Whoa! (Geek warning: Genealogy)

rubsluts'mommy

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I think sometime in the past, we've had threads on here about who we're related to who may be (in)famous. When I was in high school (back in the 80's, pre internet), my mother dragged me with her to all the genealogical libraries in the SF/Bay Area she could find. I was bored out of my mind back then, but with her mind going in her advancing age (will be 79 next month), I've become more curious and last time i visited, I asked my dad if I could have the index and main records book she kept back then. He, being the dad, told me to ask my mother. She didn't even remember DOING genealogy.

So, just a few moments ago, I got curious. I pulled them off my bookshelf and started perusing the index for familiar names. I wanted to see where she had some Danish royals listed... well, I haven't found him... but i did find someone else... and holy cr**.

Edward I, of England. I.E. aka Longshanks. beh... beh... Holy Catsmas, Batman! She never TOLD me about the British royals in my line... she was more amused in telling me I was descended from the b**tard child of a Danish prince.

So, I have the ability to continue her research, filling in LOTS of blanks... this could get very interesting... now I really need some software to get it all on the computer.

DUDE! Man, this is going to trip me up for a while...

Yeah, Royalty to moonshiners... I have an amusing family history.

Amanda
 

captiva

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Genealogy is addicting ! Congrats on your findings so far!
 

mom of 4

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Just make sure that she documented her "finds" or that you do. and becareful of what you find on the internet. There are people out there who will submit correct info along with a few errors. So always verify the info.
 

pat

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I love this stuff! We probably are related...will have to check...dh found incredible stuff (and is documenting, and still has so much to check on his father's side and my father's side) but we've found scottish kings, danish, swedish royalty, french royalty (and a welsh prince on my gram's side), a russian princess....heh...honestly, you are going to love doing this!

We use ancestry.com and really like it.
 
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rubsluts'mommy

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Originally Posted by Mom of 4

Just make sure that she documented her "finds" or that you do. and becareful of what you find on the internet. There are people out there who will submit correct info along with a few errors. So always verify the info.
My mother, being a former Librarian, was very meticulous. She did all of this in the underlit libraries back in the 80's. That page states she found it in the Brigham Young records (yes, also related to him, by way of his brother). As we all know, the Mormons are very meticulous (word of the day! no, not really) about their genealogical record keeping.

Going that far back is a little iffy, and i take some things (like the moonshiners and the other royalty) with the proverbial grain of salt. BUt this is something she found and did not put a question mark by, so I'll go with the thought that she at least believed it was absolute. I'll check her work as I get going on this... I'm just swamped with other stuff right now... I was glancing through her work.

Amanda
 

luvmyfurbabys

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I am related to some cool ppl

Samuel Chase who signed the Declaration of Independence ( right under John Hancock ) He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Washington. ( Grandfathers side ) my oldest and youngest sons carry the middle name Chase .

Solomon Chase who was there at the first reading of the emancipation proclamation and appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court under Lincoln. ( Grandfathers side )

King Duncan of Scotland approx 1038 AD ( my step mother is really into this ) ( Fathers Side )

Rebbecca Nurse , one of the many hanged during the Salem Witch trials ( Fathers Side )

Anne Bolin ( not sure of the spelling ) Second wife to Henry the VIII who lost her head. ( Fathers Side )

Elizabeth I one of the greatest rulers of England and daughter of the above ( Fathers Side )

Henry David Thoreau - American writer/poet ( Fathers Side )

I am also the 16th cousin to , Diana Princess of Wales. ( Grandmothers Side )

Its cool to know your related to historical ppl.
 

pat

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Did some quick checking back through what we have so far, I am out of William the Lion of Scotland who is 4 generations from King Duncan I...so I am related to luvmyfurbabys


Also related to Heny 1 of France "Capet"

Other quick stuff...also way back is King Canute of Denmark...I so love this stuff.

The welsh ancestor of note is Gruffydd II ap Madog, Lord of Dinas Bran.
 
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rubsluts'mommy

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I'm entering my stuff on Ancestry.com... I'm only halfway through my great grandparents... I was kinda hoping there might be some hints from their database on my fathers' grandparents, but there's no leaf (the indicator of hints). They're the true mystery of the family. I know what month and years they each were born, what Canton they came from in Switzerland, but no town, no birthdate itself (the day), and for my great grandfather, no death date... apparently he was something of a scandal... he stayed in NY while Elsbeth took the kids and moved to California. Crazy, huh? Those crazy Swiss...

I figure the only way I'll have a chance to find out more about their line is by someday going to Switzerland and digging through archives there... *sigh* someday. But with the online records, I may be able to find more about them without going... although I still want to go...

I doubt I'll get much past my gr-grandparents tonight... I have to work in the morning.

Amanda
 

mrblanche

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So, did you find the horse thieves and the Indian princess? The old joke of geneology is that no one has an Indian man, only an Indian princess, and everyone has royalty and horse thieves in their background. Or at least claim it.

It's hard to trace my family, since they were Huguenots who left France around the time of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre and went to Denmark, stayed there about 200 years, and ended up moving to the US in the late 1800's. The family joke is that the problem with France is that they ran all the intellectuals out of the country on a regular basis, and you see what they have left today.
 

mom of 4

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I strongly recommend that you take a geneology class. I took one at my local community college. It wasn't very expensive.
I learned about documentation, nearby resources, sources in other states and other countries. I met other people, including members of the local Geneology Society.
I learned the correct way to seek information - what to say and how to say it. Many people have spent hours researching their families and are often loathe to just give it over.

Never, every merge your data with info from geneology websites. If you download it, save it in a separate file until you verify it. Consider it a place to start, not correct information until you verify it. There are way too many errors on the sites.
 

gemlady

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Originally Posted by Mom of 4

Just make sure that she documented her "finds" or that you do. and becareful of what you find on the internet. There are people out there who will submit correct info along with a few errors. So always verify the info.
Yes, documentation. Very important and I wish I had done it early in my research. Oh, well.

I have family stories that I label as Family Lore and have used them as starting blocks and have actually been successful in proving some of them.

Have yet to find anyone famous unless you count a distant cousin who was the first person to be executed under state law in the the 20th century. (One person was executed earlier, but in the 19th century.)

I am related to myself. I am my own 6th cousin.
 
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rubsluts'mommy

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Originally Posted by gemlady

Yes, documentation. Very important and I wish I had done it early in my research. Oh, well.

I have family stories that I label as Family Lore and have used them as starting blocks and have actually been successful in proving some of them.

Have yet to find anyone famous unless you count a distant cousin who was the first person to be executed under state law in the the 20th century. (One person was executed earlier, but in the 19th century.)

I am related to myself. I am my own 6th cousin.
I'm well aware of having documentation. We knew nothing until my mom started doing her research. When I took the book and index last year, I opted not to take the whole file box of her photocopies from the books and records. There, I'll probably find much of her documentation. If she was in doubt of something, she put a question mark next to it, or didn't continue that line. If she couldn't find an absolute match, she wouldn't put it in the book.

While I do have some royalty way back there, I also have a TON of 'no name' types who just lived... nothing major, just lived. Although, if any of you live near Sheridan Arkansas, my gr-gr-grandfather founded the town. Littleton Veazy was his name. And yes, I'm probably related to at least half the town.
The town historian told me as much when I passed through back in 1998.

CLoser to me, I am related, by a generation or so removed, to one Maude Adams, who was a renowned stage actress at the turn of the century. She died in 1953, never married. She was the first female to play Peter Pan onstage.

I'm also fifth (or is it 6th) cousins with former Niner's quarterback Steve Young. My gr-gr-gr-grandfather (dad's side), was Lorenzo D. Young, Brigham's brother. Yes, that Brigham Young. And no, I'm not Mormon. I believe it was my grandmother who walked away from the Mormon church. Feisty one, she was.

The reasons I didn't take the whole box of my mother's research was 1. I don't have the ROOM for another box in this place... and 2. I didn't feel it was necessary. It's primarily her documentation. Next time I'm down there, I may look through the files, but unless i get some a**-kicking job and can move into a bigger place with tons of storage, I don't think I'll be bring it all up here.

Amanda
 

whisky'sdad

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Geek warning?? Hey!!!

I love doing Genealogy! www.rootsweb.com is a great FREE resource. I was stuck on my dad's dad side up to my great-grandfather. Rootsweb allowed me to go way further back and allowed me to see where our red hair and beards come from. I found out we have scottish and irish ancestry. My sister has strawberry-blond hair and I have deep red beard. My mom's side, I had alot more info on. My german ancestors came over in the mid-1800's. Back then, Germany was known as Prussia.

I had 2 ancestors who fought in the Civil War and I am a descendent of William The Conquerer, as millions of others are as well!
 

pat

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Originally Posted by Mom of 4

I strongly recommend that you take a geneology class. I took one at my local community college. It wasn't very expensive.
I learned about documentation, nearby resources, sources in other states and other countries. I met other people, including members of the local Geneology Society.
I learned the correct way to seek information - what to say and how to say it. Many people have spent hours researching their families and are often loathe to just give it over.

Never, every merge your data with info from geneology websites. If you download it, save it in a separate file until you verify it. Consider it a place to start, not correct information until you verify it. There are way too many errors on the sites.
My husband has found quite a few errors in various postings on ancestry.com, but they are usually pretty apparent (listing offspring born from someone known/well documented to have died before the said offspring could have been conceived etc.), but there are also others who have meticulously researched, and who have attached documentation to what they have found that can be checked, making accepting/using their data fairly safe, in our opinion.

Having the internet, paying for access to the Internent International databases has also made a huge difference in his research. He has spent hours, and I'd like to make it clear for a previous comment in this thread...no claim to royalty is being made without documentation...I would find making such a claim out of thin air dishonest and quite distasteful. In our case (yes, I am related to my mother-in-law and hence to my husband it appear) we are approx. 99% sure (except the welsh royalty is a definite for me) so we are pretty sure that various x,y.z's are ancestors.

I am also lucky that my mom paid a geneological researcher years ago to research part of our family back to the early 1600s...give my husband a very solid base to work with as he went further back. In another case, my grandmother's maiden name - Fisk - has a website that is well researched for all folks with that name or related spelling...which has been ex. useful. It is amazing what you can find on the web!
 

pat

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Originally Posted by gemlady

Yes, documentation. Very important and I wish I had done it early in my research. Oh, well.

I have family stories that I label as Family Lore and have used them as starting blocks and have actually been successful in proving some of them.

Have yet to find anyone famous unless you count a distant cousin who was the first person to be executed under state law in the the 20th century. (One person was executed earlier, but in the 19th century.)

I am related to myself. I am my own 6th cousin.
You can still go back and do some though! When my dh spent more time on this recently, he found newspaper articles (all online) with photos of various events he'd never heard of...his father as a 5 year old in a parade, and much more. Attaching this to the family tree is building an incredible "book" we will be putting together for his brothers and their children...not only to see the names, but to read about what they were doing (his grandmother was a very busy lady and in the paper a lot) and see photos.
 

misty8723

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Originally Posted by RubSluts'Mommy

I'm entering my stuff on Ancestry.com... I'm only halfway through my great grandparents...
I would recommend you invest in genealogy software (or just download PAF since it's free) http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp. I'm not impressed with the flexibility of entering it on Ancestry only, and it seems to be kind of a pain.

Personally, I haven't gotten all that far back but I doubt there's any royalty in my ancestors. I am descended from Joseph "Beausoleil" Broussard, who led the Acadian resistance against the British http://www2.umoncton.ca/cfdocs/etuda...false&linking= , and is considered a hero to the Acadians/Cajuns.

Also a possibility I'm related to privateer Jean Lafitte (or at least his "right hand man." speculation is they were related, but no proof).

Ancestry tells me I'm related to several famous people as well - including John Hancock, but I don't have any proof of any of that either.

Good luck. Genealogy is both addicting and time-consuming.
 

luvmyfurbabys

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Originally Posted by Pat & Alix

Did some quick checking back through what we have so far, I am out of William the Lion of Scotland who is 4 generations from King Duncan I...so I am related to luvmyfurbabys


Also related to Heny 1 of France "Capet"

Other quick stuff...also way back is King Canute of Denmark...I so love this stuff.

The welsh ancestor of note is Gruffydd II ap Madog, Lord of Dinas Bran.
Yo Cus!!! LOL
 

misty8723

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Originally Posted by Pat & Alix

My husband has found quite a few errors in various postings on ancestry.com, but they are usually pretty apparent (listing offspring born from someone known/well documented to have died before the said offspring could have been conceived etc.), but there are also others who have meticulously researched, and who have attached documentation to what they have found that can be checked, making accepting/using their data fairly safe, in our opinion.
You will find errors in everything, even legal documents. We've found incorrect spelling, incorrect dates, etc. in many legal documents. The Census records aren't always accurate either. Basically, we just document everything and make note of discrepancies.

Some people on the internet just copy verbatim from something they find and it gets spread all over the place that way.
 

pat

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Originally Posted by Misty8723

You will find errors in everything, even legal documents. We've found incorrect spelling, incorrect dates, etc. in many legal documents. The Census records aren't always accurate either. Basically, we just document everything and make note of discrepancies.

Some people on the internet just copy verbatim from something they find and it gets spread all over the place that way.
It's why I'm letting my dh do most of this...he's thorough, determined and just one of the best people I've ever met for solving puzzles
He's commented with great frustration on the difficulty in tracing women in a family tree...they come up as Mrs.x...no maiden, no nothing...it can be very difficult to find their maiden name/parents etc. sometimes.

He's documenting using multiple sources when possible.
Oh...another frustration? The folks with tiny handwriting or elegant indescipherable longhand
on these census records.
 
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