Family trees- rooting out interesting ancestors

[Myfanwyski]

Recently, I started dabbling in the family history lark. My mother had already started a tree and wondered how what happened to my great grandad when my great grandma died - he just vanished leaving his brood in orphanages. He just disappeared as far as we know- did he marry again? there's no evidence of his death- so what happened? My mum wanted to know, so I'm just muddling through at the moment.

On the television there are several programs looking into wills, celebs ancestors etc- quite often they find some interesting person or two- maybe someone who was deported in the victorian era, a bigamist, criminal or maybe someone creative or influential.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any interesting ancestors they want to share? So far I haven't come across anyone world shattering.

My great granddad who I was on about earlier was in the Boer War and was at Spion Kop- I think he was wounded there something about a cut finger - but Victorian's being Victorian - things tended to be underplayed and it might have been dangling by a thread? Other than disappearing later - he also deserted on his return to Ireland and somehow popped up in London a few months later and got married.

Who else is in my closet who knows- quite a few blacksmiths and brickies. Maybe one one of them built or made something interesting?

so over to you.

[The Multiverse of Holly Starlight]

I always was interested about my ancestry, but... being from Myanmar, I assume that it is going to be a rather difficult one to find records of. Either the records are lost, or it was used as linen for someone's lamp, who knows. Okay, I exaggerated a little there, but I think it would be a rather difficult task.

With that said, I'm not even sure if the ancestry/DNA tests will work for all the countries. All I have found so far are for USA and most of Europe (Britain, Ireland, etc).

From my first hand experience, there was nothing wrong with my tree, AFAIK. Man and Woman meet each other, realised that they found their other half, bonked and made love like it was the last Valentine's Day, and ta-da, the next generation! Repeat until where I am now. No inconsistent or other partners, because one thing's for sure, SE Asians are conservative as all heck for most of the time.

[Nippon]

My maternal grandmother's paternal grandfather was a minor but well-to-do village official in under the Nguyen dynasty. Her mother (i.e. my great-grandmother) was also a relatively well-to-do businesswoman possessed of land and trucks, but then Marxism-Leninism happened and she lost most of that; she also bought lots of lottery tickets.

My maternal grandfather is a self-made intellectual born to farmer parents. He basically educated an entire generation of officials of the third-largest city of Vietbongistania, and got no credit for it. He's still pretty committed to the Party though so I guess it's him being selfless. All of his ancestors, presumably, were farmers, because our family tree doesn't exactly go that far.

... That's it.

[Cannot think of a name]

Grandfather was a professional race car driver and his brother helped invent fiber optic cables. Also, according to lore which is notoriously sloppy we were the “bad guys” in Irish history (land owners)

[Dahon]

Pinoy ancestors were laborers from all over the Spanish Philippines.
American ancestors were laborers from California and Washington State.
Chinese ancestors were coolies from Guangdong and Fujian.
Spanish ancestors were priests who fucked a lot but never got censured, let alone defrocked.

What else?

[Reploid Productions]

I'm apparently very distantly related to Irish mobsters on my mom's side of the family!

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

More depressing than interesting. All stories of grinding rural poverty, workhouses, and parents abandoning children. Mothers being sent to prison for stealing vegetables from fields to try and feed their children. One family member was transported to Tasmania for highway robbery of a hat. A brother and sister aged 8 and 6 sent unaccompanied to America to live with relatives because they couldn't afford to keep them. Babies born and raised in workhouses never knowing their parents. You can still see the effects of the damage done generations later.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Most notable ancestor I can think of is my maternal great great grandmother, who was, apparently, a firecracker and was disinherited by her father.

[Dahon]

Most notable ancestor I can think of is my maternal great great grandmother, who was, apparently, a firecracker and was disinherited by her father.

Please tell me that's not a euphemism for "prostitute".

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Most notable ancestor I can think of is my maternal great great grandmother, who was, apparently, a firecracker and was disinherited by her father.

Please tell me that's not a euphemism for "prostitute".

Not at all. She was apparently very rebellious. Family gossip states that she either had sex out of marriage or eloped with a guy her dad didn't approve of.

[The Multiverse of Holly Starlight]

I'm apparently very distantly related to Irish mobsters on my mom's side of the family!

I read that as Irish modsters, like... Irish Moderators? Dang, I need a nap, I'm too tired.

Your family tree surprises you in many ways you didn't imagine it to be. For me... yeah, I don't know. *Shrugs*

[Stiltball]

I can hear skeletons rattling in that closet. Seems to be an interesting start to a thread- most leave you asking -and, what next?

/skip/

[True Alimeria]

How do you attain a family tree? Where do you have to look at?

[The Sakhalinsk Empire]

How do you attain a family tree? Where do you have to look at?

You can either do it by hand (i.e. draw/write it) or use a website. Personally I use a website.

First, you look at your immediate relatives: parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, siblings, children, niblings. Then, you can ask them to gain more info and continue expanding the tree.

[Reploid Productions]

How do you attain a family tree? Where do you have to look at?

And if you're starting from scratch, expect and plan on doing a lot of research and digging through old records to chase down things like birth certificates, death certificates, marriage stuff, and so on. The research can be further complicated by political turmoil, long-distance moves, and other things that impair civic recordkeeping. (For instance, I can track my mom's side of the family clear back to Ireland in the early 1700s; however trying to track my dad's side pretty much dead-ends back at my great-grandparents fleeing Russia shortly after the fall of the tsar in the early 1900s, exacerbated by the fact they didn't talk much about their ordeal or events from before they fled.)

[Kerasta]

My cousin did a bunch of research into our family a few years back, and it turns out that we were border reivers (raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border) for a period of time. Other than that, I don't have any particularly interesting ancestors, with the exception of my grandfather, who was a shipyard worker who later fought in World War 2 as part of REME. He got evacuated from France shortly after Dunkirk, before being sent to fight the Japanese in Singapore - when he got there, however, Singapore had fallen. They were sent to Australia in an attempt to escape (despite the fact that India was closer and was less dangerous to travel to), and his ship ended up getting torpedoed. He was one of two survivors, was captured by the Japanese and was sent to Pelambang in Indonesia, where he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.

[Ther Sul Citzpacia]

Kerasta:

Quite a few famous footballers were from Reiver stock- Milburns, Charltons, Robsons and I'm sure others.

maybe you might find something interesting here:

http://englandsnortheast.co.uk/border-reivers/

there's probably similar sites for the Scots and Cumbrians.

cattle rustlers with their own little 'castles'- fortified strogholds.

-
Being captured by the Japs can't have been the most pleasant thing especially when they did things like bashing on corrugated toilet blocks whilst people were pooing- sending the stool painfully back into the guts. Nice guys.

/skip/

[The Archregimancy]

One of my grandfathers was evacuated in the final days of Dunkirk and then almost precisely four years later landed at Sword Beach on D-Day with Lord Lovat's Commandos, helping to reinforce Pegasus Bridge.

Immediately after the war, he was assigned to guarding the (abandoned) offices of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the dying days of British Mandate Palestine.

He had a mildly diverting decade.

[The Huskar Social Union]

I know a bit about my family line due to my mothers research into it. Going back to my great great grand parents, all irish, dont know much about after that.

Most interesting figures are my great great grandfather (on my mothers side iirc at the moment) who fought in the british army in ww1 as part of a service battalion and later as a member of the labour corps. He was at flanders and the somme and was awarded three medals, 1914-1915 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Second most interesting figure after that, was his son, who was arrested for being a member of the IRA during the 1920s.

[Esternial]

My father did some researching after his father died. He managed to trace our lineage back to the French revolution, when our ancestors moved from France to Belgium.

Gradually migrated northeast, ended up in the Netherlands for awhile before our branch moved back to Belgium.

We've got quite a few distant relations in the Netherlands and the United States. Don't know about France but I assume there's plenty there as well.

As far as notable factoids I recall my grandfather spent some time in Congo.

[Dahon]

My father did some researching after his father died. He managed to trace our lineage back to the French revolution, when our ancestors moved from France to Belgium.

Gradually migrated northeast, ended up in the Netherlands for awhile before our branch moved back to Belgium.

We've got quite a few distant relations in the Netherlands and the United States. Don't know about France but I assume there's plenty there as well.

As far as notable factoids I recall my grandfather spent some time in Congo.

Oh dear. Leopold's Congo or later?

[The New California Republic]

I have done very extensive work on my family tree. Traced one branch of my family tree back to the 12th century, to a long line of feudal Lords in Scotland. Some French in me too, I'm a distant cousin of the Bollingers. The Irish and English branches of my tree aren't terribly interesting in comparison. There was a family rumour that my Mother's side was part Jewish, but I found no evidence of it whatsoever, so I think I have disproved that.

[Kerasta]

Kerasta:

Quite a few famous footballers were from Reiver stock- Milburns, Charltons, Robsons and I'm sure others.

maybe you might find something interesting here:

http://englandsnortheast.co.uk/border-reivers/

there's probably similar sites for the Scots and Cumbrians.

cattle rustlers with their own little 'castles'- fortified strogholds.

-
Being captured by the Japs can't have been the most pleasant thing especially when they did things like bashing on corrugated toilet blocks whilst people were pooing- sending the stool painfully back into the guts. Nice guys.

/skip/

Thank you very much for the link! I'm descended from several of the reiving clans, and my family have done quite a bit of research into it, but what you've sent me looks like an interesting site. We were primarily located in the English and Scottish East March - we later settled down around Longframlington - so info about the Northeast is the most valid.
-
My granddad never talked about his experience after he came back: we're not even sure what exactly he did, but it was almost certainly work on the Sumatran railway. He ended up with a load of tropical diseases and PTSD (which isn't even remotely surprising).

/skip/

[Pope Joan]

On my mother's side, I go back to Merriwether Lewus. Between then and now, however, we were dominated by the Red Bank gang of horse thieves, south of Williamsport PA. My grandmother's stepbrother was head of European operations for IBM

My father's grandfather, James, was arrested for being a "disorderly person" in Scotland. It turned out that this merely meant he had failed to support the Church of England financially.

Good for him

[RiderSyl]

I'm related to William the Conqueror and Rollo, on my dad's side.