# Amazing what you find out when digging for ancestors...



## Daniel Grenier (Jun 24, 2008)

Lately, I have been interested in finding more about my ancestors. So far, I know everyone in my tree going back to very early 1600s. But, the interesting find was that I have “celebrities” as (very) distant cousins in there and that was a surprise to me. 
Like: 
Celine Dion (8th generation)
Madonna (10th Gen)
Angelina Jolie (11th Gen)

Dig far enough and almost anyone has a well known person in their heritage. Kind of neat!


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

...if you believe it.


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## Daniel Grenier (Jun 24, 2008)

Diablo said:


> ...if you believe it.


Meaning.....?


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Daniel Grenier said:


> Meaning.....?



Meaning that the majority of people lack the skills to do this type of research properly, and websites such as ancestry.ca are a crock.

I am a historian. I am trained in doing historical research, and I know not only how difficult it is but also how scarce the source materials are the further back you go. I can't count how many times I have been in archives and have heard amateurs doing family genealogy arguing with professional archivists that they are right and the archivist is wrong.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Though my surname goes back to at least the time of William The Conqueror, my own branch of the lineage is only traced back to the 1700s and even that might be a little sketchy. It is believed that the name appears in Plymouth Colony but not on The Mayflower, but I haven't a link between that and myself...yet.

On my mother's side, we have a family tree going back to the mid 1600s, but from her mother's side. I don't know yet much about her father.

I haven't noticed celebrities but there appears to be a weak distant connection to the Earls of Spencer. My childrens' first names appear in one ancestor's name, same spellings too, which we didn't know about until recently.

I want a time machine.


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## Daniel Grenier (Jun 24, 2008)

colchar said:


> Meaning that the majority of people lack the skills to do this type of research properly, and websites such as ancestry.ca are a crock.
> 
> I am a historian. I am trained in doing historical research, and I know not only how difficult it is but also how scarce the source materials are the further back you go. I can't count how many times I have been in archives and have heard amateurs doing family genealogy arguing with professional archivists that they are right and the archivist is wrong.


I don't use Ancestry so I don't know how good (or bad) it is. Your success in searching depends on who you are and where you are from. My research is solely based on the records of the RC Church in Quebec which took detailed records for such things as births, deaths, marriages since day 1 (i.e. late 1500s/early 1600s) and as a Historian yourself, I'm sure you are aware of this.

In my case, and in most French Canadian's case, it is actually rather straight forward and relatively easy to find things out. My wife, otoh, is from Irish and English descent and her search has yielded minimal to no info (although she has yet to dig deeper).

In any case, searching for one's ancestry is, or can be, very rewarding.


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

I came from a long line of exhibitionists.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

@adcandour well played.

My grandmother's relative compiled a search through a few different place (no idea which ones) and she has a print-out for information on someone from the 1600's. Pretty wild.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Since one of my ancestors was a mayor (or whatever they were called back then), we can trace our history back to 1050. There is some interesting stuff in our family tree book. There are lots of them around the area as several people in our line worked on it over the years and have kept it very up-to-date. One of my relatives by the name of Elizabeth was beheaded by King Henry VIII. It doesn't say what for, unfortunately but since he was apparently going crazy in the latter years of his life, it could have been anything.


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

Steadfastly said:


> Since one of my ancestors was a mayor (or whatever they were called back then), we can trace our history back to 1050. There is some interesting stuff in our family tree book. There are lots of them around the area as several people in our line worked on it over the years and have kept it very up-to-date. One of my relatives by the name of Elizabeth was beheaded by King Henry VIII. It doesn't say what for, unfortunately but since he was apparently going crazy in the latter years of his life, it could have been anything.


She probably kept telling him to import his guillotines to the border and then send his Royal guards on a 4 day horse trip to pick it, to save a piece of silver.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

My brother and I used the Canadian Census search which is available online.
My father assisted us with names that he could remember and the locations of properties (farms) near the town of Listowel, Ontario.
I was able to go back with certainty to about 1850 or so. we then hit a wall and had nothing that we could be sure of.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

Daniel Grenier said:


> Meaning.....?


Well, I have a reserved skepticism of some of these services.
Meaning I think a lot of companies in this business, oversell these kinds of fantasies.
It’s always beautiful famous people that they’re related to...never hear of anyone saying “I did a genealogy search and found out I’m related to a convicted pedophile as well as his cousin who was run out of their town for sodomizing everyone’s sheep....neat!”.
It’s the same reason I’m dubious of people with claims of having been reincarnated....in a previous life they were always Hannibal, or Julius Caesar, not the village idiot. Statistically there are more village idiots than military greats.

Listen if you’re having fun, go for it....but I think ppl need to be realistic and not just expecting to find a weak thread between their mundane lives and the rich and famous. If they need that kind of ego crutch, they might get more bang for their buck by buying their way in to a “Who’s who”publication  Fwiw, I might be jaded because im distantly related to a former NBA star who I’ve actually met a few times....it hasn’t done me shit so I can’t get excited by name dropping someone who probably wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

colchar said:


> Meaning that the majority of people lack the skills to do this type of research properly, and websites such as ancestry.ca are a crock.


Yes, ancestry.ca was a major WTF when I tried it. Besides having little accurate information of use, it was slow as molasses. 

Luckily, my aunt had done decades of work, pre-internet, and before most of the previous generation had died, so she was able to actually talk to relatives and friends born as early as the 1870s. She was still at it after the internet happened. Fascinating stuff, census, church records, land titles, military, legal and criminal records, burials, births, baptisms, confirmations, schools and education, businesses...and she did much of it by mail and in person.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

One thing to keep in mind if you are doing a search is that most people had very little education when they moved to North America so spelling was non-existent for many. .The spelling of family names, therefore, was not always correct. A close relation such as a great grandfather, etc, may have a different spelling of their last name than yours because names were often registered as the clerk thought it should be spelled.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The more interesting aspect of this, at least to me, is not how famous a distant ancestor might have been, but rather what they experienced. If they survived a famine, or lived during a period where their region changed hands several times, or perhaps they migrated across linguistic zones, or whatnot. THAT sort of stuff is interesting. Whether they had any great achievements is nice, but secondary. Most people will lead simple lives with no great deeds that stand out. But they will frequently lead them in interesting times and places.

I was once chatting with my grandmother, some 30-odd years back. She was in her mid-90s, stone blind from glaucoma, and consigned to bed with a broken hip. For some reason, the topic of knowing other languages came up. Knowing that she had come from Russia, I said "If I knew Russian, I could read Tolstoy in the original Russian. Do you know who Tolstoy was?". Given that she was a farmer's wife who had been blind over half her life at that point, and had raised 8 children, I fully expected that she would not. Instead, she said "Sure. We lived near him in St. Petersburg. He was a baron, but he worked in the fields just like everyone else, even though he was a baron." She proceeds to tell me how he dressed, the length of his beard, details of his funeral, and the general sadness at his passing. Some years later, what she told me was confirmed in the historical drama "The Last Station", that recounted Tolstoy's final days. So, a not especially significant woman, who lived a life of no particular note, but she lived it in an interesting place and time.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

Steadfastly said:


> The spelling of family names, therefore, was not always correct.


This is an example from 1881 Census where our last name (spelled Gray ...and often misspelled as Grey) appears to be spelled Greay (that covers both spellings at once....LOL)

The other fun thing to track is ages. Some people would age 4-5 years between the 10 years census and others would age a healthy 12-15 years. I am named after "William" (great, great grandfather) who is 15 (give or take...LOL) at the time of this census. He died when I was 2 years old (1952).


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

greco said:


> This is an example from 1881 Census where our last name (spelled Gray ...and often misspelled as Grey) appears to be spelled Greay (that covers both spellings at once....LOL)
> 
> The other fun thing to track is ages. Some people would age 4-5 years between the 10 years census and others would age a healthy 12-15 years. I am named after "William" (great, great grandfather) who is 15 (give or take...LOL) at the time of this census. He died when I was 2 years old (1952).
> View attachment 187721


That's a great example.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

I did some research on one of those on-line sites and it turns out I'm the offspring of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. And yet, I can't rhyme worth a shit, and I don't think my ass is that big. 

Maybe I just used it wrong? Maybe it's 'cause I said I was from a west and not the west? I dunno.


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## Daniel Grenier (Jun 24, 2008)

Diablo said:


> Well, I have a reserved skepticism of some of these services.
> Meaning I think a lot of companies in this business, oversell these kinds of fantasies.
> It’s always beautiful famous people that they’re related to...never hear of anyone saying “I did a genealogy search and found out I’m related to a convicted pedophile as well as his cousin who was run out of their town for sodomizing everyone’s sheep....neat!”.
> It’s the same reason I’m dubious of people with claims of having been reincarnated....in a previous life they were always Hannibal, or Julius Caesar, not the village idiot. Statistically there are more village idiots than military greats.
> ...


You might have missed the intent of my post, Diablo. It is not to “drop names” so much as to confirm, in a way, that searching you ancestry can yield something “interesting”. Frankly, I am actually not a fan of any of these ladies - cousin or not and they, no doubt, could not possibly care less about me (but I do think they _would_ spit on me if I was on fire). 

It also happens that I am related to a couple people that I am very proud to be associated with in this minimal way. Felix Leclerc was a respected and wonderful folk singer in Quebec, and, Louis Hebert was the first apothecary in New Fance and one of Champlain’s “main man”. No doubt, too, there were loser, thieves and crooks in my lineage but they records would not likely say that.

Peace out.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

Someone on my dad's side did research long before 'ancestry.ca' and stuff. I am fairly sure about everything from 1792 on. They came up from America as Empire Loyalists and settled in Brighton, Ont. Before that, it is a bit tenuous - possibly landed in Cape Fear in 1680s. Not a good time in Scotland during that time I believe, a lot of religious crap going down.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

There are so many inconsistencies in the Census.

For our family, ages varied (as mentioned) along with country of origin and religion. One could understand the possibility of changing religions but the changes were a bit drastic and seem unlikely.

While doing this research, we often discussed how the realities of doing the census might have had a huge impact.

For example, the person 'drives' up on his horse (or horse and buggy) and knocks on the door. This is a farm property out in the middle of nowhere.
He (it was typically done by males according to who signed the census pages that we reviewed) might have then asked to talk to an adult when a child answered the door. The adults and older children might have been in the fields and the child tried their best to answer the questions. 
"How old is your mother?" "and your father"? (OOOPS)
"Where did your mother and father come from?"

Maybe we had this all wrong...but we had many laughs over the inconsistencies and errors in general.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

It can also be the case that the content of a census changes.

Back in grad school, we attempted to make our cognitive aging samples more comparable between college age and retirees, by looking at educational attainment. Of course, getting a doctorate in the 1940's was a lot more exceptional than it was in the 1980's, especially if one was female, and seeing that the same percentage of younger and older persons had completed high school, trade school, or university was no assurance of comparability if the older ones were of a generation where more education was less common. So, I thought I'd try a different metric by getting StatsCan data on average educational attainment, and distribution, by census-year, and use standardized residual scores (essentially, the gap between each person's education and the mean) to see if our younger and older participants were equivalently representative of their birth cohort. Turned out that the how-much-education-do-you-have question kept changing from census to census, and intervening events, like the two World Wars (which both interrupted data education and data collection), made it largely impossible to be able to compare, and graph, just how much education people had, by decade. I had to give up in my search.

There are things a census is great for, and things it isn't so great for.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

This thread is quite co-incidental with my daughter's, and my own, very recent research. So this morning I discovered that my mother had a still born brother (the death certificate is online), and I finally found my maternal grandfather's name, and likely place of birth, via a marriage record.


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## keto (May 23, 2006)

On Dad's side, great-grandma came over from Norway in 1904. On the ship's manifest or passenger list, of which we have a copy, her sponsor is listed as Thomas Edison, in Baltimore, which is correct for his labs etc. We have no idea if she was a maid, mistress, other....

On Mom's side, from Hudson Bay records up in the north, about 5 generations back someone married 'Nancy Native', so I guess I'm a 64th, where do I get my treaty card?


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

keto said:


> On Dad's side, great-grandma came over from Norway in 1904. On the ship's manifest or passenger list, of which we have a copy, her sponsor is listed as Thomas Edison, in Baltimore, which is correct for his labs etc. We have no idea if she was a maid, mistress, other....
> 
> On Mom's side, from Hudson Bay records up in the north, *about 5 generations back someone married 'Nancy Native'*, so I guess I'm a 64th, where do I get my treaty card?


Since the men that came over from Europe so outnumbered the women, if you wanted to marry and have children, you likely found a wife from one of the people's living here originally. It is likely that way over 50% of us have some indigenous lineage in our family tree.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Mooh said:


> This thread is quite co-incidental with my daughter's, and my own, very recent research. So this morning I discovered that my mother had a still born brother (the death certificate is online), and I finally found my maternal grandfather's name, and likely place of birth, via a marriage record.


Then there's stuff that the normal channels would never tell you. 

My wife has two brothers. Around the time I was born (5 years before my wife was), my late mother-in-law had a stillborn son up north, where my father-in-law was working as a miner. Because of the proximity of the two deliveries, and because we got along so well, she would often refer to me as her "third son".

Flash ahead several decades, and my mother-in-law had come to Victoria for our older son's birth. We had hired a mid-wife, who worked with the family doctor doing the delivery. While hanging around between contractions, my mother-in-law struck up a conversation with the mid-wife, asking the usual sorts of questions (where are you from, what does your husband do, etc.). Turned out that the midwife's father-in-law had been a country doctor in northern Ontario, and was the very doctor who had delivered the stillborn son, all those years ago. Now here was the daughter-in-law of that doctor helping to deliver her grandson. <insert Twilight Zone theme here>


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

greco said:


> This is an example from 1881 Census where our last name (spelled Gray ...and often misspelled as Grey) appears to be spelled Greay (that covers both spellings at once....LOL)
> 
> The other fun thing to track is ages. Some people would age 4-5 years between the 10 years census and others would age a healthy 12-15 years. I am named after "William" (great, great grandfather) who is 15 (give or take...LOL) at the time of this census. He died when I was 2 years old (1952).
> View attachment 187721


Forty-five years back, I was working in a library that accepted donations of books from community-members. My job, and that of my co-workers, was to sort through the books and separate them into three bins: suitable-for-circulation, antiquarian-dealer-material (which could not be put into general circulation but could generate revenue for purchasing new materials), and discard. We were permitted to take what we wished from the discard pile. Among the books I took was a King James bible, printed in 1774. Inscribed in sepia ink, on the back of the Table of Weights and Measures, separating the Old and New Testaments, was the family tree of the clan for whom this was a family bible, including not only the names and kin relationship, but date and time of day of their birth. It goes up to about 1830 or so.

I would love to one day reunite the bible with the family. But unfortunately the family name - Clark - is not exactly distinctive enough that one could pinpoint the family with any precision, particularly since it runs out of identifying information many generations back. I'm sure it could be done, but would necessitate considerable effort. So for now, I remain the guardian and keep it from harm.


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## blueshores_guy (Apr 8, 2007)

The only ancestry-type thing I'm reasonably sure of is that my wife and I are related. But only through marriage.


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## jdto (Sep 30, 2015)

RBlakeney said:


> She probably kept telling him to import his guillotines to the border and then send his Royal guards on a 4 day horse trip to pick it, to save a piece of silver.


LOL


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## Daniel Grenier (Jun 24, 2008)

Steadfastly said:


> Since the men that came over from Europe so outnumbered the women, if you wanted to marry and have children, you likely found a wife from one of the people's living here originally..


Indeed. In or around 1665 or so, the French King sent over several 100 “King’s Daughters” to New France to address the roughly 40-1 male to female ratio. Most were quite young and pretty much all ended up married quickly and pregnant just as fast. 

I found out too, thru my research, that two of these “Daughters” are part of my tree. I have yet to find any “native” ancestry in my lineage but if I do, I would be fine with that too.


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## ezcomes (Jul 28, 2008)

Steadfastly said:


> One thing to keep in mind if you are doing a search is that most people had very little education when they moved to North America so spelling was non-existent for many. .The spelling of family names, therefore, was not always correct. A close relation such as a great grandfather, etc, may have a different spelling of their last name than yours because names were often registered as the clerk thought it should be spelled.


exactly...a lot of people didn't know how to spell...so phonetics came into play and we end up with name changes...
but then you have the people who, the name is spelled wrong, but they don't have the resources, or want, to correct it...my grandparents name was always wrong in the phone book...and as such, people continued spelling it wrong

I don't have any ill feeling, or good feeling to be honest, towards these online search sites...information is only as good as those entering it...no one monitors who enters it, so for all I know, it's not 100% trusting

besides...go far enough back...we all came from fish


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Steadfastly said:


> Since one of my ancestors was a mayor (or whatever they were called back then), we can trace our history back to 1050.


I'm sorry, but I flatly refuse to believe that. One person having a minor municipal title (it it wouldn't have been 'Mayor' back then) does not make a family important enough for records to have been kept, or for records to have survived from that time (during the English Reformation, among other events, Catholic churches were burned, looted, emptied of everything they contained, etc. and their records went with them).





> One of my relatives by the name of Elizabeth was beheaded by King Henry VIII.



So you're claiming to be descended from, or at least related to, Elizabeth Barton, the only person named Elizabeth to have been executed during the reign of Henry VIII? Interesting. She had no children and historians know virtually nothing about her early life (ie. the rest of her family), but you're related to her?

And by the way, she wasn't beheaded she was hanged. Although her head was removed after death and put on a pike.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Diablo said:


> Well, I have a reserved skepticism of some of these services.
> Meaning I think a lot of companies in this business, oversell these kinds of fantasies.
> It’s always beautiful famous people that they’re related to...never hear of anyone saying “I did a genealogy search and found out I’m related to a convicted pedophile as well as his cousin who was run out of their town for sodomizing everyone’s sheep....neat!”.


Exactly.

And here in North America, everyone thinks they are descended from royalty of some sort and that they have a castle waiting for them back in Britain/Europe. It ain't true as the poor, whether by force or by choice, emigrated at far greater rates than the wealthy did. Shit, the wealthy didn't need to emigrate. But everyone here thinks they are related to someone wealthy or noble. It ain't true, particularly as the poor outnumbered the nobility by a wide margin so, statistically, you are far more likely to be related to someone poor than to someone noble. I don;t get this need in North America to be connected to someone. Is it because our history here is so short and not very glamorous?

Plus, far too many people do not realize some basic facts about names. First, that they were often tied to occupation (Baker, Smith, etc.) and people doing the same occupation in the same area might have the same last name, but shared absolutely no blood. Second, in the Scots and Irish traditions Mc and Mac mean 'son of' so there can be multiple people in an area who share a last name but no blood, they simply had father's with the same first name. And those names changed, depending on the father's name. So if David McDonald (David son of Donald) had a son that son (let's call him John) that son would be called John McDavid (John son of David). Good luck tracing that family line during an era for which written records are virtually non-existent. Third, the poor often used the last name of more wealthy and/or powerful families simply for the protection that the wealthier family's name often provided. There was no blood between them, they simply shared a last name because it offered protection. But in all those cases, people looking back now can easily get mixed up and think that there _was_ blood between people who shared a last name.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

Daniel Grenier said:


> I don't use Ancestry so I don't know how good (or bad) it is. Your success in searching depends on who you are and where you are from. My research is solely based on the records of the RC Church in Quebec which took detailed records for such things as births, deaths, marriages since day 1 (i.e. late 1500s/early 1600s) and as a Historian yourself, I'm sure you are aware of this.
> 
> In my case, and in most French Canadian's case, it is actually rather straight forward and relatively easy to find things out. My wife, otoh, is from Irish and English descent and her search has yielded minimal to no info (although she has yet to dig deeper).
> 
> In any case, searching for one's ancestry is, or can be, very rewarding.


all you have to do is watch a few episodes of maury to see that LOTS of paternity tests come back negative. in that case, you cant trust written records for accuracy.


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## Xelebes (Mar 9, 2015)

I have been able to trace one strain of the family tree on my mother's side to the 7th century Germany. What fun you can find when you are descended from the Harrison political family. Didn't even need to use Ancestry.com for that as we have newspapers from the 1920s exclaiming the fact that a member of the family was moving into Delia, Alberta from Washington State. My grandmother had a large scroll that had the family tree all drawn out leading to William Henry Harrison.

That said, there are some dark stories in there. On that same tree, you had the member having a daughter who would marry a bitter drunk man who was maladjusted for living on the prairie and so she died relatively young. This scarred my grandmother when she was growing up, to the point where she swore she would never be a housewife.


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## Wardo (Feb 5, 2010)

Some of my wife’s family and my family came in through Ellis Island.

A lot of them didn’t live long enough to have their names changed.

My last name precedes the Conquest but there’s no way I’m related to those fuckers; the only thing I kinda know is that I come from my mother and this world is mine.


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## Daniel Grenier (Jun 24, 2008)

Steadfastly said:


> One thing to keep in mind if you are doing a search is that most people had very little education when they moved to North America so spelling was non-existent for many. .The spelling of family names, therefore, was not always correct. A close relation such as a great grandfather, etc, may have a different spelling of their last name than yours because names were often registered as the clerk thought it should be spelled.


That very thing happened with my ancestors. My original ancestor was named Garnier who came from Normandy in 1634. His grandson changed the name to Grenier for reasons unknown but the records do show clearly the name change and when. Also, later on, some changed the name to Grigner but that did not last and the name reverted back to Grenier. Garnier, however, was changed very early on so it didn’t last thru the years (in Canada, that is).

Anyway, I find it quite interesting to read these stories (including the skeptics’ rationales).

But don’t you wish you knew who all played guitar in your ancestry?


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Daniel Grenier said:


> That very thing happened with my ancestors. My original ancestor was named Garnier who came from Normandy in 1634. His grandson changed the name to Grenier for reasons unknown but the records do show clearly the name change and when. Also, later on, some changed the name to Grigner but that did not last and the name reverted back to Grenier. Garnier, however, was changed very early on so it didn’t last thru the years (in Canada, that is).
> 
> Anyway, I find it quite interesting to read these stories (including the skeptics’ rationales).
> 
> But *don’t you wish you knew who all played guitar in your ancestry?*


I just found out a few years ago that one of my other brothers played guitar a little bit when he was younger. He is 24 years older than me. That's 3 out of the 4 of us.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

Daniel Grenier said:


> That very thing happened with my ancestors. My original ancestor was named Garnier who came from Normandy in 1634. His grandson changed the name to Grenier for reasons unknown but the records do show clearly the name change and when. Also, later on, some changed the name to Grigner but that did not last and the name reverted back to Grenier. Garnier, however, was changed very early on so it didn’t last thru the years (in Canada, that is).
> 
> Anyway, I find it quite interesting to read these stories (including the skeptics’ rationales).
> 
> But don’t you wish you knew who all played guitar in your ancestry?


assuming it’s validity, I’m envious of those like yourself that can find that much information....it’s not so easy for some of us of different ethnic backgrounds, who were dispersed under impoverished and chaotic (war) circumstances where record keeping was not a priority. Even with a relatively uncommon name, searches often lead to nothing (or nothing that makes any sense based on my family stories).
I’ve never even met either of my grandfathers, and only 1 grandmother. It doesn’t really matter though, as my only child is a daughter, so my name ends with me anyway.
That said, colchar makes a good point...with more common names, I’m sure there’s a greater tendency for errors to be made.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Family trees can have dead branches, get pruned, be grafted, become hybridized, or simply felled.

I have a cousin with an unknown father, though her mother may have known the father. The mother has died and taken the secret to her grave. This cousin, btw, I only discovered about 12 years ago and we're Facebook friends now. Her half siblings (my other cousins) aren't interested in her, but I figure she's just as much my cousin.
My wife's father is also unknown (and her sister's father is another unknown). The chances of their fathers being the same man are unlikely, but weirder things have happened. The chances of my wife's and sister-in-law's fathers being the same man as my cousin's father are astronomically unlikely, but it sure would make a fun family tree.

Then there are assumptions, like when my parents had a child statistically very late in life and rumours abounded that the child was not actually theirs but the bastard child of my older sister. Leave that sort of information with the wrong person and God knows what becomes of the family tree.

Isn't there a board game based on this stuff? If not, there should be.


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## Guitar101 (Jan 19, 2011)

I use Ancestry. Kids were all down this weekend so we were searching. My wifes Great, Great, Great Grandmother spent 14 years in the Australian penal colony. We traced one of my daughter-in-laws relatives back to the mid 1700's when he was working on his farm in Germania and was kidnapped and taken to America to fight with the British in the American Revolution. And my other daughter-in-law may be a descendant of a Pirate. (Captain Blood - were all treating her a little bit better today in case she has some pirate genes)


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## Daniel Grenier (Jun 24, 2008)

Diablo said:


> ... I’m envious of those like yourself that can find that much information....it’s not so easy for some of us of different ethnic backgrounds, who were dispersed under impoverished and chaotic (war) circumstances where record keeping was not a priority......


Absolutely. In my case, as I mentioned, it is straight forward and relatively easy to find things out. One country, one ethnicity, one religion (who controlled society and kept excellent records) and all this makes it possible for the likes of me to find things out - good or bad. For instance, my first ancestor was 28 when he married. His wife, my great-great x10 grandmother was 12!! Gross and disturbing for us these days but that was the norm back then. She died well into her 60s and had 11 kids - first one at 15 or 16. Though as nails they had to be back then too.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> Exactly.
> 
> And here in North America, everyone thinks they are descended from royalty of some sort and that they have a castle waiting for them back in Britain/Europe. It ain't true as the poor, whether by force or by choice, emigrated at far greater rates than the wealthy did. Shit, the wealthy didn't need to emigrate. But everyone here thinks they are related to someone wealthy or noble. It ain't true, particularly as the poor outnumbered the nobility by a wide margin so, statistically, you are far more likely to be related to someone poor than to someone noble. I don;t get this need in North America to be connected to someone. Is it because our history here is so short and not very glamorous?
> 
> Plus, far too many people do not realize some basic facts about names. First, that they were often tied to occupation (Baker, Smith, etc.) and people doing the same occupation in the same area might have the same last name, but shared absolutely no blood. Second, in the Scots and Irish traditions Mc and Mac mean 'son of' so there can be multiple people in an area who share a last name but no blood, they simply had father's with the same first name. And those names changed, depending on the father's name. So if David McDonald (David son of Donald) had a son that son (let's call him John) that son would be called John McDavid (John son of David). Good luck tracing that family line during an era for which written records are virtually non-existent. Third, the poor often used the last name of more wealthy and/or powerful families simply for the protection that the wealthier family's name often provided. There was no blood between them, they simply shared a last name because it offered protection. But in all those cases, people looking back now can easily get mixed up and think that there _was_ blood between people who shared a last name.


Then you have things like what took place in Louisiana, where family names were often changed to sound more "French" because there was an association between being French and being societal upper crust. 

Not to mention the corruption of immigrant names because immigration officials might either poorly transliterate the name, or else assign it whatever they already knew that sounded close to that name. For some inane reason, our family name "Hammer" was changed by immigration to "Emer" for a branch of the family that settled in Montreal.

A prof my wife and I worked for had the family name "Black". I once asked him if his family name had been Schwartz (German for black) before they came to Canada. He said that actually it had been "Blanc" (just like cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc), and the immigration folks changed it. So he literally went from white to black.

A former classmate has the family name of "Gould", though she is as Acadian as they come, and her ancestry goes back in the Moncton/Dieppe area for several generations at least. She told me the name change occurred via a similar sort of snap decision by a census-taker, priest, or something.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

I came to this thread hoping there'd be shovels involved. There are no shovels. Leaving disappointed.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Guitar101 said:


> We traced one of my daughter-in-laws relatives back to the mid 1700's when he working his farm in Germany and was kidnapped and taken to America to fight with the British in the American Revolution.



Germany didn't exist in the 1700s. And people weren't kidnapped and forced to fight on the British side. George III was the Elector of Hanover and was allied with several German speaking states/principalities (primarily through religion). Soldiers from Hanover were sent to Gibraltar so that British soldiers stationed there could be freed up to go fight in the R.W. 

German speaking states would rent their soldiers out to fight for the British (some states would rent their soldiers out to whomever paid the highest price, so technically they were mercenaries). Those soldiers volunteered or were recruited and were well paid (if you are going to hire out your soldiers you want them to be professionals, and not some useless rag-tag group of conscripts or kidnapped individuals, otherwise nobody is going to pay you for the use of your soldiers). Many people from those states also volunteered to fight for foreign powers, with German speaking soldiers fighting on both sides of that conflict. A lot of the German speaking soldiers in that conflict, particularly those who fought on the British side, came from Hesse and were thus referred to as Hessians. There were also a lot of Brunswickers who fought on the British side.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Xelebes said:


> I have been able to trace one strain of the family tree on my mother's side to the 7th century Germany.



As mentioned above, Germany didn't even exist then.


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

You skeptics go ahead and laugh all you want.
Back before the turn of the century, I received an 'important notice' from Prince Kevin, Prince Regent of the Principality of Hutt River, informing me of my noble ancestry. I'm quite certain it was legit.


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## Wardo (Feb 5, 2010)

jb welder said:


> You skeptics go ahead and laugh all you want.
> Back before the turn of the century, I received an 'important notice' from Prince Kevin, Prince Regent of the Principality of Hutt River, informing me of my noble ancestry. I'm quite certain it was legit.


Yeah, Kev should be rollin up any time soon in a coach and six ready to share out the family dosh if you’ll just give him your banking information.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

Exactly how are some of you digging for ancestors?


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

I was shocked to learn that I am related to everyone.


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## Guitar101 (Jan 19, 2011)

I wouldn't shoot down Ancestry. I'm pretty sure their not making false census, marriage and death records to name a few. Even if you don't want to search your family , you can still start a tree for your future relatives. It costs nothing if you don't search their database and use Ancestry's records. Just start your tree, put your family in it as much as you know and keep adding your family as they come along. No charge, and for the doubters "NO CHARGE". I've had mine for many years and only pay to search their records every 3 or 4 years during the winter months.


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

Suprise, suprise, I am also related to the women you mentioned.

Celine Dion (16th generation)
Madonna (16th Gen)
Angelina Jolie (23rd Gen)


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Guncho said:


> I was shocked to learn that I am related to everyone.


Crap. Wish you would have told me earlier. I would have invited you to the last family gathering. Sorry I didn't check. My bad.


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## Guitar101 (Jan 19, 2011)

colchar said:


> As mentioned above, Germany didn't even exist then.


Correct. It was called Germania


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Guitar101 said:


> Correct. It was called Germania



In the Roman Empire, yes.


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## 4345567 (Jun 26, 2008)

__________


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

Björk Guðmundsdóttir is your 27th cousin thrice removed.


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## Guest (Apr 4, 2018)

I'd like to think that one of these people were my ancestors. lol.


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

Is that Ringo and Shelly Long?


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## Guest (Apr 4, 2018)

Guncho said:


> Is that Ringo and Shelly Long?


yup


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## brucew (Dec 30, 2017)

An aunt spent a lot of time at this, not sure what all resources she used, believe mostly things like church records, land deeds, service records, that sort of thing.
Biggest problem is depending on the part of the world such records are commonly destroyed by war, fire, etc and leave dead ends.
She did trace her father (my paternal grandfathers) side back quite far. Went to E. europe for a holiday to follow up and do more research. Did find very early marked family graves to confirm much of what led her there.

Near as she can figure my great, great, great great grandfather's job was, "feeding the geese". (no knights in shining armor on that side, my family's the one's pressed into service carrying a wooden pitchfork)

Another great aunt traced her side to two men landing in (S. Carolina or someplace from who knows where)(1600's). One was hung as a horsethief, the other married and that's her family.

Point being, not really much to go on and less the further back you go.


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## Xelebes (Mar 9, 2015)

colchar said:


> As mentioned above, Germany didn't even exist then.


Didn't know plate tectonics moved that quickly.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Xelebes said:


> Didn't know plate tectonics moved that quickly.



You might want to figure out that Germany is a country, not a natural phenomenon.


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## bolero (Oct 11, 2006)

I am pretty sure my ancestors were cavemen


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

bolero said:


> I am pretty sure my ancestors were cavemen


What happened to all their caves? Ive been through most of North America and only seen a few in Arizona and Mexico. Certainly not enough to give rise to humanity.
Where’d all the caves go, did the dinosaurs, unicorns and dragons destroy them?


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## bolero (Oct 11, 2006)

good question, I'll ask my Aunt GROOKA next time I see her

I believe they were mostly in Europe; France


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2018)




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## Gary787 (Aug 27, 2011)

2017 was the 100th anniversary of the WW1 Battle of Vimy Ridge. My grandfather fought and survived the war and I planned a visit to to Vimy to commerate this and to take him back with me. In the planning I learned from a cousin that my grandmother had a brother killed at Vimy on the morning of the raid. No one ever talked about it. He was battlefield buried and later exhumed and placed in a Canadian war cemetery. I used many different sites and when we were able to locate him and bring him back in memory for at least a day.


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## Gary787 (Aug 27, 2011)

Diablo said:


> Well, I have a reserved skepticism of some of these services.
> Meaning I think a lot of companies in this business, oversell these kinds of fantasies.
> It’s always beautiful famous people that they’re related to...never hear of anyone saying “I did a genealogy search and found out I’m related to a convicted pedophile as well as his cousin who was run out of their town for sodomizing everyone’s sheep....neat!”.
> It’s the same reason I’m dubious of people with claims of having been reincarnated....in a previous life they were always Hannibal, or Julius Caesar, not the village idiot. Statistically there are more village idiots than military greats.
> ...


There is always a first brother. Our family tree was maintained by a church in England. It clearly shows a distant relative was hanged in the town square for horse thievery.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Gary787 said:


> View attachment 191281
> 2017 was the 100th anniversary of the WW1 Battle of Vimy Ridge. My grandfather fought and survived the war and I planned a visit to to Vimy to commerate this and to take him back with me. In the planning I learned from a cousin that my grandmother had a brother killed at Vimy on the morning of the raid. No one ever talked about it. He was battlefield buried and later exhumed and placed in a Canadian war cemetery. I used many different sites and when we were able to locate him and bring him back in memory for at least a day.



If you want to find the grave of a member of the military just check the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and you will find the info instantly.


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## bolero (Oct 11, 2006)

colchar said:


> If you want to find the grave of a member of the military just check the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and you will find the info instantly.


that is good to know, thanks!

I have some WWII relatives buried over in Europe, will check that out


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

bolero said:


> that is good to know, thanks!
> 
> I have some WWII relatives buried over in Europe, will check that out



So long as they served in any of the Commonwealth forces, and you know their name (first and last names help you narrow it down far more easily, especially if they had a common name), you can find their grave info as well as info on where and when they died. 

Commonwealth War Graves Commission


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## Xelebes (Mar 9, 2015)

colchar said:


> You might want to figure out that Germany is a country, not a natural phenomenon.


Go learn some geography man and then come back to me with your BS. Germany refers to the continental transalpine region between the Rhine and the Oder but south of Jutland. In the Roman times, this region was called Germania.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Xelebes said:


> Go learn some geography man and then come back to me with your BS. Germany refers to the continental transalpine region between the Rhine and the Oder but south of Jutland.



Oh look, we have a Wikipedia scholar on out hands.






> In the Roman times, this region was called Germania.



The country of Germany, which is a political entity, did not exist so one cannot say that their ancestors came from 'Germany' because no such thing existed. 'Germania' and 'Germany' are not the same thing.

You made a claim, it was wrong, deal with that fact.


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## Xelebes (Mar 9, 2015)

colchar said:


> Oh look, we have a Wikipedia scholar on out hands.


No, just a geography nerd. Just for your information, I refered to the location of Germany and not the political entity of Germany. Your pedantry is a whole bunch of nonsense.


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