Ancestry

Has anyone else done this? I'm just in the process. Finding it fascinating to know where I've come from, and to know what my ancestors did during their lifetimes. I've only researched my mum's side of the family at the moment, and only looked at direct lineage. You can see where I've got to in the pic; it's work in progress, and there's quite a lot of info missing. I'm basically from a family of working class heroes from London, Essex and Kent. The best job I've found in the family so far is a gun case maker. Although I quite like the idea of being a candle shop owner.

I get the impression that most of my family wouldn't have lived very privileged lives; London in the Victorian era was over-crowded, dirty and disease-ridden from what I understand.

Anyway, share your ancestry, research, family history etc.

All I know about my ancestors is that my great, great, great times something grandfather apparently was the mayor of a quite large German city.

It means fuck-all, but still awesome to know. Would love to check out more of it. How exactly did you do it?

It's not that difficult really. The first thing you have to do is talk to your elderly relatives. Get as much detail out of them as possible; names, birthdays, occipations, where they lived, who their family was etc. Then once you have some basic information about your great-grandparents generation, you can work back from there.

www.freebmd.org.uk is really useful in the UK, as it provides free access to Birth, Marriage and Death records. I don't think it covers other countries though. Then when you hit a brick wall with that, you need to start looking at census data. www.ancestry.co.uk (or .com for the US site) provides access to a huge amount of information for a small fee.

If you don't want to pay for the information, the other option in England is to go to the National Archives; I have no idea what the equivalent would be outside of the UK.

i have french, welsh, english, irish, and scottish blood

My grandfather refuses to talk about his past, and it bugs the hell out of me because I've inherited a family painting with our last name on it and it says that our family name goes all the way back to 1514, but still he refuses to talk about his grandparents, and their parents and so on.

  On 7/27/2010 at 10:04 PM, -Ad- said:

Has anyone else done this? I'm just in the process. Finding it fascinating to know where I've come from, and to know what my ancestors did during their lifetimes. I've only researched my mum's side of the family at the moment, and only looked at direct lineage. You can see where I've got to in the pic; it's work in progress, and there's quite a lot of info missing. I'm basically from a family of working class heroes from London, Essex and Kent. The best job I've found in the family so far is a gun case maker. Although I quite like the idea of being a candle shop owner.

 

I get the impression that most of my family wouldn't have lived very privileged lives; London in the Victorian era was over-crowded, dirty and disease-ridden from what I understand.

 

Anyway, share your ancestry, research, family history etc.

Ah, would you look at that. I was born in Harlow.

I personally don't understand people's fascination with their ancestry. If I went back in time I'd love to meet some old relatives, but to know that my great great great grandfather worked in a sausage shop and was called Arthur doesn't really fill me with a sense of knowing where I come from.

i traced mine back to 1641 or something like that. then my subscription ran out and i haven't thought about it since. i did it out of my own interest but also as a way of connecting with my dad and uncle but neither seemed that interested and with that i lost interest too. also didnt help that they barely moved from one town for centuries

just finding out names isn't too interesting but from there you can research them more

  On 7/27/2010 at 10:35 PM, tht tne said:

i have french, welsh, english, irish, and scottish blood

That explains absolutely everything

  On 7/28/2010 at 12:10 AM, Obel said:

  On 7/27/2010 at 10:04 PM, -Ad- said:

Has anyone else done this? I'm just in the process. Finding it fascinating to know where I've come from, and to know what my ancestors did during their lifetimes. I've only researched my mum's side of the family at the moment, and only looked at direct lineage. You can see where I've got to in the pic; it's work in progress, and there's quite a lot of info missing. I'm basically from a family of working class heroes from London, Essex and Kent. The best job I've found in the family so far is a gun case maker. Although I quite like the idea of being a candle shop owner.

 

I get the impression that most of my family wouldn't have lived very privileged lives; London in the Victorian era was over-crowded, dirty and disease-ridden from what I understand.

 

Anyway, share your ancestry, research, family history etc.

 

Ah, would you look at that. I was born in Harlow.

As was I.

I just noticed your (FortyTwo and Obel) Xbox360 gamertags... Vetrolic and Vitrolic? Hmmm?

i recently heard about a company that will trace ancestral lineage using dna

it all just seems alittle to convenient to me - i dunno - maybe i'm to cautious of who has my dna record.

maybe i'm not

ive seen my family tree, the furthest back it goes is jonathon peacock who died in 1714, i dont really care about him *shrug*

I'm not that bothered that I don't know a whole lot about my family's past.

I don't get the thing about ancestry. With each generation above you, you friggin double the number of people over you. There's no true ancestry to your last name, you have as much blood as anybody else at any tree level, whatever their name.

So in 5 generation before, you basically 2x2x2x2x2 = 32 ancestor.

And it just double each time.

So what's the point???

I love tracing my ancestry. I've traced my maternal lineage back to my great great grandmother who moved here from Exeter, Devon, England. A couple years ago I searched my grandfathers name on ancestry.com and some crazy person that no one in my family knows had listed my paternal lineage back to my greatx4 grandfather who moved here from the British Isles. Not sure where exactly but probably Ireland or something since my name is really Irish. I don't really know how to trace any further than that.

My parents submitted samples of their dna to the Genographic Project, which is this thing that traces your maternal or paternal migration pattern from Africa based on genetic haplogroups or something like that. It is pretty interesting but doesn't give a whole lot of info. It showed that my dad's lineage migrated through the Middle East, while my mom's went on a more northern route. Maybe this is why most of my dad's side has dark brown hair and brown eyes, while my mom's side has blonde hair and blue eyes.

I think it would be really amazing to learn what the personalities of people in my family who were alive way before me were like, to see if any traits were carried down. I know there were a lot of angry drunk men on my dad's side which may have trickled down a bit because some of us are really temperamental.

I did a research paper last fall based on a rumour that Queen Victoria had an illegitimate child and the child was sent to Twillingate, Newfoundland. A lot of people in my family often recite the rumour because my grandmother is from Twillingate and it is funny to think that we might be related to royalty or something. I haven't been able to find much about it, though, it seems like no one else has ever heard of this rumour before. I'm pretty sure it started because the royal family has hemophilia in it and Twillingate has the most cases of hemophilia in the world or something. Pretty sure it is only because of inbreeding though lolzzz. Has anyone else heard this rumour before?

End of this really long post.

all i know is that my birth mom was half native american and half french, and my birth dad was mostly english with some swedish blood.

my adoptive parents are mormon and have traced their lineage back to like, the dark ages or some shit. i don't care. not my blood.

  On 7/28/2010 at 7:04 AM, disparaissant said:

my adoptive parents are mormon and have traced their lineage back to like, the dark ages or some shit. i don't care. not my blood.

what if it helps you quit smoking?!?

  On 7/28/2010 at 7:09 AM, tht tne said:

  On 7/28/2010 at 7:04 AM, disparaissant said:

my adoptive parents are mormon and have traced their lineage back to like, the dark ages or some shit. i don't care. not my blood.

 

what if it helps you quit smoking?!?

haha, how would it? NO RELATION.

my family history (dad's side) is pretty awesome. there's even a non profit organization dedicated to finding the modern sons of the tree, though i only found out about that earlier today while scouring the internets for my ancestors. my great^x grandpop francis and his wife and kid took the mayflower over to america and settled in Massachusetts in 1620, hell yeah. original gangsters.

I'm surprised there's not more love for tracing your roots on here. I thought this would be exactly the sort of geeky, anal, precise activity that WATMM would love. Anyway, I agree with Glunk, there are a lot of joys to be had. It's not just about names, although that I find interesting in itself. Once you have birth date and place, occupation, changes in residence, number of children, number of marriages etc. you can really start to build up a picture of what people would have been like and what their life would have involved.

Researching yesterday, I cam across pictures of my grandfather, his parents, grandparents and great grandparents that had been uploaded by a stranger from a somehwhere-connected member of the family. It's fascinating to see their faces and how physical traits have been passed down.

  On 7/28/2010 at 1:13 AM, Squee said:

I just noticed your (FortyTwo and Obel) Xbox360 gamertags... Vetrolic and Vitrolic? Hmmm?

Also I'm pretty sure FortyTwo had that avatar of Frankie Boyle. Don't get me wrong, but last time I looked, both Obel and Frankie Boyle were absolute cunts.

(but incredibly funny and honest <3)