently, as well. Telling someone that no, in fact, they're not related to <name of royalty> has resulted in some nasty replies, but *shrug*, they hired me to do a job, and I did it. I keep two sets of trees. A fun one where we're descended from Robert the Bruce, my 15th cousin three times removed is JFK, and our oldest most distant ancestor is a large Finn named King Fornjot the Giant. And then there's the real family tree where we're all slavers who died in large numbers in a futile effort to keep our chattel. But I also make clear which connections are tenuous at best.
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Sep 24, 2018 20:45
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ComradeCosmobot posted:The name might be unusual, but how do I actually know it’s my family other than the fact that the received wisdom says it is and the date and place “seem right”? Yes, exactly this. And what makes it worse is that being in the right place and roughly time makes it much more likely that there were several people with the same name there, because names were reused so much in families and communities.
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Sep 24, 2018 23:10
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Oh man an English based gennerd! Hey there! Wanna help me prove the guy that came over in 1594 or whatever was the same guy in England before then? I think he was a Barnham and the family society just kind of accepted it as fact without what my pedantic rear end would consider incontrovertible proof. I have a few other English/Irish lines I’d love to pick your brain about too. drat Irish and their lack of records/habit of naming everyone after other family members/having a zillion kids.
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Sep 24, 2018 23:18
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Krispy Wafer posted:I keep two sets of trees. A fun one where we're descended from Robert the Bruce, my 15th cousin three times removed is JFK, and our oldest most distant ancestor is a large Finn named King Fornjot the Giant. And then there's the real family tree where we're all slavers who died in large numbers in a futile effort to keep our chattel. But I also make clear which connections are tenuous at best. Haha I have one of those, too. I'm descended from Robert's sister, Maud... nice to meet you cuz! Oracle posted:Oh man an English based gennerd! Hey there! Wanna help me prove the guy that came over in 1594 or whatever was the same guy in England before then? I think he was a Barnham and the family society just kind of accepted it as fact without what my pedantic rear end would consider incontrovertible proof. I have a few other English/Irish lines I’d love to pick your brain about too. drat Irish and their lack of records/habit of naming everyone after other family members/having a zillion kids. Pick away! Irish genealogy is fun and not a hair-tearing experience at all.
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Sep 25, 2018 09:05
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I don't know where else to ask this, so here it goes: I have cousins who married (Kentucky lol) and I can figure out how they're related to me and I could probably figure out how they're related exactly to each other with a little pen on paper. (They had the same last name as each other so it wasn't too hard to figure out.) It's come up more than once where I'm related to people twice over, usually pairs of siblings marrying each other or the cousins thing above. Is there a way to document/notate these weird occurrences when a family tree doesn't exactly branch? I use Ancestry primarily and family tree maker as well. I missed one sibling pairing until I physically wrote out the drat thing by hand (well Excel anyway).
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Sep 25, 2018 18:10
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Most people have some pedigree collapse when you go back a couple hundred years, and in fact everyone does if you go back far enough (number of ancestors double each generation so pretty soon you have more great-great-...-parents than there were people alive). I'm pretty sure all genealogy software (definitely Ancestry and FamilyTreeMaker do) will let you have the same person show up in multiple places in the tree. Some of the shittier ones will even let you create loops (ie. I'm my own grandpa-style).
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Sep 25, 2018 18:22
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Example from the app i use (GEDitCOM). The Lars Bendtsen Sand / Ellen Rasmusdatter couple is twice in the tree, being the parents of both Jørgen's paternal grandmother and his maternal grandfather; iow. his parents Lars & Christiana are first cousins.
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Sep 25, 2018 18:36
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I have a few of these in my tree (gently caress you French-Canadians!). Ancestry handles it just fine but it can be confusing to you the viewer when it looks like maybe someone's been mistakenly entered twice, they just show up twice because they're twice-related. I know like RootsMagic will try and warn you that this person is already in your tree and make sure you're not duplicating it but they all should allow it.
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Sep 25, 2018 20:36
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I've got some too and also, when I was working on my dissertation, I used Family Historian, which is better than FTM for things like titles, nobility and such. It handled the cousins marrying quite well, but then FTM does too. I like to add notes to all my weird entries and I know some people use pictures for each person to distinguish between certain peculiarities.
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Sep 25, 2018 21:50
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Thanks all. I guess I am wishing for a feature for Ancestry or FTM that alerts you if the name is there already or creates a little icon on the tree to say this is a duplicate/same as situation. I didn't catch one instance already and the last one was obvious because both partners had the same last name as my maiden name. I'm assuming there are more but I have no way of really finding them. I think I'll have to figure out how to use color coding and notes a bit better in FTM.
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Sep 25, 2018 21:56
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You can do individual colour coding and it shows up in the names list to the left of the tree view. Like in this example
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Sep 25, 2018 22:07
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Also it should be possible to merge accidental duplicates when you come across them.
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Sep 25, 2018 22:30
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Yep. Edit > Find Duplicate People.
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Sep 25, 2018 22:32
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Thanks gang.
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Sep 25, 2018 23:58
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Little Miss Bossy posted:Oh that makes me soooooooooooo happy! I get absolutely infuriated by some trees I see on Ancestry... especially things that are just obviously simple mistakes, but people are too lazy to check. For example, an ancestor being listed as born in Boston, MA in 1523 even though it had not been settled yet and it's obviously Boston in Norfolk, England. I mean, take some time and care and think, people. Rant alert! Public family trees on sites like Ancestry, Geni etc. are so ridiculously inaccurate when you go back far enough that it's maddening. It's partly laziness, but I think it's more split between people assuming the records have been verified, especially if a lot of people crib from the same trees, and the simple fact that people want things to be true for the sake of bulking out their ancestry. I've seen people happily accept that they are descended from an erroneous child of a famous or important person, regardless of the evidence, because if the evidence isn't concrete, they use the lack of evidence as proof. Sure, we know that Jimmy Bloggs was baptised in 1602 in York, that there were Bloggs families there at the time, and that renowned mariner Joe Bloggs operated out of London his entire life, but none of his known children were baptised in that year, so obviously he had a brief sabbatical. I'll save everyone from the six thousand other rants I could have. To contradict myself slightly, some people did move about a lot, that's true, but they tended to be directly traceable. Oracle posted:Oh man an English based gennerd! Hey there! Wanna help me prove the guy that came over in 1594 or whatever was the same guy in England before then? I think he was a Barnham and the family society just kind of accepted it as fact without what my pedantic rear end would consider incontrovertible proof. I have a few other English/Irish lines I’d love to pick your brain about too. drat Irish and their lack of records/habit of naming everyone after other family members/having a zillion kids. I might be able to help with this as well, on the English side of things at least.
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Sep 26, 2018 10:29
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I can't get enough of are Dan
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Little Miss Bossy posted:Pick away! Irish genealogy is fun and not a hair-tearing experience at all. Ok, so: most of my Irish came over during the Famine back in the 1840s, so most of the records like census etc aren't going to be of much help because the ones still in existence were all by and large well after they left. Some of the tax and land records have sort of maybe helped except for the fact that there's at least three men of the approximate right age and name in the exact area who I'm sure are likely all related which doesn't exactly help narrow down who is who (I run into this a LOT). PITA Irish ancestor #1: Robert Hawkshaw Says he was born 6 Mar 1846 in County Westport, Mayo (this is likely a lie I think he just wanted to be 100 when he died). He was very long-lived; my grandmother was raised by him when her parents died young. I actually have a picture of him; he is my gggf. 1900 US census say May 1850. 1910 census say 1853. I have his parents listed as a James Hawkshaw and Bridgett NLN, however, two siblings have a Robert Hawkshaw listed as the father on their death certs and died well before him. There was another Robert Hawkshaw in the same area at the same time whose father may have been James but he died in 1904. All claim to be from Westport and Hawkshaw is a common name in those parts so that at least is accurate. William his brother was said to come with his sister to the US in 1865 (according to obit), Robert came possibly in 1880. Other families from Westport who also settled in the same area and intermarried include surnames Walsh/Welsh/Welch, Ruddy/Reddy/Ready, McDonnell/McDonald (noone cared about spelling back then!) O'Day/O'Dea. There was supposedly another sibling, James, who moved to Hull, England and died in1915. Robert married a Margaret Conway in Ireland. She came with him and died in the U.S. as well. The scans for Westport (aka Aughaval) from the time period of his birth are... not great. The book looks like it caught on fire at some point and has been taped together with tape that I assume yellowed with age and thus obscures quite a bit. This site has an interesting entry for a death record of a Robert Hawkshaw from Westport, Mayo at page 92 but yeah, its a reach (maybe a father/uncle?). Also has a record of marriage of Margaret Conway in 1866 but no Robert Hawkshaw and of course there's no image for that one to indicate who she's marrying or if that's her maiden or married name. I'm lucky in that Hawkshaw isn't a common name and it appears any that came over to the states are some kind of relative, but that's about as far as that goes.
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Sep 30, 2018 01:48
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Oh dear me posted:No, I mean that the sources can be fine (original baptism/marriage/burial records) as far as they go but still not enough to justify people's conclusions, because names were so common. Baptism and marriage records (at the least ones from the One True Church  ) give the names of the parents (and sometimes grandparents) in addition to the name of the person(s) receiving the sacrament, which should clarify things. If you've got a particularly nice priest, you'll get ages and professions too for bonus confirmation. Of course, that assumes you're looking at the record itself and not just an index or extract. Little Miss Bossy posted:Oh that makes me soooooooooooo happy! I get absolutely infuriated by some trees I see on Ancestry... especially things that are just obviously simple mistakes, but people are too lazy to check. For example, an ancestor being listed as born in Boston, MA in 1523 even though it had not been settled yet and it's obviously Boston in Norfolk, England. I mean, take some time and care and think, people.
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Sep 30, 2018 06:38
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Brennanite posted:Baptism and marriage records (at the least ones from the One True Church Not enough. It makes people more confident than they should be, that's what I'm arguing. For example: in one branch of my family - overwhelmingly ag lab - I have a Samuel who married a Mary. He was the son of a Samuel who married a Mary. That Samuel was also the son of a Samuel who married a Mary. You can make some guesses about which Sam and Mary were producing kids at any time by their ages, but there were clearly overlaps, making it impossible to tell from the baptismal record whose child is whose. And that's without even looking at how many of Sam 1's other children named a son Samuel after him, each with a high chance of marrying a Mary. You often have to study the whole community to disentangle families like this, if indeed it can be done at all, and people hunting solely for their direct ancestors may be too ready to think that names are sufficient identification.
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Sep 30, 2018 08:31
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loving hell yeah, never take comfort in parish records. Before ~1800 they're the best there is but after ~1900 they're ehhh. In between is a graded average. Example: I'm trying to ID an ancestor that might have been born in Schleswig-Holstein ca 1765. Found a pretty good match. Given name & everything checks out except there are two contemporary men with a given/patronym combo and one has a byname, & also the priest demonstrably doesnt know how to use the one guys byname. Like byname guy apparently has kids with 2 months in between while the bynameless has kids with 1-2 years between. (and they're trueborn, wtf)
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Sep 30, 2018 09:15
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Oracle posted:Says the person a boat-ride away. Sarcasm bb, sarcasm. Irish research can be extremely difficult due to a lack of records. In 1923 the central record office was torched during the Civil War so finding anything is generally considered good. If the records of an area you're researching had been moved to the central location in Dublin, there's a good chance they'll be gone - so finding anything is incredible. I'll DM you so we can chat more about this case, as I'm intrigued - and unravelling Irish genealogy is always fun. 
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Sep 30, 2018 09:51
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Little Miss Bossy posted:Sarcasm bb, sarcasm. Irish research can be extremely difficult due to a lack of records. In 1923 the central record office was torched during the Civil War so finding anything is generally considered good. If the records of an area you're researching had been moved to the central location in Dublin, there's a good chance they'll be gone - so finding anything is incredible. )And yeah I’ve run into the whole ‘hey let’s name all our kids after us and also make sure they have the same profession and marry a girl just like the girl who married dear ol’ dad right down to the name.’ Irish baptismal and marriage records are even worse because they will randomly switch on whether or not they put the mothers maiden name (and the further back you go they may not name her at all because hey she’s just a woman not like she did anything to contribute). Sometimes you can guess and try to work backwards from sponsors of a baptism (I had to do this for about half a village in goddamn Mecklinburg to figure out which pairing of Johann Schmidt and Mary Clasen were mine. Did a whole drat separate tree and it took months, turned out Maria Clasen was the same person as Margarete Claus and her full name was Maria Margarete but she either went by Mary or the priest was too lazy to write the whole thing out more than once). Had this problem with a Johann Adam Wilhelm too, some records he’s Johann some Adam and it’s seemingly random which for what. It seems like marriage records are more likely to include all the names and all the fathers names at least in my experience.
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Sep 30, 2018 13:48
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Oh yeah that makes sense, that marriage records would be the more accurate! When you think about it, they're basically about delegation of liabilty & responsibility in a very legal sense. e: A typical entry from the early mid 1700s Denmark: quote:Anno [date] is to be held the engagement between [name] and [name]. Thus we the undersigned guard for these two, in Marriage, to the parish priest [name] such that he may be free from all accusations about this arrangement that might hurt him in any way, this we also affirm in our own hand. (signatures from legal groomsman and bridesman) Another, early 1800s: quote:On [date] did [name and name] show, who both declared their intent to marry. That they have no near relation, other marriage intents, or any legal hindrance to this marriage, as well as they have had the natural smallpox*, for this, we two undersigned claim and guard. (signatures) * smallpox vaccine became obligatory in 1810 if you wanted to get married or travel outside your parish so for the next like 50 years, it is mentioned if they were vaccinated or natural Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Sep 30, 2018 |
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Sep 30, 2018 13:59
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Krankenstyle posted:Another, early 1800s: I feel cheated that I got married in cph and didn’t get asked about smallpox, just because it’s 2018 and the disease has long since been eradicated.  I have a question about Swedish immigration to the US that you fine folks may be able to help with. On the death certificate of my gg-grandpa (1921) Oscar Robinson, it says his father William was born in Sweden and his mother Mary Gaddie was born in TN. The 1920 census says his father was born in TN. The 1910 census says his father was born in “GRE? English” (I’m not sure about the GRE part). 1900 goes back to TN and unfortunately he’s not part of the limited surviving records from 1890. Going back to 1880, the first census he was alive for, he’s living with his maternal grandfather Lawrence Gaddie and it says his father was born in Sweden. William is nowhere to be seen. In 1870, William and Mary are married and living with Lawrence and his family, and William’s birthplace is listed as TN. My gg-gpa was born later in 1870, and Mary died shortly after. I can’t find anything for my ggg-gpa prior to the 1868 TN marriage record for him and Mary. Family legend is that my ggg-gpa was born in Sweden and stowed away on a boat to come to the US, and ended up in TN because why not? It was good enough for most of my other maternal ancestors, it’s good enough for him. If he was in the country less than legally, to the extent they cared in the late 1800s*, that may explain the discrepancies. I’m trying to figure out if there’s any way I can confirm the story though, especially without a date for when he would have come over other than “before 1868.” Does anyone have ideas on other ways to track this down? It doesn’t help that my ggg-gpa had a generic name and another man with that name, born in GA, married a woman with the same name as my ggg-gma. (Who had a son by her first husband with the same first name as my gg-gpa, but a different last name. And definitely not the same person because the relevant son was around long after my gg-gpa got himself shot by my gg uncle, and clearly ties back to the GA man.) *At least for white guys. Been having fun trying to track down records for my husband’s Chinese ancestors, including the opinion from his g-gpa’s court case proving he was a citizen after the Chinese Exclusion Act was struck down.
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Sep 30, 2018 15:46
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There's a fairly comprehensive database of Swedish emigrations called emibas (includes like local records on who left the given parish). Afaik, no free version exists but usually you can get someone to look if you ask on forum.genealogi.se. There's a ton of great posters on there... btw I'm curious, when did the concept of "illegal/undocumented residency" arise in America? We didn't in Denmark until 1875* and the modern passport system was basically invented to get a handle on ww1 fugitives. * we were getting tired of criminal Swedes lol. Also tbf, after the Struensee affair in I think 1771, you needed to be born or naturalized Danish to hold public office. This was to avoid tricky Germans though.
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Sep 30, 2018 16:44
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Little Miss Bossy posted:Irish research can be extremely difficult due to a lack of records. In 1923 the central record office was torched during the Civil War so finding anything is generally considered good. If the records of an area you're researching had been moved to the central location in Dublin, there's a good chance they'll be gone - so finding anything is incredible. Ah, that may explain why I have a jump from "the American records say they were from Ireland" to "  can't find these people at all." Anywhere unconventional I should be looking?
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Sep 30, 2018 19:17
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small bird pudding posted:I have a question about Swedish immigration to the US that you fine folks may be able to help with. On the death certificate of my gg-grandpa (1921) Oscar Robinson, it says his father William was born in Sweden and his mother Mary Gaddie was born in TN. The 1920 census says his father was born in TN. The 1910 census says his father was born in “GRE? English” (I’m not sure about the GRE part). 1900 goes back to TN and unfortunately he’s not part of the limited surviving records from 1890. Going back to 1880, the first census he was alive for, he’s living with his maternal grandfather Lawrence Gaddie and it says his father was born in Sweden. William is nowhere to be seen. In 1870, William and Mary are married and living with Lawrence and his family, and William’s birthplace is listed as TN. My gg-gpa was born later in 1870, and Mary died shortly after. I can’t find anything for my ggg-gpa prior to the 1868 TN marriage record for him and Mary. The GRE (English) is almost certainly IRE for Ireland. There was a stigma against those born in the crappy part of Ireland and people discriminated against them fairly regularly so people would be all ‘I’m Irish but you know the GOOD Irish not the perfidious papist Irish’ (even if they were). It basically meant Northern Ireland. Given that you say the guy has a very common name I’m wondering if maybe you have the wrong guy on at least some of your records. Not that false info wasn’t given out freely by well-meaning friends and neighbors, mind. If he was born in Sweden I’d check the Swedish church records to see if he and grandma got married in the Swedish church; it’d give a lot more information such as his Swedish name (often different from the Americanized name, Americans tended to frown on surnames differing from your fathers as was Swedish tradition). You can find those records online at Ancestry and on family search. I would take any stowaway stories with a grain of salt; they tend to be a lot more common in myth than reality. It just wasn’t that common or easy to sneak aboard ship. What I would look for are passenger lists with Gggpa’s name Swedishized e.g. Oscar Williams becomes Oskar Williamsson/Welamsson/Welams and look in the Swedish church records (assuming his wife was also of Swedish descent). Look for death records for his dad on a county level see if gives his parents names or anything.
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Sep 30, 2018 19:47
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Thank you both, that was definitely helpful. Oracle, I might not have been clear. Oscar, my gg-grandpa, was born in TN for sure. He’s the one I have a death cert for. In the census records, where it lists father’s birthplace, it’s all over the place, but they’re definitely him. They’d had most of their children by 1910 (the IRE English year, and ty for that, it’s definitely Ireland now that I look at it), and the numbers, ages, and names are distinct enough for the location to know. His father William is the mystery with the generic name, and his mother was TN born & bred. No hope for Swedish marriage records. Could be Wilhelm instead of William though... Agreed on the stowaway thing, but it’s a fun story until it can be proven wrong. Edit: Oh, and Krankenstyle, I think the first act restricting immigration was in 1875, targeting Chinese women, followed by the Chinese exclusion act in 1882. So I guess wherever he was from, ggg-grandpa William wasn’t here illegally. Emily Spinach fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 1, 2018 |
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Oct 1, 2018 02:59
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You can see the various forms William might take in Sweden here, as well as name days (sometimes they'd name the kid after the saint whose day they were born on, can sometimes be a clue as to birthday vs baptism date). Might help if you cross reference that with what year census says they arrived. Make note of siblings names if they came over with or to meet up with any. If you have any idea where they may have come in that helps too. You can see when the waves of Swedish immigration to America were here along with some history which might give you an idea as to where they came in to get to TN (which was not a common destination so far as I know).Krankenstyle posted:There's a fairly comprehensive database of Swedish emigrations called emibas (includes like local records on who left the given parish). Afaik, no free version exists but usually you can get someone to look if you ask on forum.genealogi.se. There's a ton of great posters on there... The big law was 1924 when you started needing a visa to enter and entry was restricted to 2% per country as per the populations in the 1890 census (and outright barred anyone from Asia sans the Japanese and Filipinos). Before that 1917 is when they started giving literacy tests etc. You can read more about it here. Basically America was always hungry for (white, northern European) bodies to settle the newly-acquired land in the West (and help drive out the Indians/fight the Mexicans/act as a bulwark against those crafty Brit-loving Canadians) to the point they were advertising for immigrants for most of the 19th century. Once things were basically settled in the West they began to look to limit immigration because FYGM ('gently caress you, got mine') is as hallowed an American institution as mom, baseball and apple pie. There was always a bit of paranoia about foreign interlopers coming in and taking over, which is why you had to be a 'natural born citizen' to be President (avoid all those British plants) but everything else was fair game. Hell my dad's line just kind of wandered on over from Canada and settled without so much as a by your leave, and they came from a family that had fought for the British during both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. That was in the 1870s or so, so yeah, WWI was the first big xenophobic push (I mean we still hated and feared the Chinese and despised the poor ignorant Catholic Irish and most Eastern and Southern Europeans were given the side-eye). Oracle fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Oct 1, 2018 |
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Oct 1, 2018 04:35
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tagesschau posted:Ah, that may explain why I have a jump from "the American records say they were from Ireland" to " My go to list (after exhausting Ancestry, FMP and FS) would be: IrishGenealogy.ie National Archives of Ireland National Library of Ireland Irish Times Newspaper Archive Oh here's an overview of what got destroyed and saved. It's a FMP page so obvs they're all "woo look what we got" but it'll give you an idea.
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Oct 1, 2018 11:18
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MyHeritage now takes the v5 chip uploads from 23&Me.quote:We're happy to announce that we now support the upload of 23andMe v5 and Living DNA data files, in addition to previously supporting data uploads from all major DNA testing services, including Ancestry, 23andMe (prior to V5) and Family Tree DNA (Family Finder). Users that upload their data receive DNA Matches and ethnicity estimates on MyHeritage for free, a unique benefit not offered by other companies. For files uploaded after December 1, 2018, unlocking additional DNA features for DNA uploads will require an extra payment. So don't delay and make sure to upload your DNA file now, while all the DNA features are free.
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Oct 8, 2018 17:21
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Little Miss Bossy posted:Yep, I did my Master's dissertation on the nobility earlier this year. Oh good. Might have to pick your brain on the particular hand off between poor church going folks in Salisbury and the nobility that my mother made once back from this trip I am on. The genealogy done up to that point is solid, and once in the nobility its probably reliable, but the few generations between...I am suspect. I mean, on my Norwegian line my mom placed us as descendants of Eric Fairhair so I'm suspicious.
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Oct 10, 2018 18:38
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Awesome, last week I discovered a treasure trove of baptismal attestations in an unlikely place! I mean I'm not the first one to discover them (they're in the state archives), but you know. Basically, in the 1850s the Danish crown was selling some of its land holdings to the copyholders who lived there. During this process, a huge number of identification papers were required, which were then after use neatly stacked in boxes. This is especially useful for those of us with ancestors who were born in a place/period where the church records have burned. I've been going through the ones for my hometown and the final tally is: certificates with precise birthdates (instead of the years calculated from age I had before) for 5 direct ancestors! 
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Oct 10, 2018 21:21
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