Tracing Family History

[herofan]

I notice that people here sometimes make references to their ancestors having been in the Civil War or Revolutionary War. How do you know your family history that far back? Was it handed down in documents from your family members, or did you trace your family history at some point? I was wondering how difficult it is to trace family history. Are any of the on-line sites any good?

 

[Aaron]

Ancestry.com is very good. Pricey, but if you have the time to devote to it, you can make a lot of connections if you make your family tree on it for public view. One name can open up a lot of information. I pay on a month-by-month basis. Last time I did it was for two months, two years ago in the dead of winter. Far too busy in the summer to even think about it.

 

[Bigfoot]

Back in the 70's, I had an aunt, that paid big money to have our family history traced. Don't know what became of the information they gathered. She didn't have children, and all of her "stuff" got rifled through pretty good. That was years ago, but I remember well her talking about family members being in the civil war, and revolutionary war. I remember thinking even as a kid, unless your family came after either war, you've probably got ancestors that served.

I've had times in my adult life, where I thought about getting interested in geneology. I usually come to the realization, that if you just go back 2 generations you've got 16 great great grandparents. How watered down is that gene pool? I'm not taking anything away, from people that are big on family history, it just doesn't intrest me.

 

[SJB]

I didn't have to go too far back to figure out i didn't want to go any farther!

I've got documents from one side of the family back to early 1800's. We had a family member that got interested, did the work, and presented it at a family reunion about 40 years ago.

Isn't the Mormon church somehow involved in all the ancestry stuff? Did I read somewhere they have vaults full of that kind of data?

 

[greybeard]

Mormans have one of the largest genealogy databases in the world.
btw--ancestory dot com does have a free version.

 

[Commercialfarmer]

Had an uncle that traced things back a ways. Family name came across in some of the early English voyages to settle America. I always thought they must not of been very proliferative as there are so few with the name. Or maybe that's were my potential to have all girls came from? :lol2:

I'm like you BF, I just don't know what it does for me past a few generations. Talk about compounding interest, double your ancestors every generation backwards. Well, except for maybe a few, but I won't name names right now. Don't see how the world can't be related.

For me, the treasure is in the labeled photographs, the hand written letters, and stories of struggle passed down. There should be a archive for those type of documents that give a sense of what life was like.

 

[HDRider]

I never knew anything past my great grandfather. I had an aunt that used www.ancestry.com and went as far back as our family coming from England to Long Island in the late 1600's. On top of that, I did a DNA test and it allows you to connect it to ancestry.com and allow others that match your DNA to share e-mail addresses.

The internet has really made it much easier.

My first American born ancestor moved to the Hillsborough NC area, to middle Tennessee to Texas. It is fascinating how one guy can propagate such a herd in a few hundred years.

What I saw about my ancestor's were every time people moved in, they moved out.

 

[herofan]

I've had times in my adult life, where I thought about getting interested in geneology. I usually come to the realization, that if you just go back 2 generations you've got 16 great great grandparents. How watered down is that gene pool? I'm not taking anything away, from people that are big on family history, it just doesn't intrest me.

I'm like you BF, I just don't know what it does for me past a few generations. Talk about compounding interest, double your ancestors every generation backwards. Well, except for maybe a few, but I won't name names right now. Don't see how the world can't be related.

I've thought along those lines as well. I don't know my family history past a few generations, and some people act as though it's weird. I listened to a presenter once who said, "some people don't even know where they come from," referring to not knowing their family history.

If I discovered i was a direct descendent of George Washington, for example, that would be interesting for a few moments, but it's not like I knew him or he knew me, or that i could claim anything from it. Maybe I could milk it and say, "I knew there was a reason I was such a great leader, or I knew there was a reason I looked like the portrait of Washington." I'm sure George's genes would be fairly thinned out by the time it got to me.

 

[skyhightree1]

Ancestry.com is very good.

:nod:

 

[Alan]

Ancestry.com is very good.

:nod:

X3, while I have never traced much of my family history I had two aunts who started to back in the 70's. Then my older sister picked it up and really ran with it a few years ago back into the early 1400's late 1300's........ She used ancestry.com. I pretty sure you can communicate with others on the sight and find distant realitives to compare notes with. I spent years in the Moron (LDS) church when my boys were young, they do have the biggest data base in the world. While they don't or didn't have a web site then they did allow non LDS access to their data bases and requested information in return from the general public to help with their data base.

I found out some pretty interesting things through my families research. I have both scum and respectable ancestors in my genes. Also things I was told and believed were wrong, such as I was told as I was growing up I had American Indian blood from a (several greats) grandfather who was a chief of some sort....... Well he was white and the town drunk by several reports.

I think overall it was something I'm glad my aunts and sister took the time to research and I'm very lucky to have the info. With that said, as I stated my sister went back into the early 1400's while she truly believes her info to be correct, much of the very early stuff leaves me with the ahhhhhh, really? Well okay if you say so feeling. I would never tell her that with the work she put into it. But I'm confident that the stuff going back to the 1600's is fairly correct and supported by distant family members who made contact with her through ancestry.com.

 

[red angus 2010]

My wife has a cousin that has researched and they go way back to the revolutionary war. I never really cared when I was a young man but now it kind of interests me. Like some have said I just don't have the time to spend on it. I just laugh and tell folks as far as I know we didn't have slaves so don't blame me.

 

[M-5]

Every few months I go in and do more with ancestry.com. it is very interesting and enlightened on some of my family history. Makes you proud to be a descendant from men that shaped this country

 

[TexasBred]

I knew my dad, his brother and sister and my grandparents on his side. I knew my mom, her brothers and sisters and only her mom on her side. Beyond that it is all a mystery. Probably very interesting research but I can't ride through life on their coattails anyway so really don't have any interest in it.

 

[cow pollinater]

My aunt is really into it and wrote a book on our family history. She traced the family name back to Amsterdam in the 1600's and it has changed slightly since then so that was an amazing amount of work on her part. On the more recent generations she gave descriptions of each persons personality and their jobs and anything else of interest and that really made me feel connected as I read about them and thought "holy shyt it's bred in". :lol: It made me a lot more comfortable in my own skin.

 

[Dave]

I have never done any of it but have some relatives who have. I have read what they found. They traced my Grandfather on Dad's side back into the 1400's. Interesting comment about that last guy way back there in Sweden. The information says he had 6 cows and 4 children. The cows were listed ahead of the kids.

No slave owners unless you were able to trace back into Viking days. And then any slaves they owned were probably Irish.

 

[john250]

If you type my name into google you'll find I was married to Ann Boleyn before she dumped me for Henry VIII.
Her loss.

 

[Jogeephus]

I have an aunt whose hobby is tracing the family tree but for the most part the most interesting stuff is found in old heirlooms and from word of mouth. My family was one of the founders of a small community and still to this day most family members live near this site so all the heirlooms and things are still close by and the history is shared at family gatherings.

 

[JW IN VA]

Mine goes back to 1100s on Dad's father's side.1600s on Mom's mother's.

 

[fitz]

My Great Grandfather was a wealth of information on family history. When the Northern Army came thru the Valley burning homesteads he told of his Father's (around 13 at the time) family offering the soldiers Homemade whiskey if they would spare the house and barn. A deal was agreed upon and the place was spared.

 

[M-5]

I found out me and Jo are related and share same surname