Genealogy: Your ancestors sucked too

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Genealogy: Your ancestors sucked too

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

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.

# ¿ May 23, 2016 18:32

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 19:51

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

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 :ohdear:

.

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.

# ¿ May 24, 2016 15:16

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

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

# ¿ May 25, 2016 16:09

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

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 :psyduck:

# ¿ May 26, 2016 04:30

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

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. :ohdear:

# ¿ Jun 17, 2016 20:24

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

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 :rolleyes:

) 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 like

Me: 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 :psyduck:

Her: OK I send you a picture of her portrait that I took with my phone from my computer screen
Me: :psypop:

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

# ¿ Jul 12, 2016 20:03

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

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.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2016 23:30

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

ComradeCosmobot posted:

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!

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.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2016 21:30

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

My mother's intensive burst of research has been going into the female side of lineages since they tend to be under researched traditionally.

So far my original settler lineage, founders of Salem, MA, has managed to avoid mention in the witchcraft trials. No longer; mom has tied a spouse to some of the witches. According to her research, Abigail Faulkner is a first cousin of mine.

There is going to be so much work to fact check this poo poo in the future.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 17:12

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Very cool!

Also lol at the fines for extramarital sex.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2016 22:28

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Yeah my mom and her collaborators elsewhere in the family are starting to probe into some of the family secrets, like "why didn't great grandma so and so ever talk about her family?" So far she has called out a murder-suicide, and one old woman who was struck by a pickup truck and dragged to her death while walking to church

I kind of find it all fascinating really.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2016 03:31

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Snapchat A Titty posted:

Agreed & by the way, can you talk about the murder-suicide? I'm morbidly curious.

Yeah, it was recent enough that there are articles available on it too. They were distant cousins not direct ancestors. Anyway, its a sadly common story. Wife filed for divorce. Man shot her, then himself. Now they are buried together, forever, which is another tragedy.

So, I'm a Cubs fan. I've been reading a lot of stories leading up to the WS, and one was about Mr. Baseball Ernie Banks, who died a couple of years ago. The story detailed how the team paid for him to be buried in a cemetery not to far from Wrigley Field. The name rang a bell, and checking my mom's tree, sure enough, my great great grandmother and father are also buried there. They arrived in Chicago from Sweden 4 years before the Cubs' last win.

In correspondence with the cemetery I learned where they are located roughly, but they are without a headstone. My parents and I are considering getting one now, because that has struck me as so sad. Anyway, next time in Chicago we'll pay them a visit.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2016 02:03

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Snapchat A Titty posted:

Ugh sorry I thought it was in your great grandmother's time. Though I guess that doesn't really make a difference, it's still people dying. Just something about the distance in time makes it less immediately sad (I don't know, maybe because they would be dead anyway?).

How long are graves kept in America? I suppose you have enough space to keep them a good while. Here, graves are reused after 20 years if noone wants to pay for an extension. The headstones are thrown away & ground up for roadfill or what have you, though sometimes a church may save particularly old or interesting ones along the cemetery wall. Some of m great great grandparents' headstones are by the wall in my hometown.

Oh no big deal. It happened at least 40 years ago, to people I didn't know, in a place I have never been. No more emotional impact than any other such story--terrible, but people suck.

I feel fortunate to have known some of my great grandparents--we're pretty long lived stock mostly. I knew both my maternal grandmother's parents (that great grandfather taught me how to shuck clams, and that grandmother made fresh donuts every morning that were killer), and both of my father's grandmothers (although very briefly and I was very young).

RE: graves. I confess to not knowing much about that industry (except morticians since I teach anatomy), but I have never heard of graves being replaced like you describe--definitely only 20 years would be very unusual. As you say we are not starving for land.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2016 02:28

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2248/do-cemetery-plots-have-expiration-dates

# ¿ Oct 27, 2016 16:17

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Here is a question for you (and the others). The great great grandfather whose grave I just located told a story my grandfather recorded and passed on to me :

My grandfather posted:

My grandfather said that at age 6 he saw his father and older brothers break through the ice in a sled�horses and all. Their home town was Gamleby, which means "Old Town," located on the east coast of southern Sweden.

(In Kalmar fwiw)

So something like that should have been recorded in a local paper presumably, although it is a small town? How would I go about searching for documentation? Perhaps a search for newspaper archives in V�stervik would be more productive. The event would have been in 1845 if he correctly remembered being 6. I also am assuming they all died, since he goes on to tell another story about his uncle survivng a similar ice fall through.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 02:16

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Awesome, thanks for the links!

I am actually trying to learn a little Swedish so this will be good practice, and I still have relatives there I am in contact with despite the passing of the original immigrants.

e. also after reading the rest of my grandfather's letter, he does confirm they all died in the accident

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Oct 28, 2016

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 04:59

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Somewhat Heroic posted:

This is a neat thread. Full disclosure - I am and LDS (Mormon) member that resides in Salt Lake. I grew up less than ten miles away from the Granite Mountain Records vault (aka "The Vault") which is literally just a cave that they dug out in the mountain where they keep all of the microfilm and stuff. I know that the OP was hesitant about using the resources from the LDS church regarding some of the doctrines/practices that are a motivation behind genealogy but I would be happy to answer any questions about it the best of my ability. As a quick side note you can request that any family tree stuff that you have completed be excluded from any ordinances.

That said with my family history dating back in the LDS church to pretty early on there are some neat bits of information. My maternal Grandfather was adopted in Idaho. The man that adopted him was one of 12 children. His father was the son of an immigrant from Prussia (Germany) that joined the LDS church while in Preston, England (1838). He was studying to become a Rabbi, but changed to become a dentist and surgeon. He migrated to America to Nauvoo, Illinois. He spoke seven different languages and helped Joseph Smith Jr. learn Hebrew and German. He made the pioneer trek to the Salt Lake Valley and was the first dentist here in Utah. He made false teeth for Brigham Young. I have seen his dental tools on display at a museum even.

My paternal side of my family to Sweden which is very neat. The furthest back line I have so far is like into the late 1500's.

No offence intended, just find your doctrine for ancestral baptism a little problematic--mostly out of respect of the beliefs of my predecessors. None of that stuff really means anything to me. Besides, one of my ancestors that first moved from Sweden to the US was LDS so all this is already in the system already anyway so, pragmatically, no big whoop. Maybe we're related even.

I was supposed to have attended a conference in SLC last week but I am still not cleared to fly so vOv. I would have headed to the archives had I been there.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2016 06:18

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Some great posts all!

My mother has been tearing into genealogy, will take decades to confirm what she has found. One lineage she has back to pre English invasion Normandy in the 10th century :duckpop: On topic, she has our Norwegian roots traced back to a farm in Modum (from which the family name is taken). This was only 3-4 generations ago.

One of the neatest things for me is to take virtual google streetview tours of the places in Norway and Sweden (and England for that matter) the ancestors came from. Its remarkable to have this information so easily available.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2016 17:23

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Jaguars! posted:

I love the image of your mother tearing apart the fabric of genealogy, leaving a wake of rippling of half-truths and spurious connections to be cleared up or confirmed by a grumbling family history chain gang

That is not too far from the truth!

She has plugged into some sort of Norwegian genealogy group focused on the county our ancestors hailed from, and has helped a scad of people fill out missing parts of their trees too. So, now she is spreading like a plague outbreak

# ¿ Dec 16, 2016 16:12

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

bean_shadow posted:

What county in Norway do your ancestors come from? My relatives came from Stavanger, Rogaland.

Modum, Buskerud. Apparently the old family farm is still there and still in the family, from my uncle who went there 20 odd years ago.

e. Swedish side are from Karlskrona, Gamleby, and the Gothenberg area

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Dec 20, 2016

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 06:54

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Nice find!

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 06:07

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Heading to Chicago at the end of the month, mom wants to visit my great great grandparent's grave with me. Think I will call the local monument makers to see if I might not be able to have a surprise waiting for her...

# ¿ Apr 12, 2017 05:40

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Jaguars! posted:

I love the image of your mother tearing apart the fabric of genealogy, leaving a wake of rippling of half-truths and spurious connections to be cleared up or confirmed by a grumbling family history chain gang

For example, she and another "genealogist" she has been collaborating with (he may be or not, I am not really sure) are CONVINCED she has traced our lineage in Norway back to this guy. :psyduck:

its like literally having one's lineage traced back to King bloody Arthur :psypop:

(her last message ends with "Who knew Odin was a real person? Is he? Mom" )

e. in more real life news, we found the grave plot of my great great grandparents easily enough, plus spent some time touring the graveyard. Turns out both my sister and I have the same passion for old graveyards and always make time to visit one or two when in Europe.

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 21:32 on May 30, 2017

# ¿ May 30, 2017 21:30

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Sorry for the loss of your grandad. Mine passed away back in April, was 97 and pretty ready for it for the past several years. He served in the Navy in WW2 so yesterday was a little more poignant for me that normal.

Yeah, spurious is a nice way of putting it. Mom, if its only like another 8 generations from Fairhair to Odin you have some problems.

# ¿ May 31, 2017 01:13

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Owlkill posted:

Speaking of naming conventions, I've noticed that in certain branches of my family tree (mostly based around the English Midlands and Cheshire/Lancashire) there's a tendency for sons to take the mother's maiden name as a middle name. Does anyone know if this is 'a thing'? In my tree it seems to happen a lot in the 18th/early 19th centuries but I have a friend alive today whose middle name is his mother's maiden name.

A colleague at work, who is Scottish, took his mother's clan name as his first, which is also apparently a thing.

My mother has been at work, although this time blessedly in more recent times than those of Harald Fairhair. I have a well documented lineage that arrived in Salem from England in 1636 as I may have mentioned previously. So she is now fleshing out the female lineages--work that has been long ignored because you know males are so damned important. Turns out that the wife of my great great great grandfather (not the Swedish immigrant, the Civil War veteran) is descended from Richard Warren, one of the passengers on the Mayflower in 1620. If correctly linked (and having eyeballed it it all seems plausible enough--a whole lot of old family names in the correct time and place), this means I am a distant cousin to Taylor Swift (and a whole bunch of other people as well, given the population dynamics discussed several posts up thread).

:boom:

# ¿ Jun 4, 2017 17:16

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

HJB posted:

You may want to look through the "Mayflower Families Through Five Generations" silver books for Richard Warren, if you can find them. The Mayflower Society sells them, but they're 40 bucks a pop. Otherwise, there's this if you can figure out how their loaning system works, and old Mayflower Descendants may help out as well.

Thanks, will do

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 05:55

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Oracle posted:

There's another DNA Sale at Ancestry, 20% off, woo! Expect FTDNA to follow suit cuz Father's Day hoosier daddy.

Edit: Yup, here's FTDNA's offer. 20% there too.

My mother did this test and is waiting on the results. She has suspicion of some Ashkenazim admixture somewhere in the Scandanavian past because of her grandfather having a disorder otherwise rare except in that community. vOv

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 20:25

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Nice.

My parents did that, and got some interesting results on the low end of the distribution, with some Persian genes on my mom's side and North African on my dad's, despite our being distinctly northern Europeans for all of recorded history. Viking traders ranged far and wide, and so did Roman soldiers.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2017 20:00

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

An article on the surprises that may come with "recreational genomics": https://www.washingtonpost.com/clas...m=.4a280d7f68ae

# ¿ Jul 30, 2017 20:28

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Oracle posted:

One of the things you (and everyone else, including Ancestrys' loving ad department) need to realize is that that poo poo is by and large guesswork based on limited samples of current populations of said countries that have lived in the same spot back to at least their great-grandparents. So British, Irish, Scottish, Swedish, Western and Eastern European are to a great extent pretty drat interchangeable because of all the genetic drift from the various invasions, emi/immigration, wars etc etc. People got around a LOT back in the day, a lot more than people realize. I go into it more in my DNA post in the African-American Genealogy thread here but 'Western European' is probably as close to accurate as most people are going to get without a paper trail to back it up (never mind countries like France flat out banned DNA testing for recreational purposes).

I had to explain this to my mother when she got my father's results back. "I expected to see more English!" she said, and I pointed out that 1) it was 13 generations ago and a lot of admixture is to be expected in the time since, 2) if her tree is right that "English" lineage were actually Norman, and thus back to the large percentage of Scandanavian haplotypes, and 3) northern Europe is a huge generic mixing bowl with plenty of gene flow in all directions. She had never heard of the Danelaw, for instance. Well, teachable moments

Speaking of haplotypes, is there a site that lists which markers are being used for these various tests?

# ¿ Aug 4, 2017 22:00

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Owlkill posted:

Well another thing to remember here is that the Normans, while originally Scandinavian, settled in northern France, so that's already adding to the genetic mix, and I don't think it's controversial to say they weren't exactly endogamous once they were in the British Isles. Though I guess maybe a lot of the Normans that came over would have been of a higher social class so who knows how much classism might have affected things in terms of who boned who.

In terms of "British" genetics far as I'm aware the current view on the invasions of the British Isles is that it's not so much waves of Anglo Saxon/Viking invaders pushing back the native Britons as invaders from those cultures coming, and their languages and religions becoming dominant but basically the locals just adapt to whatever the norms of the latest overlord are, rather than packing up and loving off. So your Briton/Anglo Saxon/Viking/Norman ancestors will all have been screwing around with each other.

Yep! Its a huge admixture and genetics only tell a small part of the overall story

# ¿ Aug 6, 2017 07:36

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Nice! I really like the site personally.

My mother has been busy again tracing back female lineages (as my cousin puts it, it very much is "his"story), and has one lineage going back to a second passenger of the Mayflower. Sadly, that makes me a direct decendent of two officers who fought in the Indian Wars. What karmic debt do I owe for that I wonder?

One of the Mayflower connections was the wife of this fellow, one of my great great grandfathers. Given recent events in the US I have been thinking of him a lot. He had a rough life: his mother killed herself when he was young, which turned him into an athesist for life (which spanned 1845 to 1935). He fought in an Ohio regiment during the Civil War, and was wounded twice in the conflict (Missionary Ridge and Kenesaw Mtn). After recovering from his second wound, he still went back to the front lines because that's what what he thought of a united country. Apparently held his best friend as he died on the battlefield as well.

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Aug 17, 2017

# ¿ Aug 17, 2017 15:23

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

whoa, sorry about the huge image. Will edit it down in a sec.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2017 15:23

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Stormfronters confront their not so white DNA tests: http://www.businessinsider.com/white-nationalists-genetic-ancestry-tests-dont-like-results-2017-8

# ¿ Aug 18, 2017 01:43

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

I don't even need to go back to ancestry to find relatives behaving badly. My cousin (who I never really saw after his parents moved to Nashville) was just busted down in Florida for child porn.

People suck.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2017 15:20

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

That's really hearty rending

# ¿ Aug 20, 2017 00:18

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Think I mentioned the murder-suicide of one cousin, and another that got hit by a pickup while walking to church then dragged under it for some distance.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2017 16:02

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Tortilla Maker posted:

It also lists what might be "Petrol Merchant"? I know that one of his sons later went on to be a coal merchant, so it would be a logical connection if it in fact does say 'petrol merchant'.

It clearly says "Retard Merchant" which isn't terribly sensitive today but back then was probably pretty prestigious

# ¿ Sep 1, 2017 02:05

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Powaqoatse posted:

Just saw that the household examination records for Sweden 1880-1920 have come online (for free, unlike the local providers):
https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/2790465

They should contain pretty much everyone who lived in Sweden in that period. If anyone needs help with translations of notes or whatever, lemme know.

These are really cool. Thanks! I might solve the family falling through the ice mystery of my great great grandfather after all

# ¿ Nov 14, 2017 21:37

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 19:51

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Oracle posted:

Right? Its funny cuz its SO GODDAMN TRUE.

I think the biggest lesson I've had so far was why my paternal grandfather always struck out when hunting his genealogy in Sweden despite speaking Swedish--our last name, the most common one in North America probably, is actually an Ellis Island name and so he would never get a result searching traditionally. Thank goodness everything is digitized, and for me google translate reasonably good.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 16:31

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