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What's your ancestry and other genealogy stuff

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northland10
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What's your ancestry and other genealogy stuff

#1

Post by northland10 »

A continuation of the Trump thread hijack and this thread from the FormerBow.

https://formerly.thefogbow.com/forum/vi ... 85#p332485
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What is my ancestry and other genealogy stuff

#2

Post by p0rtia »

Thanks, Northland,

Okay how to we find out who's related to whom, here? Well, I s'pose we don't, but it would be fun.
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What is my ancestry and other genealogy stuff

#3

Post by northland10 »

p0rtia wrote: Wed Nov 29, 2023 8:33 am Thanks, Northland,

Okay how to we find out who's related to whom, here? Well, I s'pose we don't, but it would be fun.
I was trying to find a short name that had both ancestry and genealogy in it and was sort of going on the Trump hijack (non Trump stuff in the Trump thread was a nice hijack). I changed this one to What's your ancestry which is more to the theme of others telling theirs.

We do have some here who could probably help folks navigate how to do genealogy (I may be one having started doing it when I was in school) so it can still be a resource.
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#4

Post by jez »

I'm happy to help, if anyone needs it. I've been researching the family tree for about 20 some odd years. Picked up where my dad's sister left off after she got her membership in DAR. (Interesting side note: She got her membership based on my grandfather's mother. My grandfather was not her bio father, which she did not know [and never knew], and we didn't know until we found the annulment paperwork several years later.)

But I've got some experience navigating Ancestry.com if anyone needs help. :)
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#5

Post by Slim Cognito »

I told this story in my personal thread but I think it's pretty interesting so forgive me for repeating myself.

I'm adopted. When I was born back in the 50s, there were lots of kids available for adoption, especially because KC was a clearing house for babies because of the abundance of unwed mothers homes, its central Midwest location and the excellent rail system of the era. There were so many babies, my parents told me (and my also adopted older brother, not biologic) a bedtime story about going to the baby store and looking at that baby, no not that one, how about this baby, no, not this one, and then they saw me (or my brother) and they knew we were the one(s). My parents had purchased a book called "The Chosen Baby" and modified it with our names.

As a result, I was perfectly comfortable with my adopted status. So comfortable that, according to mom, the only time I got spanked was when my little brother (their biologic change of life baby) acted up as little brothers tend to do, and I told him, "Mom and dad chose me, they got stuck with you!"

With that background in mind, I have a dear cousin Karen (through adoption) who has dabbled in genealogy long before the Ancestry.com craze and is also very good at navigating the results of any DNA tests. She'd been pestering me for years to do a test but I wasn't interested. I was perfectly content with my family.* But one birthday, she called me up to tell me she'd ordered a test. Would I please just spit in the vial and fill out the information naming her as a surrogate. I complied and promptly forgot about it.

About six weeks later, I got a call from Karen telling me to sit down. Ooookaaaaaayyy. What could possibly be so earth shattering I needed to sit? I heard her take a deep breath and she said, "Your great grandmother to the fourth degree was my great grandmother to the fifth degree." (grams had married, knocked out a few, hubby died, she remarried and knocked out a few more.)

Me: Cool, so we're distantly related. Uhhhhh, BTW, is that relationship through my father's (her mother's) side of the family or through her father? (who married into our family.)

Karen: Long pause. On the (her mother/my father) family side (our parents were siblings).

Me: So I have an Uncle Dad and a Brother Cousin.

Karen: More like a Cousin Dad and a Brother Cousin.

Me: Score!!!

*My older brother and a friend of the family both chose to find their biologic parents and it was unpleasant for both. That was another reason I wasn't interested.

I gave Karen the ok to go ahead and do some checking and, sadly, I found out my since deceased biological father was a bit of a *ahem* hound dog. Despite having a wife and kids, he managed to father at least one other illegitimate child and, yada yada yada, a young man who had also gotten tested via Ancestry.com got in touch with her. Turns out he is my biologic half-nephew from a son fathered by hound dad outside of his marriage.

Karen did contact a half-sibling of mine, one of hound dad's daughters by his wife. She told the woman my story. She was polite, also not surprised, but not interested in any further contact. I don't blame her. I feel awkward just thinking about it. Apparently the family was well aware of the kind of man dear old dad was and there was no need to cause them any more pain. I wish them all well, the ones still here. (They were quite a bit older than me, like 15 years ~)
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#6

Post by AndyinPA »

I have a sister-in-law who did a lot of research on my husband's side years ago and has kept up with it. His family has been traced back to Switzerland in 13 something. But they came here early on and there and there are people who came from many European countries, a lot from England, Ireland, and Scotland. I don't remember all the details. My husband had some kind of family crest. My daughter was just here over the weekend and took it home.

My daughter also did research on my husband's side and on my side. My side wasn't traced back very far, but they weren't doing DNA research back then. Eight years ago, we went to Hungary, where all my grandparents emigrated from in the early 1900s. A tour company that we used there also did family research. I had a good deal of written material on my mother's mother, so I gave them what I had. When we arrived, they surprised us by telling us that they had found family, in what was now Slovakia, but very close to the Hungarian border, and they had arranged to drive us there to meet them. It was a surreal day. We were treated like royalty by the mayor and the family. We were given gifts from the lovely little village, taken into the Protestant church where she was baptized, and shown around the town. They spoke very little English; I spoke very little Hungarian, but our guide acted as translator. We got to know each other over a lunch that they had prepared in the traditional Hungarian way. Only we ate, even though there was a ton of food. (I know where my family's generosity with enough food for guests comes from now.) That satisfied my need to know of my family background, although with DNA now, I am a little more curious.

In the last year or two, my sister-in-law who did all the research years ago and ongoing found that my father-in-law and his two brothers had a sister who grew up supported by their dad in West Virginia. He was originally from there and frequently traveled back and forth. She now lives in Virginia, has never married, and had no children. So my husband had an aunt he never knew about. I would guess Grandma E never knew, but at least he took care of his daughter. Surprises me, as I really disliked the man. (Among other things, he crashed our honeymoon.)

I may see what's involved, but timing right now is maybe not good, We'll see.
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What's your ancestry and other genealogy stuff

#7

Post by neonzx »

Ancestry

The major problem our family had on doing that is elders didn't want to talk. There were out-of-wedlock births and people didn't speak of such things back then.

No one has been able to put together a good family tree. I wasn't into doing that.

I do know the basics of my linage. North Italy +Eastern Europe/Poland region. My baptismal cert says "Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic" (sounds weird, no?)

And my grandfather on dad's side was Irish. (and was married w/ chidren when he was banging grandma). So I am part Irish so Suranis and I can have a pint!

No wonder they were all embarrassed to share their sleeping-around habits.
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What's your ancestry and other genealogy stuff

#8

Post by sugar magnolia »

My husband hasn't found any illegitimate children on my mother's side, but we did have a couple of murders (that we know about) and one great aunt that is her own step-sister. My mother's grandparents were born in France and Spain and nobody in the family has bothered to go back any further than that, except the US Gov't, who says that Jean Lafitte, the French pirate, is my 7th (?) great grandfather.

To make matters much murkier for the European branch, the Spanish side is named Cuevas, the French side is named Quevas and some of the immigrants from both countries got changed to Quave when they got here.

That side of the family looks more like a stump than a tree.

That might help explain my uncle's 6 nipples, too.
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What's your ancestry and other genealogy stuff

#9

Post by Whatever4 »

One of my father’s cousins was a very prominent historian in North Carolina. She did the family tree going back to the 1600s in England. She wrote books about the part of NC the family was from as well as civil war histories and local ghost lore. She inserted various family stories in her histories.
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What's your ancestry and other genealogy stuff

#10

Post by Cyrus Breckenridge »

I’ve been researching my ancestry here in the UK for forty years. In the main we were a simple, unremarkable family, with roots in Berkshire, southern England. For all that, it has been fascinating though. The most interesting ancestor was someone whose occupation on a census was given as ‘Bookbinder to His Majesty the King’. He lived in Windsor, and worked at the castle.

The best story however concerned my Grandmother Grace. Her father was a seaman, whose ship called once at the Falkland Islands. He liked the place so much he settled there, and his family went out to join him. Grace was born there in 1895. When she was 17, the family decided to return to the UK, leading to a tearful farewell at the dock when a young man called George to whom she had formed an attachment, begged her not to go. She returned however, married my grandfather, and was subsequently widowed.

At the age of 75, one evening there was a knock on her door. It was her son (my father), with a gentleman who turned out to be George, who had also returned to the UK, and amazingly had managed to track her down. My dad accompanied him as it was thought the shock of him just turning up would have been too much for Grace. A romance developed, and they married a year later. I remember meeting George, who was a lovely man, a former railway conductor, based in the North East.

The story has a tragic conclusion however, as George died from cancer just a couple of years later. Grace lived on to the age of 98. I am sorry for taking so much time to relate all this, but I think it was worth it. I often think that if I had writing skills, it could form the basis of a marvellous novel.
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Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

:lovestruck:
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#12

Post by John Thomas8 »

20-25 years ago we took a look back for a high school project. A couple thousand dollars later and some assistance from far distant relatives in Scotland we got to the point where we were 60% sure that one of our ancestors was a pikeman in one of William Wallace's schiltrons at Stirling Bridge. Also there's a well removed line from General George Thomas of the Union Army in the US Civil War.
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#13

Post by poplove »

AndyinPA wrote: Wed Nov 29, 2023 12:05 pm :snippity: Eight years ago, we went to Hungary, where all my grandparents emigrated from in the early 1900s.
Maybe we're related! My father's grandparents and parents (as babies) were also Hungarian immigrants in the early 1900s. Family names were Kovacs and Nagy which became Smith and Nudge. They all lived in and around Indiana PA. A lot of my Nudge cousins still live there. I don't have much info from before they immigrated and I have yet to attempt researching the records in Hungary.

My mom's maternal grandfather was an Irish immigrant. He and his 3 brothers settled in and around Homestead PA. I have a lot of info on that side of the family thanks to a genealogist cousin and I've been to two Stouppe reunions.
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#14

Post by AndyinPA »

Kovacs and Nagy are common Hungarian names. My grandmother was a Kovacs. There are also Nagys in the family. I know where my maternal grandparents were from, but not my paternal. The best the people could guess about them is that they were from eastern Hungary, as their name (Gall) is more Germanic. Another common name is Sabo, and I have family on both sides named that. There are also a lot of Stephens in the family, as St. Stephen is the patron saint of Hungary, which is a little funny since few of my relatives are Catholic. My husband found this amusing because with so many Stephens and Sabos in the family, no one is named Stephen Sabo.

I know there were a lot of Hungarians in Indiana, PA. There used to be a lot of Hungarian Reformed Churches in this area, a Protestant affiliation, so there was a lot of interaction among them. Many of them have disbanded, but the church I grew up in is still active. It was a touchstone for learning Hungarian cooking, dancing, language, etc. There was always a service in English and one in Hungarian. My father's funeral service was in both languages.

I have relatives who lived in Homestead, which is next door to Pittsburgh.

So we could be related. :thumbsup:
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#15

Post by jez »

When it comes to Hungarian background, I have found it sometimes also pays to look a bit southish into what is now Romania. A branch of my maternal line always said they came from Hungary, were German-Hungarian, etc. Turns out the village they came from is now in Romania. It was Hungary during the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Hapsburgs), but not anymore.

Name was Roszter there which became Roster in the US. Iecea Mică is the name of the village. The paperwork filled out with immigration says Groß Jesča.

Tracing one's family can be fun when they are just simple farmers.
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#16

Post by AndyinPA »

Yes. The village where we visited my grandma's family is now in Slovakia. When she got her birth certificate for her Social Security, it was in Czechoslovakia, but when she was born it was Hungary. There was some discomfort going on at the village at the time we were there as there was some pushing going on from Slovakia to discontinue the use of Hungarian in the schools and government. There were two village names as you entered, the Slovak one and the Hungarian one.

Talking to our guide afterward, this is pretty common in Europe, where country borders have changed so much. Hungary used to be much bigger than it is now. They were on the wrong side in WWI, and lost a lot of territory in the treaties. It is still a sore spot in Hungary, which is still, more than 100 years later, bitter over it. Today, if Orban thought he could do anything about it, he would.
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#17

Post by Sam the Centipede »

AndyinPA wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2023 6:45 pm Talking to our guide afterward, this is pretty common in Europe, where country borders have changed so much. Hungary used to be much bigger than it is now. They were on the wrong side in WWI, and lost a lot of territory in the treaties. It is still a sore spot in Hungary, which is still, more than 100 years later, bitter over it. 0
That's sadly too true. Populists cynically leverage irredentism to excite their people, such as Putin claiming Ukraine is naturally part of Russia. With the ebb and flow of borders, it often becomes a case of "choose your century" if one engages in these unproductive arguments. Additionally there are often long-established communities in the "wrong" country. It's not unnatural that (for example) German speakers in France's Alsace or Italy's Tirol might feel affinity to their colinguals over the border.

The EU calmed things down a lot, as it became less significant which country was one's residence. Additionally, even countries which emphasize their main national language have become more respectful, tolerant, and even supportive of minority or non-dominant languages.

Countries with natural topographic boundaries – wide rivers, seas, high mountains – have it easier in this regard. But across central Europe, all had been flux for millennia.
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