Family History

[Caravan Ray]

Is anyone into genealogy type stuff? It is something I have only recently started getting interested in.

Growing up - I knew nothing about my family. All 4 of my grandparents were dead before I was born, so I knew nothing beyond my parents. And I don't think they knew anything about their grandparents.

But, we are going to Ireland for a holiday in a few weeks, so I thought it would be good to know where my family came from. Ancestory.com is amazing. You put a bit of stuff in - next thing, you have a whole family tree. It is awsome. I have found the little village in Co Clare that my great-great granddad emigrated from in the 1840s, and am looking forward to checking it out.

A lot of people make fun of Australians and say we are all descended from criminals. That is not really true. Most Australians are descended from free emigrants like most Americans... BUT NOT ME BABY!!!! My family is chock full of dodgy characters! I have found 4 bona-fide convicts so far I am directly descended from. I got a couple of thieves, a dude who was transported for running away from the Calcutta Regiment at the Siege of Bhurtpore (smart move granddad), and a great-great-great-great grandma, who I don't know what she did yet - but I am so hoping she was a prostitute.

[king_arthur]

I'm moderately interested in this stuff, although I haven't taken the ancestry.com plunge yet. In 1964, I sat down with one of my grandmothers and she just rattled off name after name after name (large families on my mom's side). I have some information on my dad's side as well... I think I have at least names for my grandparents' grandparents on both sides, so I imagine I could link in pretty easily.

Most interesting ancestor for me was my father's father's father. Per the dates, he died at 35, and the family story is that he was shot in a card game, supported by the fact that my grandfather would not allow cards in the house, would not come visit us when we lived in Las Vegas, and even after taking the bus through Reno on his way to California to live near our family, swore to his dying day that he had never been in the state of Nevada.

Charles

[Lunkhead]

Erin went on a big genealogy kick last year and got on ancestry.com and found out all kinds of interesting stuff about her family. She was able to go way back many hundreds of years. We did a little looking into my family too. Not too much of note, though I am a direct descendent of a Samuel Wardwell who was hanged during the Salem witch trials:

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ma/county/e ... rdwell.htm

ancestry.com is pretty incredible. It's also interesting that they indicate when other people are researching the same people as you. Erin connected with a relative she didn't know she had.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I am a direct descendent of a Samuel Wardwell who was hanged during the Salem witch trials

This explains the magic that comes out of your guitar when you play.

....sounds like a pick up line, lol.

I just registered at ancestry.com because of this thread. I don't know much beyond my mom and dad though. Just my dad's side grandparents. My mom came from Austria when she was 20 with her first husband (not my dad) that was a pilot in the air force. He died when his plane went down after my older brother and two sisters where born. She married my dad a few years later.

[Caravan Ray]

Most interesting ancestor for me was my father's father's father. Per the dates, he died at 35, and the family story is that he was shot in a card game, supported by the fact that my grandfather would not allow cards in the house, would not come visit us when we lived in Las Vegas, and even after taking the bus through Reno on his way to California to live near our family, swore to his dying day that he had never been in the state of Nevada.

That's a good story. His Death Certificate, if you can find it at your state registry would usually state "cause of death". And you might find info about that from newspapers of the time. You would probably need to go to your State Library and search through mircofiche archives for that sort of thing though. Though an awful lot of stuff in online nowdays. I recently got a login for the Australian National Archives, which has a lot of stuff I can browse through from home

[Caravan Ray]

I am a direct descendent of a Samuel Wardwell who was hanged during the Salem witch trials:

A witch!!! Cool!

Do you still see any of your old friends from Hogwarts?

[roymond]

I've done a lot of this stuff, but I like to focus on the lives and stories of the players, and not the birth-marriage-death cycle that most genealogy sites (and Mormons) are obsessed with. Nonetheless, Ancestry.com is pretty cool. If you don't want to pay for it, you can access it for free at most big libraries.

I wasn't very interested in any of this until about 15 years ago, but it's the last 6 years that I really got into it. I am working on a system to manage photos and documents in such a way that lets you navigate the stories captured in them. Not just a scrap book, but a way to link one's collections to others' and get a sense of what was going on.

I use geni.com for plotting out my family and relations. It has a spiffy flash interface that makes visualizing your family relations pretty nice. Also easy to add photos and comments and links and stuff. I embed hyper links to my Smugmug photo library so that I can view all photos that show that person. Bit of a kluge, but it works. I've scanned many hundreds of photos and documents from my family's shoe boxes. As my dad recently died, we're finding all sorts of new surprises.

I've got 368 family members in there so far, 264 of which are blood relatives. My seventh great grandmother, Mary Sharp, was born in 1649 in Northowram, England. And her family stayed in that town south of Halifax until my Grandmother moved to Worcester, MA in 1920 with her new husband, whose family also lived in the same town since at least the 1750s. I've visited a couple times and since grandma had 8 siblings, and grandpa had 3 siblings and 4 uncles, the place is crawling with relatives. They came here via Ellis Island (so much of that stuff is online) and I have copies of the ship registries with their names, the $50 in their pocket and the address of my great uncle, whom they first lived with.

My dad was born on the lower east side of NYC, as were his father, and grand father. My great great grand father came here from Germany, was a wood carver (as were his son and grandson), and worked in the wood shop of Ziegler Steinway of piano fame. Turns out one of his great grand kids (?) is one of my wife's best friends.

Sadly, not a lot of dirt in my history (so far), but plenty of interesting stuff going on. It's pretty cool to reconstruct what they were all going through and the world they experienced vs the life I lead.

[drë]

good stories so far.

i've try to pursue this a couple of times, but hit a wall pretty early on.
Online research works mostly on developed nations, USA! USA! bloody Brits, drunken Irish, fashion Europeans and felon Aussies . (did i miss anyone? )

3rd world nations, don't have much of this going on yet, so being Colombian, am out of luck.

looking forward to pursuing this in the coming years, or I've better start breading soon, to kick start something.

[Caravan Ray]

Well what do you know...I have just discovered that I am part American! I am now having a bizarre urge to go and melt some cheese over a kilo of processed pig-fat.

Turns out one of my great-great grandfathers came from California during the Victorian Gold Rush to dig on the Ballarat gold fields. Gnarly dude! Can I get a hug?


So far I have discovered that of my 16 g.g.grandparents, I am:

5 parts Australian
4 parts Irish
3 parts Scottish
2 parts English
1 part German, and
1 part US American


nothing too exotic nationality-wise there, but at least a gold-digger is a nice addition to the four convicts I have in my cupboard so far.

[BBABM]

I am now having a bizarre urge to go and melt some cheese over a kilo of processed pig-fat.

Hahahaha, the best cheese comes out of a pressurized can, and has the consistency of tile grout... no need to melt.

[HeuristicsInc]

I just started doing this recently... for a second time, heh. My maternal grandma put together a document that's her life story with lots of great details, and then collated it with a genealogy that a distant relative had done (all the descendants, including me, of a couple that lived in alsace-lorraine) and another partial on her husband's side (my maternal grandfather).

then on my dad's side i've got... his parents and sisters. i need more info on that side. although searching this old newspaper site i did find a fun article about the birth of my aunt. it turns out that my grandparents ended up giving birth at the hospital, and they had exactly the same names, first and last, as the couple right next door. the newspaper says "Fortunately for the peace of mind of nurses, the identically named and unrelated parents chose different christian names for their newly-born daughters."

anyway this is pretty fun. haven't done the ancestry - we're still hoping to move and i may have more budget for it later. didn't find much in the way of free resources for my dad's side yet.
-bill

[Caravan Ray]

i did find a fun article about the birth of my aunt. it turns out that my grandparents ended up giving birth at the hospital, and they had exactly the same names, first and last, as the couple right next door. the newspaper says "Fortunately for the peace of mind of nurses, the identically named and unrelated parents chose different christian names for their newly-born daughters."

Is this a maternal aunt? That is quite a tongue-twister of a surname you have - I find it difficult to believe there are 2 people on the planet with that one, let alone 2 unrelated people in the same hospital.

[HeuristicsInc]

paternal, actually, and IT IS ALL TRUE. in fact my amazing last name is pretty common in buffalo ny, where i am from.
-bill

[Caravan Ray]

Yes - I believe it. It is actually very interesting in migrant nations such as ours how names can accumulate in particular places. One example that always fascinated me is when I lived in Mt Isa in outback Queensland. There it is not that unusual to come across local cowboys or Aboriginal people with Muslim sounding names - relics of the Afghan camel drivers who came to the area in the 1800s to work on the intercontinental telegraph and rail construction.

My surname appears to be not particularly common in Ireland in general - but very common in parts of Co. Clare. And though in Aust, people have dispersed to the cities rapidly is the past 50 or so years - back at the turn of the last century, my surname seemed to be greatly over-represented around the lower Hunter region of NSW where I am from.

I just wish the previous generations of English/Irish descent were a bit more imaginative with their first name choices. It gets difficult when everyone is either Thomas or Patrick or William. And every second sheila is called Mary - or some derivitive of it. I laugh with derision at the bogans nowdays that give their children names with stupid spellings - but their ancestors will thank then when they try to compile family trees in the future (it will also help that in the future, the ancestors will all still be alive, existing as disembodied brains floating in jars)

[Caravan Ray]

This family history stuff is getting awesome.

It turns out that I am part African American.

Yeah. Fo shizzle.


Apparently there were several African American crew members on the First Fleet in 1788*.
My great great great....grandma Betty was caught stealing cheese (mmmmm...cheese) and sent to Aus on the Second Fleet in 1791. Within a few months of arriving, old grandma shagged a Mr James Wilson - an African American crew member of the First Fleet ship Sirius - and produced my first Australian born ancestor. Go Grandma! Mr James Wilson apparently went on to shag other convict ladies and had other offspring. Go Grandpa Jimmy!

Obviously fun times. And explains my wonderful sense of rhythm.



*NB: This is "Holy Grail" stuff for Australian geneology. Being descended from the First Fleet (the first load of convicts dumped out here) is Australian Royalty. Like being descended from someone from the Mayflower for you guys. True - my dude is crew, not convict - but it is not bad. But I do have a definite Second Fleet convict. That is way cool.

[Caravan Ray]

Just realised I have not updated this page for a while.

I went to Ireland last year and went on a voyage of discovery. I drove to Lisdoonvrna in Co. Claire and searched for where my Great Grand Father used to live. To achieve this - I sat in a pub with a photocopy of a photo of a house from the 1960s and chatted to the locals.

I got really pissed on Guiness and whiskey. Really pissed. But by the next morning I had found my first cousin twice removed - who still lives in the same farmhouse that my g.granddad left some 130 years ago to head off alone to Australia. That was frikking awsome.

And here he is here:

Gerry is the dude at the start in the green/gray polo. Not the one with the pipe.

BTW: If you ever go to the Ritz Hotel Lisdoonvarna - ask to see the smoking dog, and tell then you know me.

[HeuristicsInc]

then on my dad's side i've got... his parents and sisters. i need more info on that side.

Have been doing the genealogy thing in earnest lately. My mom found out that my dad's dad had made a partial family tree for himself and for my grandma, so I've been able to fill in a bunch of stuff. He himself was born in the Poznan area of Poland and came here when he was 2 (I had figured out that much on my own using Ellis Island immigration records, but it's good to have the confirmation). There are some good resources for that area so I'm filling in a lot of that tree. Exciting! Although nobody famous has appeared
-bill