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 ...
My family history went back until the 1600’s.
My family, however, I've never found anything beyond my great grandparents. They are Scots, so needless to say I refuse to pay Ancestor.com for the use of their not so good research. :o)
“To my amazement, it went back to 410 to King Clovis the Riparian of Cologne whoever he was.”
If you can trace your family line back to royalty, you typically can go back hundreds of years (royalty, after all, being the individuals most likely to have such records). Having traced my family back to some English kings, I then found a book that took my lineage all the way back to Julius Caesar.
I there are any Ulens out there, do I have a story for you.
My cousin did a lot of research a couple years back and got back to 1600s as well. The only real interesting tidbit which isn’t very much is that my dad’s grandmother is related to Betsy Ross.
I think marrying an Indian back then was considered a no no. My husband has a similar story from his family. When his great aunt was very old and near death she admitted to him that there had been an Indian grandmother. But don’t worry she said, she was a white folks kind of Indian.
Thanks frank, I enjoyed your history. I think I need to find a willing Mormon, folks who travel across the country in a wagon every other generation, don’t leave many tracks. They leave tracks in the mud but not in the court house records.
My great grandmother was a Cherokee Indian but that is all we have been able to find out. We did discover that her children had been offered land in OK but they did not take it. All but one lived in MS.
Do your great-grandmother’s descendants have the Mongolian mark that native American babies have?
We too are supposedly Cherokee, I have looked at the rolls. I have come to believe she was adopted and given a European name. All I have are family stories about her looks and that she hid her Indian heritage. I can trace her family name back to when they came to America, same as my great-grandfather. To me this means there has to be an adopted child somewhere for the Indian blood to be introduced. They moved to NW MO when it was still wild, which would have helped her hide. All census forms list her as white. Sadly, I think I'm at a dead end until the Cherokee nation will accept DNA as proof of heritage.
My husband’s great-grandmother was half Native American and although she swore she was French, everyone knew it. What no one knew is that his great-grandfather was some portion Cherokee.
What a long, lost cousin has told us is to look in the records for “Black Dutch” that this is a euphemism for Native American/European. That might have only been in Tennessee though. The last name that we share is definitely Scotch, not Dutch. I know this probably won’t help but it might.
I had to look up what a Mongolian mark was, as I was unfamiliar with the term. I'm not sure about my brothers and sister (will soon ask them!), but I do have a mark on my right calf that would probably qualify as such. My children do not appear to have inherited any Indian traits, other then my daughter tans very quickly and never gets sun burnt even though she is blond.
The Mongolian mark is at the base of the spine, extending sometimes onto the buttocks, of newborns. It does not appear on legs. They usually fade, so you have to ask someone who knew and saw you and your cousins when you were infants. It is an unmistakable signifier of native American blood.
My granddaughter had one of those.
As I said my granddaughter had one but around here we attribute it to Mexican-American descent and it is mostly girls.
What country are your ancestors from originally? Cool stuff.
Without knowing the identity of the father of my grandfather, one has no idea, although a possible last name suggests English.
The mother of my grandfather, her people originally came to America during the 1600s, from Gloucester, England.
Those of African and Asian ancestry can also have the Mongolian spots, so it does not necessarily signify American Indian ancestry. Also, not everyone of other-than-Caucasian descent has them as babies, so it’s really not helpful.
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