My grandfather on my father's side sent me the family tree research that he did, and I've become pretty fascinated by it all. I'm using Family Tree Maker 2006 with a free two-week subscription to Ancestry.com. I've traced some of our family to England and Germany in the 1500s and 1600s, which just blows me away. Any other sources I should know about? This is all new to me.
what's interesting is that at one point, there were roughly only 1000 humans in africa, thus the world. our genes can all be traced back to them.
I got on one of those sites once, and it turns out I'm like a 9th cousin to Johnny Cash. That probably describes about 1 million people in this country though. The farthest back I got was like the third boat after the Mayflower (like it matters). It was more fun finding the scoundrels in the family tree.
Genealogy has always been an interesting topic for me. My family is originally from Ramallah in the Palestinian territories. The entire city was founded by just a few families in the same tribe around 1535 during the rule of the Ottoman Empire. All of the current Christian residents can trace their lineage back to those few families. My Dad has these hugh 6-inch thick family tree books that list every member of every family. It's pretty interesting.
My mom's dad went to a local library in Vacherie, La. and found documents going back to 1723, where my relatives came to the Second German Coast of Louisiana on a boat called Les Deux Freres... A man named John Law scammed a bunch of French and Germans into thinking that Louisiana was rich in wealth and resources...
Same here. I didn't know much about my mom's family history either, until one of my mom's cousins emailed me our family tree dating back to the 13th century. Pretty much everyone on the family tree from the 13th century until my grandfather (YOB 1920) were born and raised within a 5-mile radius of each other in West Punjab, Pakistan (formerly British India). Cool stuff.
LOL! Suckers! Tracing my family has been very difficult. Both sides had the name changed at Ellis Island. We know that part of my dad's side came from Russia/Ukraine. My mom's side has some Polish and Scottish. We know that we possibly had descendants that died in the Holocaust. Beyond that, we aren't able to trace anything because there are varying reports of what the original last names were.
My Aunt has done quite a bit of geneology work, and has shared it. She's found out a lot about my paternal grandfather's family. I think that the more interesting story is my paternal grandmother's family. My grandmother's grandfather showed up in New Orleans during Reconstruction, with no history and a made up name. According to some records, he moved down from Connecticut, but there are no Plattsmiers in Connecticut, and no connection. My aunt thinks he was running from the law somewhere and made up a name and history when he got to New Orleans.
http://www.familysearch.org/ is actually a really good, free service. My uncle has our family going all the way back to the 1200's.
So Barack is not the first Black President? I'm distantly related to such talents as Shirley Temple. Tennessee Williams, Daniel Boone and John Sevier-- a former TN governor (crooked maybe?)...
bump. I just keep running in circles with all of the pay sites and archives/ census data. is the free trial on ancestry.com worth it? do they try and rope you in or limit your searches in the free trial period? for that matter, is paying for an account with them worth it? they give me only so much info to dive into and then you need to sign in or pay. from what I know, Census records are available 70 years later. that means 1930 and 1940 census data are available, in their original form. it appears ancestry.com digitizes the info and transposes all of the census rolls. can anyone advise? I am getting ready to bring a son into the world and want to explore my family name on my dad's side. my grandma suffers from dementia and doesn't know anything about her late husband, who was orphaned as a child and raised by a great aunt or grandmother of his own.
I have searched ebay for my last name, and on occasion found geneology books about my family. The last one I found was about a Revolutionary War officer. This probably won't work for more common last names.
What's up cuz? Coolest thing I found on Ancestry.com was the scanned manifest from the ship my relatives came over on in 1853. I had a lot of trouble finding it, because when I searched my last name I wasn't getting any results. I narrowed down the dates and locations they must have come and just started pouring through the manifests. I ended up finding out they spelled the name slightly differently in Germany and then simplified it after they arrived. It's definitely worth it in my opinion, but can be pretty addicting. It's good to get a subscription when you don't have too much else going on, so you can get your money's worth.
