genealogy

[na§tee]

this thread is inspired by the fantastic bbc documentary series who do you think you are?

what do you know, if anything, of your family's history? did your great great great gramps come over from the brazilian jungle? are you descended from convicts who got shipped off to australia for stealing sheep? do you have no real knowledge of your family other than your parents?

discuss. history is cool.

[Randetica]

umm no

[venusvenus123]

sorry nastee, don't talk about my personal life here. :(

[na§tee]

dudes! you don't have to get personal, you can just say "yeah i'm part finnish and er, part, eskimo".

oh well. no matter, i understand.

*thread dies*

[venusvenus123]

but that would be lying!

by blood, i'm a welsh rarebit, with a bit of irish and english mixed in for good measure.

i haven't gone back to beyond my grandparents.... something i should probably get round to doing while my nan, who's 98, is still around.

i just got a text from my mum saying that she (my nan) managed to do a load of washing and cooked herself a meal in the gas oven (this concerns me as she's blind and mostly deaf), so she's still got a bit of go in her and can still manage in her own house, on her own.

my husband's family is a bit more interesting, with hungarian, scottish and finnish thrown in to the english. however, my mother-in-law is known to lie and exaggerate so it's probably all nonsense.

the other day i was asking her where the name drummond came from (my brother in law's name) and she said it was something to do with the earl of drummond who was in the family. immediately i thought, "as if:rolleyes:"
probably my bad

[Randetica]

im 100% austrian, god bless hitler


but seriously, my family is huge but theres no contact to most members
i would be curious to know atleast anything about my history

[QueenAdrock]

My great-grandfather, Onni (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/QueenAdrock1/family/onni.jpg), came over to America from Finland at the turn of the century. When he got to Ellis Island, he didn't speak any English so they slapped a name tag on him and loaded him onto a train. He wanted to go to Massachusetts, where some of his family already was, but much like other Scandinavians at the time, he was shipped out west to do work in the mines. On the train, he was able to find one Finn who spoke English too, and he deciphered what his name tag said. He was informed that it said he was to be sent to Michigan to work in the mines there. He thought "Fuck this, yo," and hopped off the train and headed back east for Massachusetts. He worked there a few years, until his family decided to up and move to Troy, NY - he had a job aspect as a horticulturist for a wealthy family there. Since he had his degree in horticulture from University of Helsinki, this was his big break for him and he moved the family there. He married another Finn, had my grandpa, my grandpa met my Swedish-Finnish grandmother in New York (she was from Jersey originally), married and had my dad. Then they moved during WWII to D.C. for the war effort. I showed up a while later.

As for my mom, all I know is that her family fled Germany during WWI era, though some family was left behind. She had a few great-aunts who married Jews in Germany, and no one heard from any of them again after the Holocaust. They can kind of guess what happened to them. Her side settled in Pennsylvania, where there were coal mines and nursing jobs. She moved down to D.C. sometime later.

As a history major, I asked a lot about my genealogy. My grandfather's huge into it, so I know quite a bit about how we got here and what we did.

[abcdefz]

Mom's side is from Germany.

Dad -- we don't really know. He was raised believing he was adopted, but as my grandparents got closer to death Grandpa said dad
was my grandma's son from a hastily annulled marriage, which she denied. Weird.

[rirv]

On my father's side: his mother (my grandma) was born and bred in Manchester, and his father (my Grandfather) never knew his father (or refues to tell us) but he was born and bred in Cumbria (the Lake District). My dad grew up in Buckinghamshire, near Oxford.

On my mother's side: both her parents were from the same town in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but what then became Czechoslovakia, and now the Czech Republic. My grandma (one of 14 siblings) moved to a place that is now in Hungary, and then on to somewhere which is now in Slovakia when she was younger and the agriculture was not so good, but moved back to her hometown, where she brought up my mum. My mum then escaped to London in 1969, the year after those pesky Russians invaded Prague. Her brother, my uncle, escaped by walking through Slovenia into Italy and finally onto Germany.

I don't know anything past grandparents.

[Bob]

i'm descended from german immigrants on both sides of my family. a relative on my mother's side fought for the union in the civil war, and a relative on my father's side was a nazi (in america no less)

so i guess i'm somewhere between those two

[QueenAdrock]

^ I have evil historical relatives, too. My great-grandfather's cousin is Herbert Hoover (mom's side), and I'm also somehow related to Kaiser Wilhelm on her side, too.

[funk63]

moms side ojibwe indian (you would say chippewa) and cherokee. dads side is a mix of scottish and english and stuff.

[mathcart]

My Uncle got hugely into genealogy (my families) and has been doing it almost as a second job off and on for years. He's gotten to the point where he can't do any more without involving the Mormons (If you don't know about this little slice of bizarre trivia I suggest you Google Mormons and genealogy immediately!).
Which is all to say, I'm into it. As for me:
Can only go back to my Grandparents who were all born in Europe and emigrated with their families as children/infants- all around WW1 actually- not the war jews usually fled in mass from- but I guess they were all bad. My Dad's father was Hungarian, my Mom's father was German and both my Grandmothers were from the same town (essentially- might of been like the next town over) on the Russia/ Poland border. My mom says that she heard stories that what country they were from would change from war to war. They all eventually wound up in Brooklyn, although my dads dad had a stop in Cleveland where I may have a large segment of my family I've never met. Evidently both sides of my family have segments of it that they have disowned or been disowned from. Eye opening stuff since I've always considered my fam sorta vanilla (comparatively at least).
Didn't mean to write a book- but as I said at the outset- I'm into it. So thats that mattress man...
:)

[Kid Presentable]

^ I have evil historical relatives, too. My great-grandfather's cousin is Herbert Hoover (mom's side), and I'm also somehow related to Kaiser Wilhelm on her side, too.

They all say that. :rolleyes:

[TurdBerglar]

everyone is french on my mom's side. they came to the US through canada around the 1920/30's on both her sides. they settled in NH, then made their way to MA. somehow on my mom's side we're related to the hapsburgs. i have no idea how true that is...

my father is irish and italian. we know very little about my irish grandfather's past. all we really know is of one brother and that my grandfather was in WWII. i never really spoke to him even though i saw him pretty practically every day. i didn't like him much. he died when i was 14.

my italian grandmather also came here through canada. she was born there. that's about all i know about her.

no one really seems to know anything in my family or even care about our past.

[na§tee]

some of these are quite interesting.

i asked because i know next to nothing beyond my grandparents. on my mother's side my grandmother is from irish stock, my grandfather, who knows.

on my father's side they make it seem like they've been on the isle of lewis since time incarnate. but it's pretty much a given they're all viking descendants like the rest of the islanders. my grandfather seemed a little more knowledgeable about it all, and i'm sure i could have got lots of information out of him, but he died a couple of years ago before i got interested in all this stuff. he did say we were, er, a bunch of tinkers back in the day. fab. /gazes into crystal gypsy ball.

the only interesting thing i remember everyone knowing was that my great great great.. god, i can't remember exactly, grandfather was in the merchant navy and he brought home an indian wife. which as you can imagine in a staunchly free church island was a bit of a scandal. my uncles have quite a different colouring to what normal island people are like (lewis is not like normal places. there aren't massive amount of incomers. LOCAL PLACE FOR LOCAL PEOPLE) - all pale pale skin and dark hair (like me) - they were quite tan and dark. so cue lots of racial slurs in the playground. it may be bullshit and not due to that bloodline at all, but only the men seem to look a bit exotic, not the women. BAH.

They all say that. :rolleyes:

ha. it's true. we're probably all distantly related to someone in/famous.
when boris johnson did his episode of who do you think you are a couple of weeks ago they discovered he was a descendant of king george II and james I. but they worked out that well.. yes, he was related but because it was freakin' hundreds and hundreds of years ago and the multiple people that have been BIRTHED since then, he was related but so were, oh, a good few thousand other people in the world, too.

so if we really wanted to stretch it you could probably bet a couple of bbmbers were related. er.. eek.

there's a surname profiler (http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames1//) that was linked on the bbc recently that can tell you some cool information about your surname. it's down atm though. lotsa traffic.

[Freebasser]

My entire family is descended from the areas of Liverpool and Manchester, with a few dozen having moved up to Preston around 80 years ago.

Glamorous it aint :/

[Documad]

Members of my family have done the research down both sides. You can't put much stock in it because people lied their heads off about out of wedlock births and who fathered what child. We have a photo from four generations ago that features a family member who appears to be at least 1/2 black and that's not in the family history.

If you trust the official research, I'm 1/4 Welsh and the rest came to the american colonies from England before the revolution.
Some of my mom and dad's relatives even came over to the virginia colonies on the same boat in the same year. We have many Irish-sounding names in the family but there is no record of any Irish parentage. :confused: And there's an indian princess, but I suspect that someone made that up.

[b-grrrlie]

My dad is extremely interested in genealogy.
That much that he's the main man in going back our roots.
He's gotten as far back as 1556, to a man called Hartwick Andersson, from whom our surname was changed into more Finnish sounding.
I was never that interested in it, but I have my grandfather's old photos (he was THE photographer in their town, both professional and hobbyist.
That's where I've gotten my interest from) and dad's been using those a lot in his research.
The genealogy club even has their own flag (http://www.hartikaiset.com/myyntituotteet/kuvat/viiri_1a.jpg) and postage stamp (http://www.hartikaiset.com/myyntituotteet/kuvat/postimerkki_iso.jpg) :eek:
The shield is representative of what our ancestors were working with (i.e. farmers, soldiers and carpenters) and the colours are black and gold.

I know that my grandfather was going to move to Ameriikka (USA) when he found out grandma was pregnant,
but somehow she talked him over to marry her. He already had one child from 12 years earlier...

Don't know that much from my mother's side, except they must've been poor farmers as well.
The families were rather huge (my mum had 10 sisters and brothers) and my maternal grandma had several half sisters as well,
and several became over 100 years old (those who survived childhood).

I can easily use translations of both my parents surnames in English (or shortenings)
which has become handy when leaving films for developing (you know back in the "old" days)
and making bookings abroad.

[na§tee]

haha. fyi, indian bird in the stewart family tree certainly wasn't a fuckin' princess, lemme tell you that.

[Lex Diamonds]

My mum's parents (the Lye family) came from relative wealth and upper social class (at one point one of my mother's ancestors was a slave owner and eloped with one of the girls, so I'm like black and shit), but they pissed it all away on drink before it got down to my mother. They lost the house, the money, everything and died relatively young from drink-related illness. So my mum had to work extremely hard for everything we have now.

Other side was rough-as-fuck Irish (the McLoughlins from County Cork), who moved over to Rochdale (industrial town just outside Manchester) 3 generations back. My grandfather was one of 8 brothers and they made quite an impact on the town, coming up from working class uneducated Irish kids to be minor business owners, factory bosses and er, "political minglers". Yeah, they pretty much went around breaking people's legs. Apparently they were quite notorious back in the day.

Now me and my Marge have moved down to London, and both my families have spread apart and died out. Probably due to all the alcoholism. (n)

[icy manipulator]

my dad had our family tree done a couple of years ago. and yeah, 7 or 8 generations up on his side we're convicts from Birmingham :cool:

[rirv]

my dad had our family tree done a couple of years ago. and yeah, 7 or 8 generations up on his side we're convicts from Birmingham :cool:
An elephant is coming to the end of his long life and - after speaking to a wise elephant - believes he has to go to Birmingham to die. So he packs his trunk (arf!) and sets off for Birmingham. Once there he realises he is a bit lost and doesn't know where to go to end his life peacefully. After a few hours wondering around he spots another Elephant on the other side of the road.
"Hey!" he shouts out. "Did you come here to die??"
"No" replies the other Elephant, "I came here yesterday."

[English accents joke.]

[jabumbo]

mom's side is all from poland

dad's side has a bit of mix. his dad's parents were from poland and ukraine, both near the border, so they could have been either or i suppose. but they both came over on the boat together. his mom's parents came from ireland and belgium.


i think my dad and i are the only ones outside of gram who take after any of the belgian side.

[Deep_Sea_Rain]

Great thread...

My maternal Grandfather was half Cherokee, half white. My maternal Grandmother was 1/4 Chickisaw, 3/4 white. My mom (and of course grandparents) all hail from Alabama.

My paternal Grandfather came here illegally from Mexico. He was almost totally Native American, but as a kid when he tried to explain to me our family history, I just shrugged it off, and thus never found out which tribe. My paternal Grandmother is pure Spanish, and came to the US from Spain to marry a poor Mexican immigrant, which earned her exile from her family in Spain (back then Mexicans were viewed as a bastard race and "beneath" the Spanish). My father and Grandparents have all settled in Arizona.

So whatever the hell that makes me. Native? Hispanic? Red Neck? Probably all. I view myself as a Hispanic man though.

As far as famous relatives....I'm George Washington's great (like 10 million greats) nephew.

[befsquire]

i know very, very little about my father's side. i just know our family came over from france.

on my mom's side, i knew we were related to george washington and ulysses s. grant. fort bragg is named after my mom's family as well. what i did not know was that our family used to be slave owners. i guess one of my mom's cousins does a lot of research, and actually has copies of wills where slaves were divided amongst children, and one got an extra because one of the slaves was blind and another had one arm, so they were combined only as good as one. it's disgusting. my brother emailed it all to me, but i haven't looked through it yet. it was sort of a lot of shit to sift through.

[gbsuey]

I went and spent a coupla days with my auntie a few weeks ago and she told me a lot about my Mums' side of things- apparently her grandad was always rumoured to the illegitimate son of the Earl of norfolk but these things are usually bollocks! But there is some connection to the Shand-kidd family i think-we were the poor ones apparently. I think the rest of her side were pretty much local to Lincolnshire/humberside way.

Really want to find out more about my dads' side-i know his mum was Scottish and there was a strong Romany gypsy thing going on too-i think his dad may have been from Cheltenham way where i'm from but he didn't talk about it and now he's dead so guess it'll be up to me to find out!!

[Pres Zount]

"Hey!" he shouts out. "Did you come here to die??"
"No" replies the other Elephant, "I came here yesterday."



Hahaha.


My father's side is English, and supposedly German, too. But I think that was just there to make them seem more refined than their neighbours. Not that they had any since they lived on an Apple farm in the middle of nowhere. Still, there was enough German in them to demand that I was named Siegfried, and my sister Hilda. We weren't. Their families have been in Australia since the early settlers.

My mother's side is as Irish as the pope, and my great great great grandfather (or thereabouts) was sent here from Armagh for stealing a sheep.

[rirv]

Some of you lot should work out that you're related before long considering the amount of historical ancestory you have.

[gbsuey]

To each other??

Six degrees and all that?

[rirv]

Well, Deep Sea Rain and Beth have both claimed ancestory to George Washington, so they're related...

[gbsuey]

Yeah i noticed that-also a fair few with german ancestry - not that that would mean much i know so i don't really know where i'm going with that......

[paul jones]

I've been told I'm a relative of Ivor Novello.

both my grandads were coal miners.

that's about all I know(y)

[Deep_Sea_Rain]

Yeah Beth, we're totally relatives and stuff.

[HotAndWet]

I know a little about my mother's mother's side....they came over from county cork and I think sligo? in Ireland.....My dad's side is Lithuanian and I know fuck all about them but I'd like to start researching it.