Did you ever trace an ancestor?

Question

and find out anything really interesting about your family?

Answer 1

The hardest thing about tracing ancestors is getting them to lie still on the paper, but I find it helps if you use a really big pencil to make it take less time.  (j.k.)

The most interesting things I've found would be that I have a lot more Scottish and German ancestry than I believed (always assumed English and French more than anything else), that my family has been here for centuries longer than I realized (I assumed we came here around the Revolution or early 19th century but on most sides they arrived in the 17th century)  or that I had as many ancestors in the Revolution (including a 1771 battle some consider the first revolutionary battle- Alamance- and the ancestor was 70 when he fought in it) and that I have a lot more ancestors who were slave owners than I'd ever have suspected.  (I'm neither proud nor ashamed of the slave owners, but I am very interested in them and because of them I've learned a lot more about the practice of slavery in Alabama and the Carolinas than I ever knew before- it's a far more complex subject than most people realize.)  I haven't confirmed it but I have found some stuff to indicate that the rumors my grandmother had black blood may not be totally rumor- one of her "mystery ancestors" who seems to appear out of nowhere in 1820 Georgia has a lot in common with a free biracial ("mulatto" in the records) black person with an almost identical name and similar birth year mentioned in records in Virginia up to 1800; I think he very possibly moved south and passed for white.

I also realized that I'm my own cousin several different ways, but always very differently (i.e. I could legally marry myself without it being incest I think, but it would be weird and I'd have to pay for absolutely everything.)

Answer 2

Yes, I actually found out that my family has been in the 'new world' since it was found by europeans and settled (no, not the vikings). Some of my ancestors were in Nova Scotia and moved down to lower Louisiana in a french ship called La Amisté which is the famous slave ship the Amistad. Neat huh? Just do some research and you may find things you never know.

Answer 3

Discovered one of my first ancestors in the US was a slave owner in Maryland in the 1700s.

No one in my (living) family knew about it until I discovered some legal documents from back then that gave the names and gender of each slave.

It was a pretty shocking discovery for everyone, since we have all lived in Ohio and California for generations, had family in the Union Army in the Civil War, and never would've guessed there was a slave-owner in our family tree.  One of my grandmothers refused to believe it to her dying day.

He was the only ancestor who owned slaves - his children sold the plantation and moved to OH and PA after he died.  I don't know what became of the slaves.  He was my 5th great-grandfather, same last name.

Answer 4

yes. they lived a long time

Answer 5

Yes i actually found out that my great great grandad on my grandads side was an explorer he was on the hms discovery with captain scott and he was a carpenter that went to antarica, he was on a 42 day exploration on a 8 man bob sledge with sub lt Conybeare it was on the 4th May 1876 he is mentioned on the website www.cavillconnections.co.uk/discovery.ht... his name was henry winser it was really interested when my nan died we found photo's of him in his artic gear.

Answer 6

I had great fun tracing my ancestors who weren't the usual respectable crowd they were made out to be.

1. My father was 12 when his parents married, but it was a bigamous marriage anyway because grandfather's first wife was still alive.

2. My father had a half-brother from that marriage about which he had not known.

3. Dad's brother-in-law was killed on a rail track by a shunting train.

4. Dad's sister was strangled

5. Half my mother's family were bargemen who married into a family of brewers.

6. Gt. grandfather died as the result of D.T's at the age of 39 - described in the newspaper (Coroner's hearing) as "having the appearance of a man who had accustomed himself to alcohol"

7. A 3x Gt. uncle went to Australia "in chains" in December 1829 (he had been sentenced to death) for stealing £200 - that's as good as having a Ronnie Biggs in the family, I reckon!  William did receive a "Conditional Pardon" eventually.

8. Gt. Gt. grandparents were "Free Settlers" in Campertown in Sydney.

9. One of my father's ancestors was the subject of a Government report into the employment of children as young as 8 in the coal mines; that lad was a coal haulier - walked 4 miles to the pit, then did an 8-hour shift and walked home again - from the age of 8!  He'd learned to read and write a little at a Wesleyan Sunday School, so no "free" time for him.

9. My husband's grandfather (aged 9 years) was a refugee from Russia; and the other side of his family was Portuguese.