Genealogy

[pinkytoe]

My brother has devoted all of his spare time to tracing family lineage and has turned out a book of sorts for both sides going back as far as he can find. He actually made trips to cemeteries across the country and also met with people who might have known family members.There is not much left to discover as he has done it all. The books are fun to read though trying to imagine how all these ancestors made it to America and how much they moved around. Mother's side is of the mutt variety - English/Scotch/Irish and who knows what else - with lots of Civil War stories. I even recall reading of one ancestor falling off a steam boat on the Mississippi and drowning. Father's side is 100% Norwegian starting off on an island village in Norway, emigrating to Minnesota and the whole clan moving to Colorado in the 1800s. DH and I would like to take a European trip in a few years and see if we can find some of the ancestral villages.

[JaneV2.0]

I agree with Iris Lily that the most interesting family lore is often problematic--like my great-grandmother dying in an insane asylum, or a great-great grandmother having a mixed-race child (which must have surprised her husband, as they subsequently divorced). Another great-great grandmother died near Barlow Road on the Oregon Trail and was buried there. She kept a diary until she loaned out her glasses, and her impressions of the journey are in one of a series of books on the subject. My sibling and I used to joke about the snooty DAR, but lo and behold, there's our German paterfamilias and his son listed in their roster. Genealogy combines the thrill of the hunt with the fascination of seeing yourself through the lens of long-ago lives.

[IshbelRobertson]

I'm lucky in that I still live within shouting distance of my ancestors, and a family member still farms the same place as they have since the mid-1700s when they were forced out of Argyll. I am doubly lucky in that there is no other nationality in my ancestors, not even a smidgeon of Irish (quite unusual in lowland Scotland, as most families have SOME Irish blood!) There may be some Norman and Viking blood, but that is waaay back before records were kept!

We lost land at the time of both the '15 and '45 Uprisings. Latterly, my family were solicitors, Dominies (teachers) and doctors - so well-documented in most cases. Mind you, one of my ancestors was amongst the last Scotsmen to be hung for sheep-stealing in Scotland!

[The Storyteller]

I find family history fascinating. I have a line that I have been able to trace back to Elizabethan England. Edmund Knell was a trugger by profession.

But have no recent immigrants. All of the lines I have been able to trace have ended up here prior the Revolution. So far have found 6 or 7 Revolutionary War participants, including one pirate (captain of The Revenge). I was surprised to learn my surname is Dutch or Germanic, as it sounds Irish. A great uncle was leader of the Fancher Party, a wagon train massacred by mormons on 9/11/1857. He was on his way to CA to join his brother, my great grandfather. But was killed along with 140 other men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows. Lost a great great grandfather fighting on the wrong side during the Civil War, died in a Yankee POW camp in Chicago.

History never seems so alive to me as when I follow my ancestors through it.

[JaneV2.0]

"History never seems so alive to me as when I follow my ancestors through it. "

That's exactly the way I feel. History as generally taught is as dry as dust. Dates and wars, generals and kings. A snooze-o-rama. Genealogy literally brings it home.

[early morning]

Free access to Civil War records- genealogy - I put this on the family thread also....
I'm a little late with this, but Footnote.com and I believe Ancestry.com are opening their sites for free this week (well, Footnote is through the 14th, not sure about Ancestry), if anyone wants to take advantage to do some poking around about the Civil War or use the 1860 census.

[catherine]

I love it, too--I have a subscription to Ancestry.com, and if you are into it, it's a relatively cheap hobby. Ancestry.com is amazing--you can see all the census documents that pertain to your family, they give you "hints" when you they find something that might be relevant to someone in your family tree, they link you up with other people who have submitted information about the same ancestors. It's really cool.

I watched the Ashley Judd episode--at first I thought "why the heck would I care about Ashley Judd's great-great-great grandfather?" but I kept it on, so I guess I did!

[Greg44]

I watched the Ashley Judd episode--at first I thought "why the heck would I care about Ashley Judd's great-great-great grandfather?" but I kept it on, so I guess I did!

It is surprising how his story was lost over the generations. I find it interesting when we can attach our family to important events that shaped this country and beyond. I think it makes history come alive!

[IshbelRobertson]

I feel very lucky about tracing my ancestry. Most of them are buried only a few hundred miles from where I presently live. I have been able to trace my family back to the late 1500s, but that's IT. A brick wall. We have dominies, lawyers and doctors in our family tree after the Uprisings. We lost lands after the '45. Stolid, solid middle class scots. Info is available for them. It's the poorer people, with little written history that I am always admiring.

How foreigners with ancestry in Scotland manage to find connections is amazing.

[earthshepherd]

I have been doing genealogy research for over ten yrs, and I love it. I got my dad and several of his family interested too. One family reunion in SE MO, we tramped through several cemeteries and had a great time! I was able to trace my paternal grandmother's family back to the 900s in Britain. There are many connections that aren't confirmed, many that are impossible to confirm, but we do have an outline of where to look at least.

Two years ago when my sis and I traveled to England and Scotland, we toured Raby Castle, the ancestral seat of the Neville family, and that was wonderful. The line going back to the Neville's is fairly easy to trace. If you can trace a line back to anyone with money or power, the rest of the research is usually already done for you somewhere.

One of the many stories I uncovered was in the household of William Boarman, my 10th great grandfather, who lived in the colony of Maryland. He reluctantly gave his blessing to one of his Irish servants to marry one of his African slaves. For several generations the descendants of this couple were slaves owned by the Boarman family, until one of the grandsons of William Boarman granted the family their freedom. The ancestral home, I understand, still stands in Maryland, and this summer my sister and I are planning a daytrip to find it.