Posted on 09/26/2010 11:17:36 AM PDT by franksolich
When I was ten years old, our teacher assigned us to research our individual family histories, as best as fifth-graders could do. I swiped one of my father's lined green ledger books, and meticulously recorded my ancestors, and their vital statistics, as I collected them from the parents, aunts and uncles, and great-aunts and great-uncles who were still living at the time.
I was a late child, three of my four grandparents being dead before I had even known of them. I had many older brothers and sisters, after which there had been a substantial gap. My parents were grey and (prematurely) old when I was growing up; when my younger brother and I went around with our father, for example, he was oftentimes mistaken for being our grandfather.
Among the data I collected from my father concerned the parents of his father, my great-grandfather (1818-1897) and my great-grandmother (1825-1903). My grandfather had been born in 1880.
It was not until a couple of years later that I noticed something; my great-grandparents had been, uh, rather old when my grandfather was born.....not to add that my grandfather had a younger half-sister, born in 1890, ten years later.
I mentioned this anomaly to my father, who responded that my grandfather, his father, and the half-sister had been formally adopted as infants by their grandparents. Being young and green in judgement, I was not very good at "follow-up" questions; it was not until some years later that I began wondering why my great-great-grandparents had adopted their own grandchildren, but by then, my father had departed this time and place.
(Excerpt) Read more at conservativecave.com ...
Ping for the list.
It’s of great interest, but darn it, where’s the rest of the story? :)
Several years ago I decided to do my family history, I went to Ancestors.com. I typed in my great grandfather’s name and up popped 400 years of research by a second cousin. To my amazement all I had to do was read.
Bookmark
/johnny
I did the same thing and now have over 24,000 names in my FTM. I have tried to get more sources for my info and have done so in many cases. Genealogy is a fascinating hobby. I was bored one night and decided to trace the ancestors of someone who married into my mom’s side of the family. To my amazement, it went back to 410 to King Clovis the Riparian of Cologne whoever he was. It went further back but I thought that was enough. Wish I could find some descendants to pass it along to.
This was surprisingly common back in the day, though often kept quiet enough nobody outside the family knew about it.
I know of one such episode in my own family and at least two in the wife's.
Illegitimacy de facto was much more common back then than illegitimacy de jure.
So I don't know my true blood ancestry, but that of the only family I know is interesting enough.
I have NO desire to go on Oprah and look up my biological 'parents'.
My personal genealogy quest has hit a roadblock trying to prove a great-grandmother was an American-Indian. She lived as a white woman and took the truth to her grave :( but she couldn't hide the inherited black hair and dark skin our family still passes down.
You can use Ancestry.com for free for two weeks.
I have boxes, too, from genealogical digs. Last bit of info I discovered came from a small parish in sw Germany. We had gone there to see the village where my great-grandfather hailed from. Went to the larger parish, where the priest was kind enough to fill in some of my records back to 1650s from his church records. It was like a Gold Rush find. It’s a wonderful and compelling hobby/obsession.
One of the problems, early on, was that my grandfather, born in April 1880, was shown on the census of 1880, but in a name nothing like his adopted name. One suspects the last named used in the census of 1880 was the last name of his father, but has no way of knowing for certain.
why was no one offended by her having children out of wedlock?
To me, this has always been the most remarkable part of the story. Clarion County was a small county at the time, and everybody knew everything there was to know, about everybody else. My grandmother, who went to school as a child with my grandfather, for example, explicitly knew his background (as did everyone else).
But there apparently was no social stigma attached to the whole thing, my great-grandmother not having to "pay" any "penalty" for having children out of wedlock, and my grandfather and his half-sister not having to "pay" any "penalty" for being born outside of marriage.
It's a mystery; there's probably other factors here that I don't know.
If there is a male available have them do a y-dna test. It should give you your haplogroup (R1a, R1b etc.) & then you can check various dna websites to see if there are any matches (Family Tree, Y-search etc.). Both my husband & brother have found matches.
Correction: my grandfather was born in January 1880, and showed up on the April 1880 census as “four months old,” in his original name.
<<sometimes types too fast.
There is also a VERY new DNA test that that females can take to reveal cousins, grandparents and relatives up to 4-5 generations back. 23andMe and FTDNA www.familytreedna.com both offer them.
However, the data bases of people who have taken the test are still relatively small and you may not find a match. And they are still a little bit expensive.
This is very interesting. Years ago I found a distant cousin of my father’s on ancestory.com. He supplied me with a complete report on my grandmother’s paternal family back to the 1700s. My father (now passed) and my aunt were elated to revieve copies of this. In fact they remember this distant cousin’s family coming to visit when they were young.
I didn’t have much luck finding much on my mother’s side but haven’t looked lately.She had told me that William F. Buckey was a second cousin to my grandmother. I need to research the Buckleys sometime(my grandmother’s maiden name).
I found my family names (cherokee) on the Indian roll calls.
I’ve already did the mtdna test but I’m more interested in my husbands ancestors (he will be 82 in Feb) & my dad’s side (only 3 males left in the family). I find it interesting that the closest ancestors for both have different surames but then its probably 250/350 years ago.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.