Family Histories

Curious, did anybody here actually do this, and go back and find out when your family came here, who you may be descended from, etc.?

I was lucky. One of my cousins had done the work for me. Traced our family back to when we first came here in 1608, right down to the ship name, family origins in England, etc.

Seems I was related to the Sheriff of Nottingham, hehe...(though since Robin Hood is hard to quantify, he may not have been THE Sheriff of that story).

I'm also related to a woman who actually DID what Amelia Earhart "attempted" to do, though of course, she is decidedly less famous because she actually landed ok.

A well known character actor (mostly in the 70's) is related to us, and is a distant cousin of mine.

Another branch makes wine with the family name (and my wife and I collect a bottle for each year we are married).

Anyhow, it was actually a lot of fun to realize how long we'd been here, and see how we branched out from that initial landing. Some of the family stayed in that state, then we basically went in two directions, one to California, and one to Florida. Just wondering if others have had such a discovery, and been surprised at what they found. No need to divulge personal details, just general experience in doing this.

I have been trying for years to find out information on where my surname/family comes from. I have spent 10yrs looking for information if not more.

I have been told that it had a different spelling than it currently does. The spelling it had made it sound like it does now so I can only assume the spelling it has now has to do with when my family came here and it was spelled out based on how it sounded. I have no proof that is even true either. I was also told before this spelling it was a French name and was traced back to the 1200s. I didnt get much information other than that. I would love to find information on my name but I have been told and found thru my personal research that German surnames are pretty hard to trace.

I did find out that one of my Uncles on my dads side was a musician and wrote some Wedding March. I dont have the sound bite anymore but it is a popular one, not the one you are probably thinking of though. I am also related to a music critic for the Village Voice, he is my Uncle but he is a complete meanie to put it nicely. When I contacted him he thought I was contacting him for his "fame" and money. I laughed because I just wanted to find my dad at the time! He wasn't friendly and my aunts on my dad's side later told me he kind of removed himself from the family. He lives in NYC and is a well known music critic. The one constant on my dad's side is music from the relatives I have found. I guess it explains my musical ability and musical interest. On my moms side there is also musical talent and artistic talent that has also been traced back thru the family.

Everytime I come across one of those sites that will find your surname origins they NEVER find mine. I do know on my moms side that my family is Sicilian/Italian and some Irish on my grandmothers side. My Aunt has a book on our family history but I haven't seen it. Someone in the family did it years ago. My moms name was a little easier to trace with it being the Italian name for Venice.

I would love to find out information on my dads side esp the fact that the name was originally French. Could possibly explain my life long obsession with France.. My love of France has been there since I was a kid and my entire family has no idea why or where it came from. I am not saying it has anything to do with my name having Frehch origins but who knows!!

Originally posted by Gazrok
Curious, did anybody here actually do this, and go back and find out when your family came here, who you may be descended from, etc.?

I was lucky. One of my cousins had done the work for me. Traced our family back to when we first came here in 1608, right down to the ship name, family origins in England, etc.

Seems I was related to the Sheriff of Nottingham, hehe...(though since Robin Hood is hard to quantify, he may not have been THE Sheriff of that story).

I'm also related to a woman who actually DID what Amelia Earhart "attempted" to do, though of course, she is decidedly less famous because she actually landed ok.

A well known character actor (mostly in the 70's) is related to us, and is a distant cousin of mine.

Another branch makes wine with the family name (and my wife and I collect a bottle for each year we are married).

Anyhow, it was actually a lot of fun to realize how long we'd been here, and see how we branched out from that initial landing. Some of the family stayed in that state, then we basically went in two directions, one to California, and one to Florida. Just wondering if others have had such a discovery, and been surprised at what they found. No need to divulge personal details, just general experience in doing this.

edit on 10-5-2013 by Gazrok because: (no reason given)

What’s up Cousin, I'm related to the Sheriff of Nottingham as well!

my famaily came over to the USA 30 years after the may flower. They were out laws. They picked peas on the Sabbath (sunday) and were convicted (gasp). Luckily there jail time was waved because it was a first offence. haha

I have family in the French Indian war. The revolutionary war, the war of 1812, the civil war on both sides, WW1,WW2, Korea, Iraq 2008.

My civil war history is crazy. My family and there 16 brothers & cousins all served in the same company under Nathan Bedford forest. Nathan Bedford Forest Division seen something like 80% casualties over the history of the war yet all family members survived! Our 7th great grandpa, who was in Nathan Bedford forest division, was shot in the gut and was put in a Union prison for the rest of the war. He was a VERY wealth plantation owner and owned 20 slaves. After the war they lost EVERYTHING due to taxes and had to move Arkansas. His father was in the war of 1812 and his father was in the revolutionary war.

Go off another branch and our direct grandfather 9 or 10 times great, was the writer of the north Carolinas constitution. He was friends with Gorge Washington and hosted many gatherings at his house where Gorge Washington would attend. When the revolutionary war broke out. Charles Cromwell, a famous British General, took over the house and used it as his HQ.

All this is backed up by documents and birth certificates

Never traced the entirety of my family history (would love to though) although my aunt did some digging a while back and called us up to tell us that she found out that my family is related to the singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette. According to Wiki her father is French-Canadian and she is Canadian. I had heard from word of mouth that I have miniscule French ethnicity, although mostly composed of being Polish and German as far as I know from what I am told. Perhaps her father being French-Canadian can somehow help to connect the dots of where the little bit of French (from what I am told) in my family came from.

Pretty sure I'm really an alien though and this is all a just a front.
Ha. Ha. Just kidding!.

reply to post by camaro68ss


Those kinds of stories are really what I'm lacking about my own. I mean, my cousin has traced the whole family tree, but these kinds of events are what really make it more interesting than just names and dates.

Great stuff! (and yeah, maybe we are related at least by the Sheriff).... Robin was a pest and a menace!

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by camaro68ss

 

Those kinds of stories are really what I'm lacking about my own. I mean, my cousin has traced the whole family tree, but these kinds of events are what really make it more interesting than just names and dates.

Great stuff! (and yeah, maybe we are related at least by the Sheriff)....

Robin was a pest and a menace!

I know so much because i did all the work. It was funny finding pictures and storys.

Funny story. I was doing Research on my 6th great grandparents. I found information on them and solo photos of each of them. Back then you would only take pictures once or twice in your life because it was so expensive and that’s even if you were wealthy. So I went to my grandma’s house and we were chatting it up. She went to make dinner and I was looking at all the pictures on her shelve. She had an original photo of her mother as a 5 year old girl and 3 generations of parents above her. (it was a family photo and there was a total of 4 generations of family members in it) I look in the back of the photo and I said to myself “ I know those people” Its impossible because the photo was almost 100 years old.

I started laughing because in the back was our 6th great grandparents in the group family photo. So a distant distant relative, that I don’t even know, on the east coast has the two original solo photos of them and we have the original family photo and there wearing the same suits and dress so the photos were taken at the same time.

Yep! Spent about three years researching it on a daily basis.

Dad's maternal side were Germans living in Poland and they came here at around 1900. (I'm too lazy to open up the geneaology that is sitting right next to me). They were highly educated and very strict. His father's side was Finnish, and I can't find much about them. When my grandfather married my grandmother, they had to elope in Canada, and he changed his name to an Irish one - no one knows why. But it probably had a lot to do with him being absolutely rejected by her father - who didn't speak to either of them for YEARS.

Mom's paternal side goes back 14 generations, they came over from England right before the English Civil War, in the 1630s and settled in Rhode Island with that group of non-Puritans - I actually wrote a novel based on my research, but it's entirely fiction except for the details. Cornell was a family name - yes, Cornell University, also a scandalous colonial trial involving murder and witchcraft.

Sherman is another on that side - also colonial settlers. I got as far back as the towns & birth records in the 1500s. Even looked at the parish records of Essex (available free online) to when they first started keeping records under Queen Elizabeth. Others on that side came later - a Scot came over alone in the 1800s, married a girl from London, she became pregnant and he died in a logging accident in Canada before the baby boy was born. That baby married an Irish baptist girl who had come over as a little girl. They had a bevvy of children that led to my grandfather.

So, I'm a DAR candidate as well as a '3rd generation' immigrant - fascinating to read their stories and find out what ships they came on, when, where they lived by looking at Census records, etc. Fun stuff.

Eventually I exhausted the trail. And now I live here (on ATS)


On Mom's maternal side, they were German farmers.

It's fascinating to read about. I did all the research myself but stopped short of paying for records. I refused to pay to know my family history.

My load of reprobates

On my fathers side we originated from Scandinavia and settled in Cork Ireland. Then my grandfather moved to England to avoid the authorities for a reason or reasons unbeknownst.

My Mothers family can trace it's roots all the way back to the doomsday book as being Cornish, we have a few colourful characters on that side that were hung for piracy

In keeping the family tradition alive the last conviction (after a disappointing effort from Dad) was me, as a young tear away I was convicted of 'borrowing' a motorbike.

Luckily the punishments were somewhat more relaxed by then

None of them had the idea to move to the USA for some reason, probably too drunk to realise there was another way

Cody

reply to post by mblahnikluver


One thing I had learned about searching family history is this, if you think your Italian, Irish or what ever remember this one thing prior to WWII most marriages were still being done by what nationality you were. Example would be Irish married Irish, that is how I continue my search from the US back to Ireland.

Originally posted by 19KTankCommander
reply to post by mblahnikluver

 

One thing I had learned about searching family history is this, if you think your Italian, Irish or what ever remember this one thing prior to WWII most marriages were still being done by what nationality you were. Example would be Irish married Irish, that is how I continue my search from the US back to Ireland.

My mom's side isn't hard really, she is the Italian/Sicilian and someone in my family did a family history book. I don't remember who has it, could be my Aunt but my grandfather told me a lot and how his family came here to the states. He also explains the Sicilian/Italian heritage as well.

It's my dad's side, my last name, that is hard to find! It's so not common and there are less than 100 people in the states with my name. I'm related to all of them. There use to be a FB group but FB deleted for not enough activity which pissed me off. Everyone in it was trying to find the same thing, where our family came from!

I discovered that I was the direct descendant of King Charlemeigne. I don't even have a candle stick or anything of value.

Yes, Mom's side goes back to the 1600's in France. Some moved from there to Canada. I have an Indian Granmother from 7 generations back whos tribe was almost wiped out by another tribe in Canada. They then became members of a Native American tribe.

On my Dad's side, we learned of an ancestor who married an indian princess.

I'll have to go check the research papers to see what else was discovered. I havn't read them in many years.
There was one guy who died mining for gold that I remember. Hmmm, I'll get back here when I read more.

I know we hit a dead end when we try to research any Native American or Canadian tribes as they did not keep records like we do. I also have Irish ancestors.

reply to post by Gazrok


My husband tried both ours -- he was able to trace his ancestors back to Italy in the 1400's (fairly reliable tracing.)

...and then there's MY family. Goes back 200 years and disappears. One great-grandfather is Native American, and that lineage begins with him (don't know a thing about his parents or any before him.) I'm going on the theory that my forebearers were generally a lot of illiterate scoundrels who were chased out of every place they lived in.

True story: my great-great-grandfather was shot during the Civil War as a traitor to the South. The local KKK carved the initials "DDD" (for dead, damned, and delivered) on his coffin. My grandfather was a rum runner.

It's just fascinating what we can learn tracing our ancestory. It becomes quite interesting when you are researching a name and find that through the years it has been changed in spelling or changed entirely.

To be honest I only know so little about my family. We were a collection of diverse multiracial Christians who didn't care what race or color of skin their partner had as they produced children like crazy. Which ended up with me typing at the computer. I got the surname Ellison from my step-grandfather Ralph Ellison. My parental grandparents never married and my dad got the Ellison identity. They divorced soon afterward. My biological parental grandfather is of Cuban heritage as his name was Peter Arguelles. My dad inherited his olive skin from him. As a hard labor caused my dad to become very brown in his elderly years. I'm proud he was a Green Beret in Vietnam. However, was honorably discharge to help his poor mother and younger siblings with carpeting. He's still a hard worker too. At sixty something years old he can lift and carry all those tools and heavy rolls of carpet. I see myself as an Arguelles and I even declare myself as Johnathan Arguelles because it sounds rich and ethnic. Even though Ellison is my legal surname. My mother Judy is from Texas as she was born into a poor family like my father. Unlike my dad they were a more close and whole family. My dad's stepfathers were but munches to him and destroyed anything in their path. Talk about great parenting! Sarcasm. I never met my maternal grandparents or at least I only remember my grandmothers old home where I was a small baby. Most of my parents family were too old and far away to visit us in Sacramento, Ca. My mother's family was the Richardson family. I had an ancestor who I do believe was a statesman from Spain. Other than that I draw a blank from remembering my family. I can only make the Arguelles name famous because I barley know anything special or memorable. It sucks, but I cannot complain. I do like how diverse my racial background is (Cuban, Mexican, Russian, Italian, Greek; there's a few other things I forgot.) But I have always been jealous of families who were always close and had loads of ridiculous fun. One day I hop there would be a girl looking for the same thing in her life.