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I could not find a thread on this topic so I decided to start it myself, because I am sure there are others out there who have done some sort of investigations into their distant past. So, as one of the Last People on Earth to Join Facebook (TM), odd connections with people I barely remember have been happening over the past few months. None odder than last night, when a long lost cousin (like 3 generations lost) from back in Sweden connected with my family. She was on a genealogical hunt, and recalled her grandmother talking about her relatives that moved to the States, and had old pictures of my grandmother. Weird but kind of cool at the same time. My mother has been into genealogy for a while, and I have accumulated a fair bit of data myself over the years since I am a researcher by profession and have great database connectivity, and this contact is prodding me into finally properly databasing these data/pictures/histories. I'd appreciate recommendations for software for doing so that aren't also fronts for the Mormons. At one point I found a web site on which some nerd/collection of nerds have researched one branch of my family back to the 16th century in England, which is also sort of cool. The received story was the ancestor who first moved to the colonies was some important person with a royal warrant etc. but facts show that, whereas he ended life well off enough, he got kicked out of England for being inconsiderately poor, and so was sent off to indenture-land. I love how the reality of the past is almost invariably at odds with everybody's daydreams of royal roots. Anyway, this thread is for sharing tips, advice, asking for assistance, sharing stories, or ignoring until it falls into the archives.
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May 23, 2016 18:32
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I have helped my mom through the years with genealogy for our family, I'm good enough with research thanks to my education and job and can think more about the history which may impact how to research. Traced back family in the US to basically the boat after the Mayflower, though we cannot find the actual boat and there's historic reasons why we may never find the boat. We have visited Barnstable MA which the helped found, one family member was so cruel to their indentured servant that they were taken away from them. While my family fought in the Revolutionary war, they appear to have sided with the British... On my dads side, found the towns in Germany where family is from and have visited them, which was pretty cool. Saw that someone from the German side f the family that fought fought and died for Germany during World War One while two of my great grandfathers brothers from America fought on the side of the Allies during the same war. It feels a bit strange knowing that. As far as the Mormon thing goes, you kind of have to deal with them for a bunch of this stuff. They have the records, it's generally made things a little easier, but when you trace family back 400 years, sometimes you luck out and there are independent historical societies for early colonial towns on the East Coast. Also, if you get your family back to Europe, town church records can be helpful(if a bit difficult for language and distance). Careful with family that does genealogy as well, I have one family member who does as well and their stuff is full of errors. I am much more thorough with my research and confirmation of finding legitimate information before accepting it.
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May 24, 2016 06:33
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I am already finding errors in the information I have received from others, especially in that "received knowledge" from our cherished olds' memory. Hell, my own memory is not what it used to be and I am still in my 40s! And also sometimes the conflicting data points at uncomfortable truths like second cousin marriage--accepted back then I guess but still  . The lineage that has been traced back to the English parliament mandate to track all births/deaths/marriages is pretty cool and has lots of neat stories. That indentured servant helped found Salem, but the name never comes up in the witchcraft trials, fortunately. One on that line was a fife player for the revolutionaries in the war, one of the youngest enlistees apparently, whereas others in the family moved with the Union Loyalists. Another who fought for the Union in the Civil War was a pretty deeply embittered open atheist, and I think his attitude echoed still in my grandmother. However, the Scandinavian record, while good, gets really murky in the time of the patronym before last names got fixed. I'm glad for a fluent Swedish speaker also doing work on this and look forward to seeing the results of her research. Weird though, seeing her post photographs on FB that I walked by on the wall everyday when living with my parents! I have not traveled to see any of the old villages yet, although Salisbury is on the list (have some actual street addresses there shockingly) as are places in Sweden, Bavaria, and Tyrol. I have done some google earth touring though, which is kind of neat to be able to do.
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May 24, 2016 15:16
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Bilirubin posted:I am already finding errors in the information I have received from others, especially in that "received knowledge" from our cherished olds' memory. Hell, my own memory is not what it used to be and I am still in my 40s! And also sometimes the conflicting data points at uncomfortable truths like second cousin marriage--accepted back then I guess but still Giggity ... same here though. Grandfather's first marriage was to a second cousin. My grandmother, not a cousin, said once a story about their child dying as an infant during a massive storm that they couldn't leave in and that was about it. Supposedly he was married seven times before settling on my Grandmother and I'll I've been able to glean is that he may have married some twice (WTF Gramps!). These are the interesting things you find researching family. I don't have much advice because I only did some for a summer and used it to hook my mom into... Interesting finds: -Great Grandmother is a Drake can't prove she was related to Sir Francis Drake. -Same Great Grandmother I also can't prove but family story is she was related to Colonel Custer. -I'm distant British royalty... through a bastard daughter of John Lackland. -Was always told we were British. Unless there was some weird travel we turned out to be Irish and I can't find anything past being in Belfast. -Hey Hey Plymouth descendants! Relative came on the Fortune. -Only slave holder was the first of my last name in the US. Freed a husband/wife couple at his death. Found his will in a history book.
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May 24, 2016 17:08
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Ha! Same boat with first hand knowledge contradicting my own research. I recently found a distant relative who passed on recollections of a great-great aunt via a nephew back in the 1980s. I responded that I hated to contradict information so close to the source from Great-Great Aunt Martha, but based on those first names I cannot connect our family beyond that. On the other hand, based on some seemingly erratic clues from census data, I am able to connect beyond that using different first names. What could be more fun in research than Americanized French-Canadian names (Michel) both anglicized (Michael) and phoneticized (Mitchell)? Your last name changed and used interchangeably for a period of time (Bourgeois to Blaise) and all of the various spellings thereof (Bushwa, Burgess, Blaze).
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May 24, 2016 19:20
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Cheesus posted:Ha! Same boat with first hand knowledge contradicting my own research. While my mom's side is generally okay with names since it's English going all the way back with a few Dutch, French etc.. marrying into the family, my dads side is a whole different story. They came over in the 1860s from Germany and over the course of a couple generations significantly changed the last names and named their children with anglicized names so no Johann going by John, all the records are for John (last name). Luckily I found an old family religious book brought from Germany, which I cannot read but it includes a family tree going from the ancestors who married in Germany and came to America up to my grandparents. Since we know when and who adopted the last name changes(that took place over about 3 generations) it was not bad to follow it.
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May 24, 2016 19:52
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I did a lot of searching for our family which is ironic as I'm adopted and not related by blood. Eventually I realized none of them gave a squawk and so why should I. Some of what I found out ... Traced my wife's, mother's family back to 17th century France. Wife's father is Irish and those are murky records, only got to early 19th century there. Traced my mother's family to Kentucky, late 1800's. One problem was illiteracy, the family name spelling and data changed from census to census. Trying to trace people/decedents as they moved across country in those days was interesting. Traced my dad's family back to Massachussets, late 1700's. My great-aunt told me the family originated from 2 brothers that came from Ireland. She claimed to have a diary kept by one but never showed it to me. I found there were probably 3 brothers, one disappeared from the record, one moved to Canada is presumably the founder of our namesake there. The other is the founder of our namesake in the US. (we have an uncommon name) I just went to Ancestry.com where all my data was stored and they apparently wiped it; all gone. Pictures I had scanned and uploaded. Graves I had photographed and uploaded. Gone. I hadn't been on there in a couple of years.
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May 25, 2016 05:13
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Sucks, sorry to hear you have lost your hard work. This is why I am looking around for decent software to build my database locally in part. Plus I don't want to be party to any sort of retrospective baptisms or whatever they do in SLC
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May 25, 2016 16:09
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Both my grandfathers were into their Genealogy as "something to do while retired" My maternal grandfather even wrote up a little spiral bound book of the family history and had a few dozen copies made. I think my mom still has one. He was able to go back to Rollo (Rolf) [the guy from The Vikings TV Show] in Normandy in the late 890s, early 900s. My paternal grandfather was able to go back to Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia (who miiiight be the one the christmas song is based on) Really, though I think they found close enough connections to "famous" historical figures and said "there, that's a good a point as any to stop looking." I mean, there got to be a gazillion people that could all claim the same ancestry from both of those guys.
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May 25, 2016 21:20
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Shampoo posted:Both my grandfathers were into their Genealogy as "something to do while retired" My maternal grandfather even wrote up a little spiral bound book of the family history and had a few dozen copies made. I think my mom still has one. He was able to go back to Rollo (Rolf) [the guy from The Vikings TV Show] in Normandy in the late 890s, early 900s. My paternal grandfather was able to go back to Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia (who miiiight be the one the christmas song is based on) Yeah, once you get back far enough, there are millions of people who share ancestry with historic figures. I think it's Charlemagne that everyone in Europe is mathematically related to. It is nice if you can pick up even minor royalty in your family tree because that is all traced and kept track of well(at least in England) and from there you can trace back to the first rulers of Europe and sometimes beyond. There are also other historical societies that keep track of this stuff so if you can get a connection to say a family that had a member who fought in the Revolutionary war, the the Daughters of The American Revolution often has their history traced back even further. Random people posting these connections on the internet is much sketchier, but it sometimes provides a place to start looking or at least discounting certain family lines.
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May 25, 2016 23:17
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So my Swedish cousin has sent me to her MyHeritage site (seems to have decent functionality), which takes my great grandmother's family back 7 generations. Its very cool to see, but what a zoo once the patronym becomes a thing. Reminds me of a fellow I work with who is Icelandic, and still uses the patronym. He's named for his grandfather, similar to his own father (think John Carlsson and Carl Johnsson), and they get each other's email all the time (both working in the same university) by mistake. It boggles the mind anyone was ever able to keep track of it all 
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May 26, 2016 04:30
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ltr posted:the Daughters of The American Revolution often has their history traced back even further. Yeah, my wife is DAR, and she's got her Genealogy very well documented out to a hilarious degree for her membership.
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May 26, 2016 19:12
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Bilirubin posted:So my Swedish cousin has sent me to her MyHeritage site (seems to have decent functionality), which takes my great grandmother's family back 7 generations. Its very cool to see, but what a zoo once the patronym becomes a thing. Reminds me of a fellow I work with who is Icelandic, and still uses the patronym. He's named for his grandfather, similar to his own father (think John Carlsson and Carl Johnsson), and they get each other's email all the time (both working in the same university) by mistake. It boggles the mind anyone was ever able to keep track of it all My family's all German (Prussian?) on one side and it's Freidrich Wilhelms and Wilhelm Freidrichs for GENERATIONS. Even after they immigrated to the US, they still kept it up. Makes genealogical work a nightmare. Evidently, they were a cantankerous bunch because they were constantly getting into fights with the local church and only one or two of each generation would get baptized before priest kicked them out or they'd leave. If it weren't for the family bible, it would be impossible to trace that side more than three generations. The other side is hard-core Catholic, so literally every woman has Marie as her first name. Heaven help you if they name the first daughter after the mother or worse, had a daughter who died and reused the name. Why did people do that?!!
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May 27, 2016 16:20
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Feeling a little odd. My cousin sent me a few obits for distant relations that had also moved to NA, but to Canada and not the US. Since I now live in Canada I decided to have a go finding the survivors. It took only 10 minutes until I had tracked them down, including FB profiles and other contact information, which I passed on to her. The odd feeling comes from knowing just how damned easy it is to track a person down this day and age with only minimal initial information to go by.
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Jun 17, 2016 20:24
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Bilirubin posted:So my Swedish cousin has sent me to her MyHeritage site (seems to have decent functionality), which takes my great grandmother's family back 7 generations. Its very cool to see, but what a zoo once the patronym becomes a thing. Reminds me of a fellow I work with who is Icelandic, and still uses the patronym. He's named for his grandfather, similar to his own father (think John Carlsson and Carl Johnsson), and they get each other's email all the time (both working in the same university) by mistake. It boggles the mind anyone was ever able to keep track of it all I think the system worked mainly because of village priests who simply knew everyone in their parish. The Swedish population was pretty tiny - think like 2-3 million people for most of the 1600's and 1700's, and that includes what is now Finland. I do hobbyist archive research in the Swedish national military archives for milhist sperging reasons, but most of the visitors are amateur genealogists, mainly because of the obssessive Swedish military roll-keeping that goes back to the early 1600's and in some cases even earlier. It's not too uncommon to be able to trace family lines back to the 1600's, but getting further than that is very rare unless you're nobility because the official records for almost everyone only start appearing with the early modern state around 1600. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 15:40
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I have some documentation going back approximately 3 or 4 generations to when my family ancestors migrated over from Germany, although the research was done by my grandmother who died over a decade ago. Simply put, I would like to verify some of the information as none of the records look very official, but I am not sure where to begin searching. Goolge is more than happy to direct me to ancestry.com and other poo poo that wants a credit card number, I am assuming the information should be available free somewhere? Are things like birth certificates and other government records freely available?
Not Wolverine fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jun 19, 2016 |
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Jun 19, 2016 19:43
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Not sure if this is the right place to ask but let's see if I'm secretly adopted! I don't actually think so but I don't get the science here. I did the ancestry DNA thing and so did my mom. My dad passed away 12 years ago so he obviously can't participate. My profile came back 64% Irish, 29% Western Europe, 3% Great Britain, and 2% each Scandinavian and Iberian peninsula. My mom came back 50something percent Great Britain, 40something percent Irish, and no Western Europe. I can see on the map the areas overlap, does that explain it, or is it that it's a guess based on haplogroups and other voodoo? Because otherwise I don't see how it's mathematically possible to lose that much British and gain that much Irish and Western Europe even with my dad as an unknown. Even if my dad had zero British, that should put me at about a quarter, not 3%.
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Jun 22, 2016 23:46
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Just noticed this thread (I don't wander in here much) so I figured I'd drop in and say hello given my on-again-off-again focus on the topic. I, like others here, inherited a lot of the tree that I've been building on, so I've had time to evolve from the careless data packrat to diligently verifying from primary sources (It's always nice to find a genealogy in the Register or a book written on some branch or other, but it's distressing how often these fail to point to where their info came from). In the process, I think I've built my tree twice and I'm on my third go now, this time trying hard to stick to primary sources where possible (though at some point I'm gonna have to re-discover some of those poorly-cited documents that are still dangling off my tree). Anyway, some comments... Bilirubin posted:Feeling a little odd. My cousin sent me a few obits for distant relations that had also moved to NA, but to Canada and not the US. Since I now live in Canada I decided to have a go finding the survivors. It took only 10 minutes until I had tracked them down, including FB profiles and other contact information, which I passed on to her. The odd feeling comes from knowing just how damned easy it is to track a person down this day and age with only minimal initial information to go by. It's nuts, isn't it? Last year I found a distant cousin on Facebook solely based on the username (real name!) they gave on Find-A-Grave and some extra pieces of information to pin down a general location. By the way, with respect to local databases for genealogy information, it's been an ongoing struggle, especially since I haven't really found a nice way to publish it in a way that's in my control. As much as I like platforms like Rodovid and Geni, I like keeping my citation management intact. For local management though, I always come back to GRAMPS, even if its citation management is woefully underdeveloped. I don't know why there aren't more user-friendly tools with good citation management. I don't like having to shoehorn repeated citation information into the wrong fields, but at least their place hierarchy handling is actually quite decent now. Crotch Fruit posted:I have some documentation going back approximately 3 or 4 generations to when my family ancestors migrated over from Germany, although the research was done by my grandmother who died over a decade ago. Simply put, I would like to verify some of the information as none of the records look very official, but I am not sure where to begin searching. Goolge is more than happy to direct me to ancestry.com and other poo poo that wants a credit card number, I am assuming the information should be available free somewhere? Are things like birth certificates and other government records freely available? Access to online records over the past few years has improved so crazily that I continue to astonish myself with the branches I've been able to build and verify without leaving my apartment. I'm still amazed that I nearly perfectly verified an inherited family tree of my ancestors who lived and died in Bohemia and Moravia from various record archives posted online, a task that I never dreamed I'd be able to do in my lifetime without spending weeks in the Czech Republic poring over church books. So you'd be amazed what you'll find if you dig hard enough. That all said, some specifics that might be relevant to you, given what you've said:
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Jul 11, 2016 06:28
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Hello and thanks for that excellent information! And now for a funny story: My mother has really gone nutso on her research, inspired by contact from our Swedish cousin. My father's part of a long lineage in NA, going back to the 16th century in Wiltshire, as I might have mentioned above. My mom has been working on the female members of that tree, long ignored. She has things now going back to the 10th century, which I am skeptical of (and will take me ages to thoroughly verify should she ever learn how to invite someone to her MyHeritage site  ) but whatever, possible since its an old English name, and there were knighthoods involved further back so it makes sense these records exist given the high standing of the family. Welp, one of the wives of one of the knights turns out, if true, a descendant to the sister to Anne Boleyn. This will require serious scrutiny because people love to write themselves into important past events. Nevertheless, conversation with my mother has now turned into something likeMe: huh, well, I am interested to see how you managed to do this. Her: I wonder what that makes her to you Me: Almost entirely unrelated genetically. Her: I can't figure out how to send you her picture. Me: I KNOW WHO loving ANNE BOLEYN WAS JESUS CHRIST Her: OK I send you a picture of her portrait that I took with my phone from my computer screen Me:  Meanwhile, she still has not figured out how to send an invite from the site, despite there being a link that says "INVITE TO YOUR TREE" on the page. So, yeah, I'll remain skeptical for now  Interesting though, how if true, the fortunes of that family ebbed and flowed based upon things like "who did you side with in the War of the Roses" and "Who did you side with in the English Civil War"
Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Jul 12, 2016 |
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Jul 12, 2016 20:03
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Interesting thread, I've bookmarked it. I've done a fair bit of genealogy stuff the last couple 18 months are so, and I'm amazed how much inaccurate information is out there that people just take as truth. I'm also amazed at how much information has made it online so quickly I've had to send away for a couple of documents and visit the LDS family research/history center a couple of times. Nice folks at the local LDS church. I've traced my paternal information pretty solidly back to the 1200's in England, anything past that doesn't really matter and is a guess at best anyway. Found some interesting information and people along the way. It's pretty neat. Some of the best stuff I found was in newspapers though, the amount of information published in them back around the turn of the century and before was crazy. Mrs. So and So is visiting family and will return in 3 weeks. The newspapers from 1890 to 1910 filled in so much previously unknown information about my family it was awesome.
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Jul 12, 2016 22:03
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Well hell, I got onto familysearch.org. . . and someone has hosed up the records. Long story short, some random stranger on the internet apparently entered the full name and deathbed of my great grandfather for my grandfather, and also messed up the name. . . My grandpa's name is <A> <B> <C>, my great grandpas' name is <B> <A> <C> (hell, am I allowed to just put my ancestors full name in the genealogy thread or would that be like self doxing?) so it's easy to get the two confused but still kind of annoying to know the site's information can be updated by anyone. That said, I was able to find Kansas gravestones.org with nice pictures of the gravestones for at least a few generations of my family to hopefully be able to correct some of the misinformation. . . I also dug out all of my previous documentation - about a dozen pages which were faxed in 1997, from copies of handwritten records. So, I've half rear end verified the origins of my family up to 5 generations ago when my ancestors migrated over from Germany, I am assuming the search will only get more difficult internationally. Also, I have found either a typo or my last name was modified from "John" to "Johns".
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Jul 12, 2016 22:03
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You might be surprised at how much information is databased internationally. Sweden for instance has an extensive record, digitized at least in part thanks to a partnership with the LDS church (a lot of early Swedish immigration to the US were mormons or other non Lutherans). e. ah she managed to send me an invite. As my sister.
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Jul 12, 2016 23:30
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Bilirubin posted:Hello and thanks for that excellent information! Yeah, I have generally found that descent from nobility tends to be sketchy at best. One branch I've been eyeballing (but haven't confidently connected to yet; it's still pending one or two anecdotal-quality links in New England) is the Josselyn family, which has some dubious quality before the 1200s. Ironically, it also features no royal links in that whole line despite its reported age. The other branch is stuck at the turn of the 18th century in Bohemia with two as-yet-unverified individuals and another troublesome guy who is in the right place but possibly at the wrong time who prevent me from linking up to another hand-me-down nobility family tree. So yeah, those nobility links are nothing but trouble in my experience! skipdogg posted:Some of the best stuff I found was in newspapers though, the amount of information published in them back around the turn of the century and before was crazy. Mrs. So and So is visiting family and will return in 3 weeks. The newspapers from 1890 to 1910 filled in so much previously unknown information about my family it was awesome. Those turn of the century newspapers are great, if still under-digitized. I found one claim recently about a distant cousin who was shot by some guy in Atlanta during a fight the other guy started by calling him a slur (the newspaper leaves the word unsaid, but since the cousin was Jewish, you can probably guess what it was). The story went on for several days as the shooter hid from the police until the cousin was out of the hospital. It's also kinda fun to see your grandfather's name mentioned as participating in some patriotic parade when he was 5 years old. Crotch Fruit posted:Well hell, I got onto familysearch.org. . . and someone has hosed up the records. Long story short, some random stranger on the internet apparently entered the full name and deathbed of my great grandfather for my grandfather, and also messed up the name. . . My grandpa's name is <A> <B> <C>, my great grandpas' name is <B> <A> <C> (hell, am I allowed to just put my ancestors full name in the genealogy thread or would that be like self doxing?) so it's easy to get the two confused but still kind of annoying to know the site's information can be updated by anyone. Ugh, yeah, that's obnoxiously common, but one learns to live with it, I suppose. As for "self-doxxing", consider me rude, but given how sensitive personal information is these days, I no longer feel comfortable listing the grandparents of anyone living, just because how easy it is to find people from that, even though the old-school practice is "anyone dead is fair game" Crotch Fruit posted:So, I've half rear end verified the origins of my family up to 5 generations ago when my ancestors migrated over from Germany, I am assuming the search will only get more difficult internationally. Also, I have found either a typo or my last name was modified from "John" to "Johns". Depends. Jumping the Atlantic is pretty difficult, but it's not always impossible. It usually comes down to a combination of researching as much about the immigrant and their family as possible and a little bit of luck. Some of my luck has involved my ancestors alternately:
The best shot you have at finding something if all you have in your immigration/naturalization/census records is "Germany" everywhere is by doing a cursory search for the marriage or birth record in the German register indices on FamilySearch. Again, this often comes down to luck, but I've found at least two of my ancestors' German records this way, so it's not a completely impossible task. Just be aware that it's not uncommon to find middle names and other baptismal names you didn't expect, so you'll still want to do as much limiting on other criteria as possible (age or parent's names, for example). I won't lie that it's easy to make that jump, and it can often take time to gather enough American information to make an educated guess, but it's not impossible. Just keep researching, and you may well be able to make that leap given enough time. ComradeCosmobot fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 00:00
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Yeah, I have generally found that descent from nobility tends to be sketchy at best. I do have the full name and city of birth for my great great whatever 5 generations ago relative from Germany, and a good 10yr estimate of when he was born. I do safe listing my last name, he'll a lot of people on here already know my first and last name + address due to buying and selling shut here, and it's a sorta common last name. According to my papers, "the last name was spelled Johannes in Germany, pronounced Yo'han or Yo' han nus". So, I think my last name was sort of bastardized during the immigration process. . . Makes me wonder are people with the last name "Johnson" descendants of someone who said "I am yo'han's son" as they walked through Ellis island and got their papers stamped "Johnson"? My cousin, an Ellis, claims his last name was just a generic stamp put on from Ellis island when they had no idea what else to put, although searching google brings up more elaborate tales of grandure and royalty associated with the Ellis surname. . . Really what I am most interested in the history of last names in general, things like supposedly the last name Miller is a descendant of someone who milled grain.
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Jul 13, 2016 01:52
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Crotch Fruit posted:I do have the full name and city of birth for my great great whatever 5 generations ago relative from Germany, and a good 10yr estimate of when he was born. If you've got a city and it's not too big, then you're in good shape. The FHL has many (but not all) German church registers on microfilm, and in most towns it'll either be in the single Lutheran (Evangelische) or Catholic (Katholische) church in town. Larger cities can, of course, have multiple parishes, and then it comes down to trial and error. Also note that you could still be unlucky, like me, and have some relatives be born in a city in which the FHL never got microfilm copies. There probably are still copies in that case, but you'd have to actually go to Germany (or get a local German genealogist) to look them up. By the way, you'll probably want to double check that your ancestors didn't live east of the Oder-Neisse Line. I believe most of those archives went to Poland directly when the land was handed over after World Wars I and II, and I'm not sure what the condition of or access to those records is, since I haven't needed to do so (the few Jewish records I've hoped to find there are kind of a poo poo show for obvious reasons, so I can't really offer any useful lessons from my experience) Note that working with German Kirchenbuchen can be tricky, because not only do they rely on knowing German, but German Cursive (Kurrent) handwriting as well. I personally recommend getting high quality copies of any documents if you can, because it can take time to decipher them if you aren't familiar with it (and you probably aren't familiar with it). Getting such copies may not be possible with FHL microfilms. I know the several German Kirchenbuchen films I've looked at have a label asking for no copies to be made for whatever reason (though none of the FHCs near me appear to have microfilm copiers/scanners anyway).
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Jul 13, 2016 07:02
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Those turn of the century newspapers are great, if still under-digitized. I found one claim recently about a distant cousin who was shot by some guy in Atlanta during a fight the other guy started by calling him a slur (the newspaper leaves the word unsaid, but since the cousin was Jewish, you can probably guess what it was). The story went on for several days as the shooter hid from the police until the cousin was out of the hospital. I found some funny clips in the paper and some sad ones as well. There's a pattern going back a hundred plus years of males I'm descended from having depression/mental health issues. One gent killed himself with strychnine after his wife passed away. A distant cousin whom I've never met actually reached out to me on Ancestry and sent a few stories and a picture of my Great Uncle, and told me he died of a broken heart and how sweet and caring of a man he was when she was little. Another uncle type relative died suspiciously after losing his job, he was ran over by a railroad car. I know my father, his father, and my brother all have had issues as well. It's something I worry about sometimes but I see a therapist on a regular basis and try to take care of my mental health. Here's a funny one " Mr. <name> who is employed by Capen & Clark at their restaurant on Third and Main was sent on a wild goose chase Saturday Evening. Mr. <name>, who is ever faithful to obey the orders of his employer, was sent to W. H. Work's bakery for a "cake stretcher" from there he was sent to the Occidental hotel and numerous other places. He returned fatigued and innocent as a lamb." The newspaper clips were great to help verify a lot of information regarding marriages, children, divorce, estate settlements, etc. I was pretty fortunate though, someone 100 years ago wrote an entire book about my paternal family genealogy going back to 1632
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Jul 14, 2016 18:55
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My family name is pretty rare. I'm one of 2 people in the entire US with my name, and my 5th cousin or however far removed he is spells his first name differently. Pretty much if someone has my last name, they are within a few generations of being related to me. One of our relatives is a nun in Chicago, who I guess got bored with praying because she's spent the last 30 or so years tracing our family history back. She managed to trace it back to 1262, where it was given as a nickname to a guy name Conradinus, and it seems to have continued in the family since then. We're from a small town in Northern Italy, Vodo Di Cadore, although there is evidence we are from Conegliano Veneto. That's my Dad's Dad. My Dad's Mom was Quinn, which there's about a billion of. My mom's mom was Dawson, ditto, and her dad was a pretty rare Scottish name. We don't know a ton about that family as my Grandfather's dad died when he was 2 (1930's), and his mom sold most of the family stuff after my Grandfather joined the army. AFewBricksShy fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 20:56
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Yeah, I have generally found that descent from nobility tends to be sketchy at best. Looking at her data compared with what I have found at other sites, the big question is the handshake between the grandfather of the original immigrant to the US in the 17th century and the noble line. I mean, I guess its not unheard of that a knight's son would become a minister of a nonconformist parish, now defunct due in part to supporting Parliament in the civil war. Even more interesting is that knight's own grandfather was beheaded for supporting the Lancasters in the War of the Roses--would be a cool story of multigenerational disconent. But, the records of that minister are conflicting, with entries being recorded in both Yorkshire (which would support the noble lineage) and Wiltshire (which, you know, who knows?). OTOH, some of the noble lineage had their titles in Wiltshire too so vOv Would require some time in England to nail this down; never a bad thing, especially if a trip to Salisbury is involved. But the records are held in Swindon, which is significantly less...pretty.
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Jul 14, 2016 21:30
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Outside of living memory my research was just very dry births/marriages/deaths/census - interesting but very little in the way information about the actual people and their lives. If your ancestors were just the normal working poor then its pretty amazing when you stumble across a gem. In my case I came across an ancestor's testimony in an 1844 Royal Commission so can see him talking about his life and hardships - copied below a couple of the questions put to him and his answers for some colour, Are the charges exacted in full in cases of sickness or stint work? Exactly the same. I can speak for myself; I am in a friendly Society, and have been for four or five and forty and forty years, and I have found it a very beneficial thing to me indeed. I was ill of the typhus fever some years back, and I lay ill for weeks, and I had my children working in the shop, and they used to do the work and send it in on the Saturday; and my frame-rent was taken the same as if I was at work all that six weeks, my frame never worked a course. When I went in, my master said I looked very poorly; how did I get on? I said” As well as I could.” “How did I provide victuals?” I provided in health and strength for a time of affliction. The society afforded me 10s. a-week. This I did very well with my children’s work. Nothing more was said. I have had 10 children and I have been obliged to learn them all to be stockinger’s; I could do nothing else with them. What do you consider, as an old hand in the trade, to have caused your difficulties? – I have always considered that the battle of Waterloo which was the finishing of the French war, was the first swamping of our business. The hands came flocking in, in all directions, and they made the masters difficult to please; they made it so that we, who called ourselves good old hands, could not please at all. Then, at the back of that, they passed the Corn Law. I was making, at that very time when the Corn Bill was passed, hose at 18s. a-dozen in a 32 gauge frame. The battle of Waterloo was fought the 18th of June, and just before the next spring, in 1816. I was docked 5s. a-dozen in those very hose. Wages got down to nearly half, in many cases. What are the present prices for the same description of hose? – I can hardly tell you; they have shifted us about so. They have lost us in our sizes, our gauges, and everything that belongs to it. They have lost us, and bewildered us, in such a manor, that we are like a garden without a fence; we have no protection at all; we are obliged to sit down with all insults, and take any sort of work to keep us out of the workhouse, grievous as it is. (The Witness withdrew)
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Jul 15, 2016 15:31
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I'm a historian in the Netherlands. I'm often in the archives at the Hague looking at old documents, and the national genealogy center is right next door. So if anyone needs some info from there, hit me up.
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Jul 15, 2016 18:24
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skipdogg posted:
I lucked out that one of my ancestors was a police officer in St. Paul Minnesota when there were literally two dozen officers for the city. The old newspapers are all digitized and I was able to go on there and read about his exploits, family tragedy and his unexplained death. It also included stuff about when his children had important parties, etc.. really great information. One day when my life is not in eternal chaos, I want to go back and see what other family information is hidden in there. Crotch Fruit posted:So, I think my last name was sort of bastardized during the immigration process. . . Makes me wonder are people with the last name "Johnson" descendants of someone who said "I am yo'han's son" as they walked through Ellis island and got their papers stamped "Johnson"? My cousin, an Ellis, claims his last name was just a generic stamp put on from Ellis island when they had no idea what else to put, although searching google brings up more elaborate tales of grandure and royalty associated with the Ellis surname. . . Really what I am most interested in the history of last names in general, things like supposedly the last name Miller is a descendant of someone who milled grain. It may have been bastardized during immigration or after by your ancestors. A few years ago I found an old German prayer book that had been brought to America by my ancestors. Inside of it is a bunch of hand written family records including marriage in Germany, then future generations born in America. Along the way the hand writing changes so different people were keeping up the records but it clearly shows that they arrived in America and the parents kept the original German last names and over a few generations the surname changed a couple times until it's current form which is a much more English spelling and pronunciation.
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Jul 15, 2016 22:50
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Cool, bookmarking this thread! Will share some stories of criminal ancestors later, though I'll have to translate from Danish.ComradeCosmobot posted:If you've got a city and it's not too big, then you're in good shape. The FHL has many (but not all) German church registers on microfilm, and in most towns it'll either be in the single Lutheran (Evangelische) or Catholic (Katholische) church in town. Larger cities can, of course, have multiple parishes, and then it comes down to trial and error. Also note that you could still be unlucky, like me, and have some relatives be born in a city in which the FHL never got microfilm copies. There probably are still copies in that case, but you'd have to actually go to Germany (or get a local German genealogist) to look them up. There's a German pay-site that's started scanning kirchenbücher. They're far from complete, but checking the news shows that they're adding dozens of registers daily: https://www.archion.de/
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Aug 3, 2016 20:47
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twoday posted:I'm a historian in the Netherlands. I'm often in the archives at the Hague looking at old documents, and the national genealogy center is right next door. So if anyone needs some info from there, hit me up. I'd like to take you up on that offer I'm supposed to be a descendant of Gabriel Milan (~1631–89), who was governor of the Danish West Indies. All known descendants are through his son Carl Friderich Milan (died Copenhagen 1738). Danish historians agree that C.F. was born circa 1676, likely in Amsterdam, to Gabriel Milan & his second wife Juliana Regina von Breitenbach. It is known that Gabriel Milan's first wife died 1675 at the latest, and that Juliana Regina von Breitenbach was a widow. It is not known when they married. I have discovered a baptism in the Evangelisch Luthers doopregisters for Amsterdam:  quote:Den 30 Januarii Note that the register is slightly odd: It's divided into years, and each year is divided into letters. For each year & letter, the baptisms are listed chronologically by first initial of the named child. However, the Carel Vreederijck entry is on a loose scrap of paper, affixed with a needle (visible above/below "Regina") on the page where the letter C begins for the year 1676. It is not from the same hand as the other writings in the register. I believe that this is the baptismal record of the man who dies in Copenhagen 1738. If so, Carl Friderich/Carel Vreederijck is not the son of Milan, but of Juliana Regina and her first husband, and he assumed the name Milan (or was simply called that) after his step-father. So, that leaves some questions: 1. When/where did Milan's first wife die? Her full name is unknown, but her surname is said to have been "de Castro", and she was the daughter of Benjamin Musaphia (Sephardi Jews often carried several names). I have tried looking at the Portugees Israëlitsch records that were available at genver.nl. I can't get them to work right now, but as I recall there was a lacuna covering the years around 1675. 2. Where is the original baptismal record for Carel Vreederijck van Barlebendt junior? Was he born outside of Amsterdam, and the scrap of paper only later supplied to the priest there? Or was his entry skipped by accident and the scrap inserted as a correction? 3. When/where did Carel Vreederick van Barlebendt senior die? And who was he? I have been unable to locate any useful variants on the van Barlebendt surname. There seem to be a lot of von Breitenbach/van Breedenbachs all over the Germanic areas. 4. When/where did Milan and von Breitenbach marry? It is known that Milan was in Amsterdam in 1676, in Utrecht in the winter of 1678 (staying with Baron Jacob de Petersen), and that he arrived in Copenhagen in July of 1678. It is presumed that von Breitenbach accompanied him to Copenhagen. They are known to have been married by 1679. 5. What were their denominations? Danish historians believe that Juliana Regina von Breitenbach was Dutch reformed. Milan is supposed to have converted to (or reaffirmed) protestantism on January 1, 1682 in Hamburg. Was he until then part of the Jewish community like his father-in-law Musaphia presumably was, or was he catholic like some other conversos? And how does all that fit with the supposed Lutheran protestant baptism of Carel Vreederijck? Any comments & suggestions welcome!
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Aug 4, 2016 08:58
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I've got a question for the thread. What is the best way to find out information about someone from the early 1900's? My mom has done a lot of the leg work on trace her family tree, going back to the 1500's? But she really can't find any info about her father, my grandfather. We know he was born out of wedlock to a former maid in Scotland who traveled to the states. But then things get cloudy. He worked as a livery cab driver in New York during the 1920 and 30's then packed it up, changed his name, and moved to California where he got involved with horse racing. When he was dying he was telling my mom stories about his life but refused to write any of them down saying "I know where too many bodies are buried." I've been able to find a couple of references to him as a feather-weight boxer in New York, but nothing else. Any ideas?
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Aug 26, 2016 23:39
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diremonk posted:I've got a question for the thread. What is the best way to find out information about someone from the early 1900's? Newspapers are surprisingly good resource for between 1900 and 1950 or so. Depending on where he lived, you may have luck with one of the several online newspaper archives, but I strongly recommend checking out which of your local libraries have access, if any, since the services themselves are expensive if you aren't lucky enough to have Google's old newspaper archive covering your city. Since it sounds like New York City is one of your places to look, I can unfortunately state with some certainty that newspapers may not help you out much on that end since it was too big to get nice local coverage, but still, it's not a bad idea to do a name search just in case. There are a ton of local resources for this, but there are a few big ones to consider if you look. Ancestry has some, which usually dovetails with Newspapers.com's selection, but not universally. Newspapers.com itself is often not available at nearby libraries, so you might want to check before you sign up for a 7-day trial. If I remember correctly, NewspaperARCHIVE.com is available at your local Family History Center, so that's an easy place to check as well.
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Aug 27, 2016 04:38
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For old newspapers in NY you could check out http://www.fultonhistory.com I've used it for years to look up family history, and other things. The guy running it adds more pages all the time, it's a great resource.
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Sep 3, 2016 02:03
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Here's a little story about arranged marriages & children born out of wedlock from mid-19th-centry Denmark: Once upon a time, my great grandma wrote down what she remembered of her ancestors, mostly just names & dates. Her mother's father was one Anders Jensen aka Søgaard, she wrote, a smallholder in Mollerup parish. A Google map of the major locations fwiw. He was married to Frederikke Marie Christensdatter Svane, and I knew nothing else about them aside from the date of their marriage and his age – he was born around 1838. With the help of another genealogist, I found his birth records: He was born out of wedlock on June 20, 1838 in Gullerup in Bjergby parish, but both his parents (Jens Chr. Pedersen and Christine Caroline Christensdatter) were in Vejerslev, serving Anders Larsen on the Søgaard farm (at least in the 1834 census). So I went through the arrival/departure records that were kept in each parish register at the time, & I've reconstructed the events as follows: Severely pregnant, Christine Caroline left the farm where she was serving, Søgaard in Vejerslev, on June 1, 1838 and arrived home to give birth to Anders Jensen on June 20 in the house of her stepfather Jens Olesen Houe and his wife (her mother) in Gullerup, Bjergby. She didn't show for arrival registration until June 21, so she probably arrived at the last minute and was unable to do so. She didn't stay long with her parents though, but left already on July 10 to go back to Vejerslev where she arrived on July 18. Sometime around new years eve, she must have been seeing Jens Chr. Pedersen again, alas on June 2, 1839, she marries the widower Anders Pedersen Dam from Ovtrup. They leave for his farm in Ovtrup shortly after, and on September 30, 1839, she gives birth to Birthe Cathrine Jensdatter (Jens Chr. is the claimed father again!). Anders Pedersen Dam & Christine Caroline stay in Ovtrup until his death on June 5, 1853. On January 17 the next year, she finally marries Jens Chr. Pedersen! I have no idea where he's been all this time (16 years), but he doesn't appear to have forgotten her – he's still a bachelor in the wedding records. In the meantime, Anders Jensen (Søgaard) had come in the care of Anders Larsen on Søgaard in Vejerslev, where he is counted in the 1845 census, and with Anders Larsen's widow in the 1850 census. April 18, 1853, he leaves for Mollerup, where he arrives on May 6, but leaves again on November 2, 1854 to go to Ovtrup – likely because word reached him that his parents finally married. He's with them in the 1855 census. On March 25, 1858, the family leaves Ovtrup for Gullerup in Bjergby, where they are in the 1860 census - except Anders Jensen, who's busy starting up his own family with Frederikke Marie Svane. Hella romantic, isn't it? As a side note, Frederikke Marie Svane's uncle Peder Christensen Svane is also present at the Søgaard farm in the 1834 census. Maybe they met through shared acquaintances.
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Sep 3, 2016 02:33
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And something more action-packed: One of the dudes on the left is my fathers fathers mothers mothers fathers brother:  The dude getting shot at is Danish Council President (prime minister) Estrup My great uncle explains to Politiken the following day: quote:Captain C. C. Larsen, Skjoldsgade 5, ground floor, the man who first apprehended Mr. Estrup's assailant, was not home last night at 8 o clock; he was visiting his brother, Master Bricklayer Larsen, Nørrebrogade 45; it was there that our reporter met him at 8:30. It's a very gentle description imo.
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Sep 3, 2016 02:44
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Worst assassin ever.
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Sep 4, 2016 06:43
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Part of what I do involves reverse genealogy of sorts, as in looking up people as far back as the 16th century, finding out about their lives, and picking up BMD information as I go. It's not too helpful for those working backwards but I can recommend a few sites to check out besides the ones mentioned. The main one is archive.org/, it carries a lot of stuff that's also on Google Books but there's plenty besides, plus the search is fairly intuitive, as is the reading function, and most texts come with (an automated) text-only version for Ctrl+F-ing through. For British history in particular, you've got the National Archives (you can search freely for top-level information, but wills etc. you have to pay for to get the full thing), British History Online, which is mostly free to search and read, and for more localised information a good tip is to Google FamilySearch plus a place/church name, as the site has information on where to find records for practically every church in the UK, some of which will be free (Whitechapel St Mary for example has links to marriage records buried away in genealogy books hosted on the Internet Archive). One advantage for all you Americans out there is that there are a lot of people in the last couple of centuries who found out about their British heritage, and wrote books tracing the lives of their early immigrant ancestors back to themselves (as skipdogg found with the John Bridge family, for example). For anyone who feels like working forwards like that, this will be your Bible: https://archive.org/details/originallistsofp00hottuoft There's also a bunch of websites that reference and expand on that. Oh and a good source of reference material is through this site: http://plymouthcolony.net/resources/periodicals.html Again, you can use archive.org to search for one of those publications by name, and dive in from there, or use the contents to find something more specific. Copyright laws mean you won't find much after 1923 but there's still hundreds of publications to go through. If anyone is looking for information on their British ancestors circa the 16th and 17th centuries I can probably help out to an extent. twoday posted:I'm a historian in the Netherlands. I'm often in the archives at the Hague looking at old documents, and the national genealogy center is right next door. So if anyone needs some info from there, hit me up. Could be very useful! Plus to go with the above, there will be plenty of records from separatists who emigrated to areas such as Leiden, who then went on to America.
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Sep 4, 2016 20:02
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I can't get enough of are Dan