Ancestry.com.......anybody build their family tree?

[Traildust]

How far back did you trace your roots? Did you uncover anything shocking or find family members right down the road from you?

I just got going a couple weeks ago and have been sharing information with a close aunt who has been working on my grandmother's side of the family.

[K. Lane]

May grandmother, may she Rest In Peace, built a family tree (which happens to be my maternal side) back to the mid 1600's in Hudiksvall, Sweden ( apparently we just keep going back from there) my great great great grandfather immigrated over here in 1871....... pretty interesting stuff. Her research led me to wonder about any Viking lineage in my bloodline

My fathers side, I know zero about past his dad

[fulmer34]

My dad did, he got all the way back to the German father and son that came over on the boat. They landed in South Carolina and settled on the Dutch fork river. They came over with the last name Volmer, it got changed to Fulmer. My wife's name is Emma and there were a couple other Fulmer men that married Emma's as well. Thought that was neat.

[Fishy]

My aunt was working on it. Said some descendants were from Spain.

[El Viejo]

We have family members who have done that & gone back to the early 1800s in Germany, Ireland & northern Spain. When I taught gifted & talented elementary kiddos, I had one of my classes do this by talking to living relatives. In that research, two kids found out they were cousins. Another learned about a grandfather who lived as a hermit in the brush north of Rio Grande City. The saddest was a comment written by a boy in the space for one of his grandfathers: "I don't know anything about him because he is EVIL."

[crawdaddct]

How far back did you trace your roots? Did you uncover anything shocking or find family members right down the road from you?

I just got going a couple weeks ago and have been sharing information with a close aunt who has been working on my grandmother's side of the family.

On one side of the family I already had a lot of information, some guy had written a book about the family going back almost 1500 years. I wanted to look into more. I paid for about two months on there and was able to uncover quiet a lot of interesting things.

On my Fathers - Fathers side found travel documents of when family came over from Europe. Great Grandparents marriage license. My Great Grandfather came over from Finland in 1898. All the documents indicated from Russia, but that was because of the occupation. Marriage license was actually filed in Poland. Grandmother came over in 1904 and my Grandfather was born in 1905. Just a lot of cool stuff. Ship manifest and such.

One thing you figure out real quick is to trace too far back you either have to run into money or royalty. My Great Grandfather was a shoe maker and poor. No real records. I was able to trace my Great Grandmother back a couple more generations, because they were land owners. Ran dry though.

The most interesting branch was on my Fathers - mothers side. Was able to trace one branch branch to Scotland and royalty. You figure out that these kings spread their seed and almost everyone is connected to royalty at some point. I even found out my wife and I are related from back about 1000 years ago. Of course once you hit royalty then you can really trace the lineage. I think the furthest I went back was around 400 A.D. Had Kings, Queens, Concubines, and even a connection to a Roman Emperor.

I also uncovered some interesting stories. Like one of my wife's branches was from the Richardson's in England. They were the richest family in England at one time. Lot of incest and stuff, trying to control their money and land. They had more land than the king at one point. A father and son decided to come to the 13 colonies, so they started skimming money away from the family and putting it in a bank account under the name Web. When they had enough, they took their families and headed to America. They changed there name to Web and that name carried forward. They used their money to fund a lot of the infrastructure in the new world.

Of course in the end it means nothing but its cool. The one my wife liked the most was a branch of her family went through William Shakespeare's Grand Mother. Her claim to fame.

[Traildust]

I've traced one limb back to Wales in the early 1700's. A grandfather fighting for the confederate side, his grandson fighting for the Union side. The grandson died in battle. Tons of other stuff.

[Birddog66]

I have not worked on my family tree, but I think I have a very unique ancestory.com story. I found out I was adopted about a year ago. I just turned 48 and that whole story needs a thread of it's own. Anywho, I did the dna test mainly because I wanted to know what my general ethnic heritage and "maybe" find some biological family members.

I found my biological father and he and his family have been awesome. The crazy thing about it is that, for whatever reason, we both decided to do the dna test within a few weeks of each other. When I first received my results back, the closest family I had were a couple 4-6 cousins. Then I was out of town for a while and jumped back on there and bam! "**********is your Father". It was probably the most surreal moment of my life.

[Traildust]

I have not worked on my family tree, but I think I have a very unique ancestory.com story. I found out I was adopted about a year ago. I just turned 48 and that whole story needs a thread of it's own. Anywho, I did the dna test mainly because I wanted to know what my general ethnic heritage and "maybe" find some biological family members.

I found my biological father and he and his family have been awesome. The crazy thing about it is that, for whatever reason, we both decided to do the dna test within a few weeks of each other. When I first received my results back, the closest family I had were a couple 4-6 cousins. Then I was out of town for a while and jumped back on there and bam! "**********is your Father". It was probably the most surreal moment of my life.

That is awesome!

[Birddog66]

I also uncovered some interesting stories. Like one of my wife's branches was from the Richardson's in England. They were the richest family in England at one time. Lot of incest and stuff, trying to control their money and land. They had more land than the king at one point. A father and son decided to come to the 13 colonies, so they started skimming money away from the family and putting it in a bank account under the name Web. When they had enough, they took their families and headed to America. They changed there name to Web and that name carried forward. They used their money to fund a lot of the infrastructure in the new world.

Wow! That is interesting.

[Bill]

Ancestry.com.......anybody build their family tree?

My wife and I are getting into it.

We had heard her grandmother's brother died in an asylum in upstate New York in 1971. He came from Ireland before his family, became a 'Bowry Bum' alcoholic in the 30s and the courts committed him. The back story was he left a pregnant wife and 3 children when he came here (we found a picture and she was a looker) to escape the English and new Irish government after the civil war. Apparently the killing and payback continued after with the IRA.

His wife had an affair, he found out and that's why he went off the deep-end. He always wanted to go home to Ireland but his wife refused requests to sponsor him to leave the asylum.

We connected with her relatives in Ireland, and after his wife and all the children died, the grandchildren decided to put his name on her tombstone, saying he finally returned to Ireland.

What was crazy was his descendants I connected with in the US and Ireland had never heard the story about the infidelity. The story in Ireland (from his wife and brothers) was he left for the USA to find a job in advance of his family, and disappeared- nobody knew about Willard Asylum.


μολν λαβ

[treestand]

Taced my father's side back to the mid-1700's. Nothing newsworthy but several of my great,great great uncles were involved in starting up the whiskey industry in southern Indiana / Kentucky area. One had a patent on a milling machine used to grind corn.

Also did the DNA test thing. Didn't result in any breakthroughs but confirmed a few connections. Also showed some probable branches that I have yet to follow up on.

[Traildust]

One thing that stuck out was the number of children they had back then. 10, 12, 15 was not uncommon. Alot of the children died before their first birthday.

[mudjeremy]

Years ago I was able to trace some family back to Germany in the late 1700's. I also found out of some family in Germany in the 40's that started the white rose which was pretty cool to learn about

[Traildust]

Also had 2nd Great Grandfather on my mother's side that died in prison for killing a man. He was a share cropper and had a dispute with his partner. Walked in his house, got his rifle and killed him.