Anybody into genealogy?

beau5278

beau5278

Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
2,179
We had a bit of a debate going on in another part of the forums about genealogy research,so I decided to bring it up here.Who's looking for their ancestors,how's it going and do you have any interesting stories?I've been doing research on my family for about 8 years now,I have found almost 1500 ancestors,some lines going back 10 and 11 generations from me.Nothing interesting to tell,mostly German blood,in fact all German,I think,until the middle 1800s when the Welsh and Irish came ashore.
 
I haven't done any on-the-ground research myself, but have enjoyed reading other peoples' research of the families. The most interesting so far, my ancestor was a veteran of the Black Hawk Indian Wars in 1831-32.

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On my other side of the family, I've found an ancestor that looks just like me!

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Furthest I've made it back depends on the branch.

My family name gets lost in the 1740s, as the man was a sea captain and next to nothing is known about him. However, a branch of that side of the tree can be verifiably taken to the 12th Century in Britain/Ireland.
 
I have spent countless hours and there are still voids. I tell you it has been a lot of work. So far, the oldest ancestor I have found was born in 1850...in Spain. This is one of two Spanish ancestors I have on my father's side. The other one is a mystery. The man fought for Spain in the Spanish-American war, stationed in Cuba and then Puerto Rico, this from accounts from really old family members. When Spain lost the war, they were all ordered back to Spain, so he left and told my great-great Grandmother he was sending for her later only to die a couple of months later in St Augustine, Florida (On his way to Spain), from a weird illness/snake bite. With him died my real last name ( We are named after her). I am determined to find him, we'll see.....
 
I know where your coming from,I have three families that came here in the 1850s,one from Germany,one from Ireland,what I've found on the third says,England,but I think i was Scotland.Most of the rest where in the states from colonial times,most of those were German,a few I know what areas of Germany,but that's where it gets tough.I was born a Smith,fortunatly for me,they moved in a group and a lot of them settled in one area and lived there since.Once I found the right group of Smiths,it was just a matter of sorting out which was which,a lot of them used the same first name.My Smith line ends in about 1745 in New Jersey and I think if I want to get farther than that,it's going to be doing it on foot,so that's kind of on hold until I get time.It is an incredible amount of research and seems like it's never ending.
 
There are probably about as many ways to go about it as there are people doing it.Start with what you know,for sure,about your family,you can start by putting it down on paper,there are books already made up in book stores,that also gives you a good starting point.But if you think that your going to get interested in it don't wait to long to get some software and put it on your computer,that's the easiest way to organize your data.The best software that I've found is from the Church of Latter Day Saints,it's on there website,I can't get to my bookmarks right now or I'd give you the link,it's easy enough to find if you do a search for LDS church.The best part about their software is,it's free and it works great,you can link photos to it,it has calculators for calculating relationships.They also have a terrific searchable database of free information,if you use the online system,it's a little complicated until you figure out what your looking at.There are churches in every major city that have access to the data also,you can go there and they'll steer you in the right direction.I've been to a couple and they are very professional with their help.
 
There are also pay sites,like Ancestory.com and Genealogy.com,where you pay a membership fee,their data is a little easier to get through,they also have more information,but it does get expensive,I used them for about a year or 2 and found quite a bit of information,but I got to a point that it seems like I'm going to have to find some of what I need by going to the areas that I need it from.A lot of my lines dead end in Germany,I shouldn't really say dead end,because Germans have kept some of the best records down through history,it just gets slower because you need to use translators with most of it.
 
I am lucking in that the family bible from Germany has stayed in my branch of the family and is in fact currently in my possession. When I was stationed in Germany I took the time to find my relatives that still lived in the same little town my ancestors came from. Made for a nice visit even tho my German wasn't that great and neither was their English but we muddled through.
 
Thanx for the links and suggestions.
In reading beau's reply, I think my major hurdle will be language.
Both of my parents came here from Germany in the 20's.
This sounds more and more like a project for my German fluent niece.

I'm going to poke around when time permits...
Thank you again.
 
Maximus,thanks a lot,I'll be checking out those sites as soon as I get time,I'd love to be able to get to Germany and the UK to do some research,truth is I'm having a hard enough time finding time to get to New Jersey at present,to search for what I need there.Absintheur,that's an incredible piece of family history,you can't imagine how many times I've seen old family photos and bibles sold at estate sales,usually the people buying them have some interest in them but it's a shame that it wasn't kept in the family for future generations.I have a few scans of old photos of some of my family,but I've never known of a family bible.The Germans were great at keeping records,I have a couple CDs of German church records to go through yet,the hard part i understanding what they wrote.Another thing that takes a great deal of time is ships passenger lists,it's hard to believe how many ship where coming to he US even in the 1800's,I'm sur not near as many as in the 1900s,but at least by then everyone was going through Ellis Island and their database is searchable,although not or free.
 
Ellis Island can be a great resource depending on your name. My last name is unusual enough that there are records of only two families coming through there, a pair of brothers and their families. This means most of those with the same last name in the US are likely related in some manner. Now if your last name is Smith it becomes much more difficult. It helps also both brothers settled here in the midwest and there is now a cluster of the family name centered here.
 
Absintheur said:
Ellis Island can be a great resource depending on your name. My last name is unusual enough that there are records of only two families coming through there, a pair of brothers and their families. This means most of those with the same last name in the US are likely related in some manner. Now if your last name is Smith it becomes much more difficult. It helps also both brothers settled here in the midwest and there is now a cluster of the family name centered here.
Click to expand...

That's what I ran into no matter what I was searching for but I had info going back to the middle 1800s.Then I ran into about 5 Sam Smiths,just by luck,I came across info on the Smith family from the late 1700s and early 1800s at LDS,I was able to sort through that info and connect the pieces that I needed to connect it to the Sam Smith that was my ancestor,every generation,from my GGrandfather back to my GGGGGGrandfather had at least one Sam Smith,some had 3 or 4.Now,I'm back to the middle 1700s,with not much info to work,so I'm kind of stuck until I get time to do some research on foot.
 
I bought "Family Tree Maker" software, and it came with a 9 month free subscription to ancestry.com.

I found it to be quite useful. I was able to find copies of census records for most of my ancestors in the US. If you're lucky, you will be able to tie into a previously researched family tree.

Using a few clues from my Father, I was able to find his Irish GGF, who served in the 31st Iowa Infantry in the Civil War.

I've also been in contact with a distant cousin that i never knew. His GGGF was a brother of my GGGF.

Also, check out the US Web Gen project. Each state should have it's own web page. From the Iowa Web Gen page, I've been able to track down the burial sites for several of my ancestors, and even a photos of a few of the headstones.

Good Luck and have fun!
 
That is a great way to go and there is a ton of information,if you don't mind the cost,it sure speeds up research.I have few of the CDs from Ancestory with records on that I still haven't gotten all the way through.Just be careful with linking to other peoples information,I still double check it to verify that it is correct,some people seem to get carried way with adding names and don't know if the info they are publishing is correct.I found one persons info that was linked to my Moms family and they had skipped a generation on her fathers side,completley missed my ggrandfather.
 
I don't know if anyone else here has this problem, but they might, since there were a few mentions of Germans. It's hard to find info on my father's side of the family, since A) they lived in Silesia (now part of Poland) and B) the family scattered to the wind due to the war and communist occupation afterward. Some were lucky to get to the West before the Russians got there, some got caught behind the Iron Curtain, and some, like my Dad, managed to escape to the West after Russian occupation. The best reference I've found is a 1939 address book of the area that lists the family name and my grandfather's occupation (farmer) but dead end after that.

any suggestions on how to proceed down this path?
 
There are places on the internet that deal with dead ends or brickwalls as they call them.If you go to Cindi's list,there is a category there for that.That's something that I never thought of,most of my German ancestors were here long before the World Wars,but I can see where that would be a common problem.
 
Bob W said:
On my other side of the family, I've found an ancestor that looks just like me!
Click to expand...

(edits mine) Same here - my mother sent me a photo of my great-great-grandfather that looks like me if I was wearing a S.A.S.S. or "End Of Trail" costume. She's been researching her side of the family for 30+ years, and she does genealogy research as a livelihood. Finding the names and dates of ancestors can be difficult, but the tough part is figuring out the details of there lives. My mom's good at that. We've got some very interesting stories from our family's past, but the most interesting stories come from her research for other families; some of the details are fascinating:

back in the early 1900's, one randy old coot fathered a son in his late sixties, not by his wife. The family knew about it, but still doesn't want anything said. There's moonshine-makers & ridge-runners (one of whom was a local sheriff), bank robbers, priests, killers, policemen, war heroes, war deserters, one woman with 16 children, an old miner who blew himself up making homemade dynamite, etc. My mother researched the reason for a pension for one family's Confederate ancestor, and found out that he had survived the "Crater" at the siege of Petersburg (Civil War), but was deaf the rest of his life. He was close enough that the ground shock broke his legs, then blew him 15-20 feet backward into a horse.

Lots of cool stories out there - you'll have a great time learning them.

thx - cpr
 
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