Ancestry

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retro

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I couldn't fall asleep the other night, so I got back up and started working on my family's genealogy again... I had been stuck about four generations back on my dad's side previously, so I decided to sign up for a free trial at Ancestry.com. I had used one from them like 4-5 years ago, and man has it ever come a long ways since then. I was able to trace the male line of my dad's side of the family all the way back to England and discovered that my ancestors were British nobility. This guy is my 18th great-grandfather... John FitzAlan, 1st Baron Arundel. I also learned that my 10th great-grandfather immigrated to the colonies in 1635 and is believed to be the forefather of the majority of people with my last name in the United States today. My dad wants to know more about his mom's side of the family, so that's what I'm going to work on next while I take breaks from packing and cleaning... I've gotten back a few generations on that side, only to get stuck for the moment because we originate from Sweden and Austria on that side.

Anyone else do any work on their ancestry? Got any tips or suggestions aside from Ancestry.com that you've used before? I'm having a lot of fun with this... especially on my dad's side of the family, because I have a number of relatives that have gotten a ways back on my mom's side, but nobody that I know has ever worked on my dad's. As a student of history, it's really interesting to find stuff out about your ancestors... and once I get a good family tree working, then I want to go back and fill in all the details about my ancestors.
 
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Sneakiecat

Sneakiecat

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Familysearch.org I've found a lot of information from there. They also used to have a really good free family tree program but I don't know if they still do. Rootsweb.com is good too. I've followed my maternal grandmother's paternal line pretty far back. They're mainly Scottish. I have a hard time on my dad's side since it's full of very common last names.

I've been researching off and on for 13 or 14 years. It's a nice, peaceful way to kill some time and learn about things I wouldn't have otherwise known.
 
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retro

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FamilySearch is what I had been using previously... their program is actually pretty good, PAF, it's what I've been using to this point... and now I'm recreating everything in it that I get from Ancestry.
 
Sneakiecat

Sneakiecat

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I've found a lot of good census info from Familysearch. It's one of the few places I've found any information on my paternal grandmother. Check message boards too. I found a distance cousin of mine who had letters that my great-grandfather sent to her grandfather, his brother. She sent me copies and it was amazing to be to be able to read his own words in his own hand. She also sent me a copy of a license he had to be a grocer. He died well before I was born so it was nice to have tangible proof of him.
 
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I don't know much about the doing of it, but my nan and my dad are both interested in it :) my nan found out we have family in Canada (not exactly close relatives but still) and now writes to them regularly.


Also from their digging, I have french ancestors on my mum's side and Jewish ancestors on my dad's side. If my paternal grandmother had been a practicing Jew then I'd probably be one too, but she broke away from that side of her family.


Hell, I looked up my dad's site that he's been posting our tree on recently and discovered he had a sister who died when she was very young that I'd never even heard about, from hydrocephalus.
 
skyblue

skyblue

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i've got my dads side back about 200 years or so,we're all over the world...the all conquering family
 
Zorak

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My dads side is pretty standard Ulster Scots as far back as anyone knows. My mums side is English, Jewish and Turkish.
 
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Abcinthia

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I have a pirate on my dad's side and a musician of Elizabeth I on my mum's side.

My great grandparents on my mum's side are from Yorkshire and my great, great grandparents are Scottish.

My dad's family is from London. A long way back (my great uncle has an incredible family tree he has made)
 
AUFred

AUFred

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When I attempted my Dad's side I get conflicting information due to the spelling. On my Mother's side I have Jones & other very common names. Hard to trace.
 
Kyle B

Kyle B

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Joe the meek said:
When you celebrate Christmas and Easter?

I use to play the "Goo Bah" for Christmas;)
Click to expand...

I was actually baptized in Russia in the Russian Orthadox Church. But I celebrate Easter and Christmas the same days as everyone else.

My neighbors who are Greek Orthodox and go to a Greek church and everything celebrate Christmas and Easter the same day as everyone else but follow the church calender for church stuff.
 
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Joe the meek

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Kyle B said:
I was actually baptized in Russia in the Russian Orthadox Church. But I celebrate Easter and Christmas the same days as everyone else.
Click to expand...

Well, if you lived in Russia, it wouldn't be the same as everyone else now, would it? LOL

I was a child when our church was being tried to become "Americanized" by the local dioceses . Fact is, most of the Russian Coal miners families had their own mortgages tied into the church at one time, and for most of the poor immigrants and their families, you didn't mess with tradition. Long story short, the church told the dioceses to fuck off and they switched. Remember some cousins getting ticked off at their parents because their local church up the road did become Americanized. Amazing I was an altar boy under the priest who married my grandmother in 1936 (her second marriage as her first husband died in the coal mines).

To answer the OP question to the original post (LOL) I had the baby of my mom's side doing some research on our family. Only really pushed it back a couple of generations into Eastern Europe as my moms side of the family came off the boat in America after 1900. Not much going on with poor peasant farmers turned coal miners LOL

What I did find interesting was I had three grandfathers and a step grandmother all die before they hit 45 in the U.S. Even pulling a tooth could kill you after 1900.
 
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