# Family Tree



## ChrisHewitt (Dec 24, 2011)

Has anyone tried to trace their family tree?

I have managed to trace back to my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather Edward who was born in 1781 in a village about 6 miles from where I now live.
He was a farmer and he married Amy Church who was also born in 1781. He also married Elizabeth Church who was born in 1791. I'm not sure if Amy and Elizabeth were sisters but it would be interesting to find out.
My Great-Great Grandfather William had a brother who was born on Christmas day in 1836, he was named "Isaac Christmas" and was a farmer and later a mole catcher.

I was lucky in that it didn't cost me anything to find this out as the info was put on the internet by someone who shared my ancestors.  I also found photos of my family dating back to Victorian times.
I will continue to look into it.


----------



## *DrDLN* (dr.s.dhillon) (Jan 19, 2011)

I know my family history over six generations back to 18th century. It's good to know your roots.


----------



## Alle Meine Entchen (Dec 6, 2009)

my dad is the geneologist in the family.  He occassionally will try to get me interested, but it's a no go.  He's had to slow down a lot b/c he has bad knees (and recently re injured one so bad he'll need surgery again) and most of the family cemetaries seem to be on top of  steep hills.  He's found some interesting and not so interesting things (like the fact that even though his mom was a McCoy, we aren't related to Those McCoys of the Hatfield and McCoy fame)


----------



## Joyce DeBacco (Apr 24, 2010)

I have a photo of my family taken in 1873. In it is my grandfather as a young boy, my great grandparents and my great, great grandparents. My father had only brothers, but I noticed that his aunts didn't live past their twenties. I assume they'd died in childbirth because all the men of that generation survived to old age.

An interesting story that's been handed down is that my g,g,grandfather was so tiny when he was born, they put him in the warming oven to keep him alive. A primitive incubator, I presume. He survived and grew up to be a sheriff. His son, my g, grandfather was born in jail.

Lots of other info too numerous to go into here. But my dad's family was traced all the way back to the mid 1700s before the trail goes cold. Fascinating subject. That's why I love to watch that show "Who do you think you are?"

Joyce


----------



## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I can trace my family tree back to the mid 17th century on the paternal grandfather side and maternal grandmother side and to the mid 19th century on the other two sides. Luckily, I have relatives interested in genealogy. 

In Germany, very few families can be traced back further than the 17th century. For anything prior to that, the relevant records were lost in the 30-years-war.


----------



## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

My grandma is the genealogist in our family, so she does all the footwork and shares the info with the rest of us. It's a good system because I like to know things but wouldn't want to search it out myself. If I remember correctly, she's managed to track down one member of our family as far back as the eighteenth century, when he came over from England, but after that I don't think anything else is known about him. We have a similar problem on the other side of my family, which also came over from England. It seems like the trail goes cold once it leads to another country.


----------



## sesmith (Dec 21, 2011)

All I really know past the "greats" is that apparently (based on my grandfather's account) my great-great-great-grandfather was a cousin of Frank and Jesse James and once hid them in his basement.


----------



## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

CoraBuhlert said:


> In Germany, very few families can be traced back further than the 17th century. For anything prior to that, the relevant records were lost in the 30-years-war.


Yup, that's when ours stops too (on my mom's side). I have almost complete records until that point, though. I was told that so many churches were looted and burned that very little from before survives, since the churches kept almost all the records back then.

On my dad's side (in the UK), nobody's ever gone back beyond 1800 or so. Maybe that's a good thing, since they were Border Reivers.


----------



## spotsmom (Jan 20, 2011)

One of my ancestors was the Sheriff of Nottingham... no, not THEN.


----------



## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

spotsmom said:


> One of my ancestors was the Sheriff of Nottingham... no, not THEN.


Found this...
http://myweb.ecomplanet.com/kirk6479/mycustompage0035.htm


----------



## ChrisHewitt (Dec 24, 2011)

Susan in VA said:


> Found this...
> http://myweb.ecomplanet.com/kirk6479/mycustompage0035.htm


A lot of those names sound as though they originate in France.
Apparently, if you could travel back to England in those days you would not be able to communicate very well as the language was so different to what it is now.


----------



## Sandpiper (Oct 28, 2008)

CoraBuhlert said:


> In Germany, very few families can be traced back further than the 17th century. For anything prior to that, the relevant records were lost in the 30-years-war.


Same here. I'm of pure German heritage. (Well, there is one drop of French blood.) One of my cousin's children is the genealogist on my father's side. She has gone back to 1600s in Germany on one branch. Stops there.


----------



## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Susan in VA said:


> Yup, that's when ours stops too (on my mom's side). I have almost complete records until that point, though. I was told that so many churches were looted and burned that very little from before survives, since the churches kept almost all the records back then.


The churches kept the birth and marriage registers, which are important for genealogists. However, the 30-years-war was a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants and as a result every side looted and burned the churches of the other. There was random looting and pillaging going on as well, because the war was mainly fought by mercenaries who don't react well when they are not paid.

And considering how long the war was, pretty much every city, town or village was affected at one point or the other. The 30-years-war was so bloody that it left deep tracks in the collective memory well into the 19th century, i.e. more than 200 years later, and was only eclipsed by World War I and II.


----------



## spotsmom (Jan 20, 2011)

I did find a link to the Church of the Crooked Spire in England where my ancestor, Godfrey Foljambe, was buried in the 1500's. Blurb said it was an 'ancient family'. My brother actually visited there a couple of years ago with his Fulghum family crest ring on and they took him on a special tour!

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DBY/Chesterfield/Lysons.html


----------



## Shayne Parkinson (Mar 19, 2010)

I used to do quite a bit of genealogical research, though I haven't for a while. 

My most rewarding result was establishing contact with distant cousins in Sweden. My gt-gt-grandfather left Sweden in the 1860s, settled in NZ and married an Englishwoman. He died quite young, and his wife couldn't write in Swedish (and no doubt had enough on her mind just surviving), so his family back in Sweden never knew what had happened to him. Over a hundred years later, a descendant of his brother got a letter out of the blue - from me! And he still lived on the same small island my ancestor had left from. *And* he had in his possession some letters my guy had written home! I got to hold them (and was given copies). Alf was quite elderly, and died a few years after we met, and I'm so glad I made it there in time.

We've visited the extended family twice, and had a wonderful time. One distant cousin looks uncannily like me.


----------



## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

ChrisHewitt said:


> I was lucky in that it didn't cost me anything to find this out as the info was put on the internet by someone who shared my ancestors. I also found photos of my family dating back to Victorian times.
> I will continue to look into it.


You shouldn't rely purely on other people's trees, they are often incorrect unless they have accurately sourced all their information. Be careful what you add to your own tree - genealogy isn't easy and unless you trust that the person doing the work knows what they're doing, you shouldn't just assume the info is accurate. I've seen trees where individuals were born before their parents! Other errors can be more subtle but just as damaging to your work - like the wrong maiden name which then means the entire branch from that point on will be the wrong family.

The oldest person in my tree was my 8th great grandfather, born in 1625. He was the father of the first Mennonite Bishop in the American Colonies so his line is well documented. He (the bishop, not the father) even has his own Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_C._Gottschalk and he's also documented on the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online: http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/gottschalk_jacob_1666_ca._1763


----------



## Joyce DeBacco (Apr 24, 2010)

Another problem with having some distant relative doing all the research is that it takes all the fun out of it for you. My daughter started researching our family and went on a website and found someone who was related somewhere along the line. She was given all the information she had gathered. And then she completely lost interest in it because there was nothing left for her to do. It had all been done already.

Joyce


----------



## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Joyce DeBacco said:


> Another problem with having some distant relative doing all the research is that it takes all the fun out of it for you. My daughter started researching our family and went on a website and found someone who was related somewhere along the line. She was given all the information she had gathered. And then she completely lost interest in it because there was nothing left for her to do. It had all been done already.
> 
> Joyce


Not necessarily - my grandmother had done a lot of research to our family tree so when I took up where she left off when she died, I wasn't sure there was much else to find. Turns out, there was a lot. I've probably found just as much, if not more information than what she had found. A distant cousin of mine has been a professional genealogist for 30+ years and she's still finding new information about our shared branch.

And even once you start hitting brick walls, you can start doing more than just collecting names and documents. I started reading books on the histories of local areas where my ancestors lived and cultural histories of the time periods they lived in to get a better understanding of their worlds. I have travelled to some of the locations they lived in too, even found a stone house still standing that my ancestor's built! I have written micro-bios of each branch in my tree, in order to really connect the dots between records and dates and what they actually meant for my ancestors. How much was their property worth? At what ages did they marry and have kids? How many children did they loose? What religion were they?

It's exciting to find new names, locations, and dates but genealogy is also about analyzing what that information really means to understand our ancestors better.


----------



## sherylb (Oct 27, 2008)

^^Also remember that new records are added to the internet every day.

Genealogy is all about patience. It takes many, many years to build up an accurate family tree. If you just rely on another online tree to get your information, you will never know if it is correct or not. You can use them as a tool and an idea of what to search for next, but never rely just on a tree(s) you find online.

Just because the person has the same name you are searching for does not mean it's _your_ relative. You need corroborating evidence to link that person to you. This is a step many people new to genealogy seem to miss. Example: My grand uncle was born in a small town in 1881. He was my paternal grandfather's brother. Now, we had only heard about the maternal side of that family so had very little knowledge of grandfather's family. In the same year there was another person born in the same town with the same name. No middle name. One of these two went on to have a family, the other one didn't. I finally was able to connect one person, the one without the family, using the information found on his WWI draft registration card which listed the nearest relative as my grandfather's other brother. That was a happy day!

The records available online today are absolutely amazing and I feel a thrill every time I unearth some new fact or finally am able to confirm something I have been working on.


----------



## ChrisHewitt (Dec 24, 2011)

I'm pretty sure the family tree that I found is accurate as it includes my father and his three brothers and three sisters. I remember my Grandparents and uncles and aunts. I also recall visiting my Dads uncle who owned a mindmill nearby when I was about 8 years old or so.
I have checked the earlier family on Ancestry.com and it all matches up.
I have been back to the area several times as it is only about an hours walk along a river to the windmill. There is also a pub and railway station where my Great-Grandparents lived for a while.

There is a website for the area

http://www.berneyarms.co.uk/html/berneyarms/railway/berney_railway1.htm

The second photo shows my Great-Grandmother Eliza at the railway station
The third photo shows my Great-Grandfather Thomas (Eliza's husband) who worked on the railways.

When I'm on holiday I'll try to find some more information.


----------



## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

ChrisHewitt said:


> I'm pretty sure the family tree that I found is accurate as it includes my father and his three brothers and three sisters. I remember my Grandparents and uncles and aunts. I also recall visiting my Dads uncle who owned a mindmill nearby when I was about 8 years old or so.
> I have checked the earlier family on Ancestry.com and it all matches up.
> I have been back to the area several times as it is only about an hours walk along a river to the windmill. There is also a pub and railway station where my Great-Grandparents lived for a while.
> 
> ...


Just because some of the info is correct doesn't mean all of it is. Most trees have some kind of accurate info, otherwise, how would you have found them as linking to your own? I've seen trees which link up to mine at first and have correct info... but then as the generations go further and further back, the info clearly becomes inaccurate. The further back you go, the harder it is to research and therefore the more likely people are to make mistakes and add the wrong info. For birth records in the US, it can be hard to find anything pre-1900 because birth certificates weren't mandatory before this point. For US censuses, it can be hard to research before 1850 since only the head of the household was recorded. A lot of people hit brick walls around the late 1700s and early 1800s because records become more and more scarce. So around this point, it can become easy for people to make mistakes.

I'm not saying the tree you found IS incorrect, just that an important rule in genealogy is don't make assumptions and always confirm facts with reliable sources.


----------



## Jeff (Oct 28, 2008)

My mother's family came to the New Netherlands from Denmark in about 1634. Because there were no Danish surnames, I've been unable to go back any further. That family tree is 13 generations tall. Member number 24, Leslie (Nicoll) is a cousin-in-law.  

I've had no luck with my father's family tree; it's only 5 generations tall, starting with my paternal grandfather. All I know about him is that he was apprenticed to a Wall Street brokerage house in 1899, when he was 10 or 11, and lived there, in a room in the office building, until he was a grown man.


----------



## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

I've been working on it, off and on, for a while now. The problem is that I never met my dad, and I don't even know his name. It was something not even spoke of when my mother was alive -- but more about that in a moment. I've done okay with my maternal side, going back several generation on her father's side, and a few on her mother's side. Somewhere, and I have to find it, there was a newspaper article where a cousin said the reason the family left Germany was someone shot the Kaiser's pet deer. 

I also did a DNA test for 23andme.com, and I've found lots of cousins, but not close cousins -- and nothing solid on my father's family. The neat part is I got my grandmother to do it, too. With cousins, I could see little shared pieces of DNA, but with my grandmother there was dramatically more in common. Well, yeah, that's to be expected, but it was still cool. The website also flagged us as close relatives, with the predicted relationship exactly right.


----------



## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

Jeff said:


> My mother's family came to the New Netherlands from Denmark in about 1634. Because there were no Danish surnames, I've been unable to go back any further. That family tree is 13 generations tall. Member number 24, Leslie (Nicoll) is a cousin-in-law.


I know you thought we were cousins but you were able to confirm it? How very cool! Who is married to whom?

On my father's side, we have all sorts of information about the family and all sorts of evidence: paintings, photos, letters, membership logs (the St. Nicholas Society) and lots of other stuff. Plus the New York Times...Nicolls were always popping up in the NYT for this, that, or the other thing. Births, weddings, deaths, society debuts, appearing on the stage, gory car accidents, impromptu weddings in the middle of the night--I have lots of interesting clippings stored on my hard drive.

On my mother's side, not so much info...

Here's a resource to look at the US Census records (through 1930, although the 1890 census was destroyed) for free:

http://blog.archive.org/2010/12/22/1790-1930-u-s-census-records-available-free/

L


----------



## Tip10 (Apr 16, 2009)

I can go back to the mid 1200's AD in a direct line on my paternal side (something like 16-20 generations or so).  Basically back to around the time of the Welsh Rebellion in about 1280. 
This is due to almost 20 years worth of research by a gentleman we stumbled upon (actually his research led him to us to fill in one of the lines he was working on) out on the west coast.
My last name is not common but not super rare either.  I have come across a number of folks who share the name and in most cases we can either find them in my book, or, based upon info they know of their heritage we can find the hole they belong in.  There are a fairly large number of holes in the book and the gentleman used to put out updates to it periodically up until his death many years ago.  The book itself is about 10" x 16" and about 3 inches thick and the font used in it is about 8 point!!  I've had my copy of the book for about 40 years now.
And yes, there be horse thieves and brigands and scholars and soldiers and men of legend and men of ill repute in there!


----------



## Jeff (Oct 28, 2008)

Leslie said:


> I know you thought we were cousins but you were able to confirm it? How very cool! Who is married to whom?


I can't remember the details. It began with the gravestone of a man named Nicoll who is buried in the Exxon cemetery. I think you confirmed that the man was a relative of yours. His wife was a great-great-great aunt of mine. (I'm guessing at the number of generations.) I should have written it all down.

I wonder how many KB members are related. My forefathers, by the time of the American Revolution, were related to nearly every family in New York.


----------



## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Leslie said:


> Here's a resource to look at the US Census records (through 1930, although the 1890 census was destroyed) for free:
> 
> http://blog.archive.org/2010/12/22/1790-1930-u-s-census-records-available-free/
> 
> L


It would probably be easier to use www.familysearch.org to search the censuses for free since it's indexed and searchable.


----------



## HappyGuy (Nov 3, 2008)

history_lover said:


> You shouldn't rely purely on other people's trees, they are often incorrect unless they have accurately sourced all their information. Be careful what you add to your own tree - genealogy isn't easy and unless you trust that the person doing the work knows what they're doing, you shouldn't just assume the info is accurate. I've seen trees where individuals were born before their parents! Other errors can be more subtle but just as damaging to your work - like the wrong maiden name which then means the entire branch from that point on will be the wrong family.


My mom did extensive research on our families. I think she said that to be acceptable to most genealogical researchers you were required to have two references.


----------



## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

HappyGuy said:


> My mom did extensive research on our families. I think she said that to be acceptable to most genealogical researchers you were required to have two references.


A lot of people go with three references but I think it depends on the reliability of the source. If your first source is a census, it's safe to say any of the info might be incorrect. Other types of records can be more reliable though so if your two sources are a census and a birth certificate, you're probably good. If your two sources are two different census records (from different years), I would look for a third.

I have one individual in my tree with four different census records and collectively they name three different birth locations. I even had one census which labelled someone with the wrong gender - I only found the right gender because on her gravestone it said "daughter of (x)" which is probably pretty reliable, lol. Once I changed her gender to female, I was suddenly able to find her on other censuses which were previously getting ignored in the search results because the gender was wrong.


----------



## jumbojohnny (Dec 25, 2011)

We can get as far back as the late 1700s. Our family was called Hentz, lived in Germany, and then future generations branched out all over the place. What I have found out and I am not sure if I am sad about it or not; a story was handed down that Hentz became Haines in England, particularly among our Liverpool branch of the family, during the Great War in the face of anti-German feeling, but upon doing some research, I found that the name had already been Anglicised thirty years before. Just goes to show, you can't believe all that you are told, even within a family.


----------



## Meb Bryant (Jun 27, 2011)

My father was illegitimate. End of story.


----------



## Alle Meine Entchen (Dec 6, 2009)

Meb Bryant said:


> My father was illegitimate. End of story.


I have a friend who was adopted, he has the same problem. Then again, I have a great aunt who had 12 kids by that many fathers (none of them on record). I'm just glad I don't have to work on that puzzle (said aunt never told anyone who fathered the kids, plus this was in the late 1800s early 1900s when it was more of a scandal)


----------



## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

Meb Bryant said:


> My father was illegitimate. End of story.


With DNA testing today, not as much the end as it used to be.


----------



## Meb Bryant (Jun 27, 2011)

Thanks for the positive posts; however, for us the story ended when my dad died in 1995. I wanted to question my grandmother before her death, but my father was horrified at the prospect.

DNA testing is a godsend to so many.


----------



## tecwritr (Oct 28, 2008)

I have tracked my mothers side back to my 5th great grandfather.  On my fathers side I've tracked his mothers family back to my 4th great grandfather.  My dads natural father never married my grandmother, as far as I know.  He abandoned his family in LA, Ca around 1918 and disappeared.  His name was George Edward Ball born in Arkansas in 1881. That's all I know about him.


----------

