Family History?

[misty8723]

Women can't do the DNA test

. You need to have your dad or a brother or uncle do it because it goes on the y chromosome.

Yes they can, things have changed. Ancestry.com is having a 20% off sale right now. I'm kind of tempted, but I know that my ancestry is primarily French / German / English.

 

[margd]

My great aunt was very interested in our family history.  She discovered that we were descended from one of the first Lieutenant Governors of Virginia - Governor Spottsworth and bragged about him for years.  A bit of research revealed that  Spottsworth was such a degenerate incompetent that King George actually recalled him to England. I believe he was the only one of King George's appointees who was recalled so you know he was awful.   We teased my great aunt about him for years.

She once paid to have her family tree done and was told that she was a direct descendent of Marie Antoinette.  We had to gently remind her that Marie Antoinette and all of her children perished at the guillotine.  

My sister has done a lot of serious work on our family tree.  We come from France, Germany, England, Ireland and Scotland.  I'm waiting for my DNA test to come back and tell me that I'm actually from somewhere else entirely! 

 

[misty8723]

 
Those of you interested in learning more about who your ancestors are may be interested in some of the genealogy sites on the Internet. A good free one is RootsWeb - http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ . It was purchased by Ancestry.com, which is a subscription site, but RootsWeb still free and has a lot of good information on it. There is a search function in which you can enter the name of your oldest known ancestor along with a little basic information, and all family trees with that person in them will come up.

Also try familysearch.org.  I've gotten a ton of information from there based on the marriage applications alone. 

For myself, I know a lot about most of my lines - a couple of brick walls that drive me batty, but I guess that's par for the course.

The one that haunts me like the OP was talking about are the Acadians who were expelled from Nova Scotia by the British, not unlike the Trail of Tears, but in prison ships. Families were separated, a lot of them died, they were sent many different places. One place was Louisiana, where the governor welcomed them, gave them land no one else wanted, and that's where the Cajuns got their start.  My 6x great grandfather was Joseph "Beausoleil" Broussard, a leader (along with his brother Alexandre) of the resistance fighters in Nova Scotia.  The brothers were captured and eventually ended up in Louisiana. There has been a lot of research done on the Acadians, a wealth of information.

 

[denice]

 
Also try familysearch.org.  I've gotten a ton of information from there based on the marriage applications alone. 

For myself, I know a lot about most of my lines - a couple of brick walls that drive me batty, but I guess that's par for the course.

The one that haunts me like the OP was talking about are the Acadians who were expelled from Nova Scotia by the British, not unlike the Trail of Tears, but in prison ships. Families were separated, a lot of them died, they were sent many different places. One place was Louisiana, where the governor welcomed them, gave them land no one else wanted, and that's where the Cajuns got their start.  My 6x great grandfather was Joseph "Beausoleil" Broussard, a leader (along with his brother Alexandre) of the resistance fighters in Nova Scotia.  The brothers were captured and eventually ended up in Louisiana. There has been a lot of research done on the Acadians, a wealth of information.

I've done a little with this.  There is a  lot of info there all of which is free.  It's ran by the LDS church and I know genealogies are very important for them.  That is probably why they make  it free for non-Mormons.  They want as  much info as possible to complete member's genealogies.

 

[DreamerRose]

LDS information is whatever some one posted and there are often errors that no one can correct. Don't rely on their data.

 

[misty8723]

LDS information is whatever some one posted and there are often errors that no one can correct. Don't rely on their data.

Any tree posted by individuals is suspect until you can find "proof."

FamilySearch.org has much more than just individually posted trees, though, and I've gotten a lot of information from marriage applications from the state of Pennsylvania. They have other states, but seems like a lot from PA.  They also have census and other records.  You can't always rely on any source of data to be 100% accurate, because it is sometimes wrong on official forms. 

 

[denice]

Sometimes you can just stumble on something just by googling.  I stumbled across some research that someone had done on descendants of my great great grandfather on my mother's and her mother's side.  It came up because I did a search on my grandmother's maiden name.  They hadn't taken it past my  grandmother's generation.  I recognized one of her sister's name because  I  can  barely remember visiting her when I  was little.  They had a copy of my great great grandfather's homestead agreement for  160 acres.

 

[artiemom]

I googled my last name and found some relatives in Europe! I was also sleuth enough to find an e-mail address for one of them. My name is very unique. He directed me to his brother who is really into genealogy. 

It turns out we are somehow related!! It seems their father and my great, great grandfather were brothers. My g-G- grandfather immigrated to the United States. They had many siblings. Half of them stayed in Europe. 

It was pretty cool to find this out. My last name is the original spelling!! And I was able to meet one of the brothers, who came to the U.S. for a conference..They are about 10-15 years older than me. 

It was also cool to find out we had a lot of career interests between me, my dad, and this family. 

 

[lorie d.]

 
Those of you interested in learning more about who your ancestors are may be interested in some of the genealogy sites on the Internet. A good free one is RootsWeb - http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ . It was purchased by Ancestry.com, which is a subscription site, but RootsWeb still free and has a lot of good information on it. There is a search function in which you can enter the name of your oldest known ancestor along with a little basic information, and all family trees with that person in them will come up.

I did a lot of research on RootsWeb years ago, and not only learned more about my own heritage, but found many cousins I never knew I had. I still correspond with some of them, and I am so glad I found them. The most amazing thing was to find Thomas Jefferson, the third president, in the family tree. We aren't direct descendants, but he's a many times great uncle.

My son is possibly  a direct descendent of a famous person from the civil war era.  Besides my name and hubby's name the only other information I have is my late father in law's name and the name of the state he was from.  Is this enough information to find out anything from a site like ancestry.com???   This famous civil war person is either my son's great-great grandfather or great-great uncle.  I would like to find out something for sure.

 

[DreamerRose]

Yes, that's enough to start with. Put in the grandfather and go back. Then try the famous ancestor and go down

 

[engine4154]

 
Sometimes you can just stumble on something just by googling.  I stumbled across some research that someone had done on descendants of my great great grandfather on my mother's and her mother's side.  It came up because I did a search on my grandmother's maiden name.  They hadn't taken it past my  grandmother's generation.  I recognized one of her sister's name because  I  can  barely remember visiting her when I  was little.  They had a copy of my great great grandfather's homestead agreement for  160 acres.

This is exactly how. I learned about my father's side of the family. I typed in my great grandfather's name and found someone had researched all the way back to when we first came to the U.S. from Scotland in the 1700's. Included was a painting of my great, great, great (x?) grandfather who looked almost exactly like my late father. It was almost eerie.

My mother's side we know less about. She was adopted and raised, oddly enough, by a Scottish couple.

 

[foxxycat]

I have to do this=I want a passport and they ask for names/dates/birth place of parents parents. So I asked my dad for this info and then will get it. I just want to go to Canada when I want. We used to only have to show id and birth certificate. I keep a copy on me at all times now.

On my fathers side I am related to two brothers who are artists. And one wrote books- Cobb

Darius Cobb and Cyrus. Interesting history about these two!

I found a few of these old books at antique stores. The funny part is the artwork is the same exact style I used to do in my teen years. They both had families and I remember someone giving my dad a book about their history. Its in my house somewhere in the built in case of books. So interesting. Someone also related to one of the pilgrims on the mayflower. My dads family some are from Maine and some from Plymouth.

When I was younger I was not interested in any of this. now that I am half way through my years I find it so interesting! I want to know people's history and what their lives were like. So different than life now.

 

[denice]

The art style being very similar is interesting and they are finding just how much genes affect us.  They have found siblings that didn't grow up together and found how similar they are.

They have also done that with identical twins and it is really eerie.  They are alike even in things like mannerisms even though they were not raised together.  

We went from one extreme that everyone is completely ruled by their genes, to everything is the environment that we grew up in and now that it is actually some type of mix of genes and environment.

 

[foxxycat]

I just spent the past hour asking questions. My granddads middle name is Cobb. And come to find out Cyrus is my Great-great granddad. So how cool is that? I remember connecting the dots five years ago. I never met my grandpa's mom and she died in 1981. She lived to be 100!

Turns out that was not the same woman-same name and state-sorry! So dad says that his dads mom died long before he was born. I found a page on Facebook about the cobbs. Interesting to see all the artwork.

Years ago I heard mom tell me that his family was very bad with abuse and back then it wasn't uncommon for kids to be beat for discipline. I shudder to think what my father lived through. He won't talk about it but my mom used to tell me things that made me cry inside. Strange how a family can come from money and still have lots of bad things in the background. We have come a LONG way! Things are making sense-things and facts I remember but I couldn't remember what it was related to.

Like dad always says he comes from Maine. He refuses to be associated with his family from Mass in Malden. Things are making sense now. His uncle lived in Maine and I think they lived up there when dad was younger.

mom was adopted so I only have her mothers name but not maiden name or anything. I will never find out about her side.

 

[kaoritokyo]

I don't know much about family history.

I'm heard Maternal ancestor was Samurai.

And Paternal ancestor was and is rice merchant.

It's hard to find ancestors unless I ask them when they're alive Here,history is too long.

as other kinds of family historyPaternal fanily has ADHD gene,

Maternal Family has breast cancer gene.

IT's too late to take care of ADHD as I already got one,

I have to check breast every year.,

(sidetracked?)

Kaori Tokyo Japan

 

[nurseangel]

 
I don't know much about family history.

I'm heard Maternal ancestor was Samurai.

And Paternal ancestor was and is rice merchant.

It's hard to find ancestors unless I ask them when they're alive Here,history is too long.

as other kinds of family historyPaternal fanily has ADHD gene,

Maternal Family has breast cancer gene.

IT's too late to take care of ADHD as I already got one,

I have to check breast every year.,

(sidetracked?)

Kaori Tokyo Japan

I just got back to this post and am fascinated that one of your ancestors was a Samurai.  That is so interesting!

 

[kaoritokyo]

I just got back to this post and am fascinated that one of your ancestors was a Samurai.  That is so interesting!

As I''m Japanese,It's quite common

 

[AbbysMom]

I have to do this=I want a passport and they ask for names/dates/birth place of parents parents.

I don't remember having to provide this info so I just looked up the application online. They only ask for info about your parents.