looking up your ancestors
By suspenseful
@suspenseful (40193)
Canada
August 28, 2008 11:11am CST
My husband was raised Mennonite and they are way into family history. He is going on Ancestors. Com and filling in the details of his family history, and also for those of our older son and his wife's family, but he is at a loss, since I cannot go back that far with my family more than past the great great grandfather stage, well because we were not Mennonites and because we never cared too much about our ancestry - I guess too many of my forebears choose the wrong side in the war. So we had to do a lot of searching to find out my history.
I did find out that my mother was younger when she married my father, younger than I was when I married my husband and that was why she was able to have two children and she had finished child bearing when she reached my age when I got married. So I guess we were of the finish early type. (I should have married when I was eighteen or nineteen if someone had asked me. No one did -
)
I found that my maternal grandmother's name, that it came from an area around Suffolk, and I have relatives over here, I also find on my dad's side, that I had a relative who used to live in Saskatoon and some who live here.
So have you found out relatives that you did not know you had because of doing an ancestral chart and was any of it interesting?
)
I found that my maternal grandmother's name, that it came from an area around Suffolk, and I have relatives over here, I also find on my dad's side, that I had a relative who used to live in Saskatoon and some who live here.
So have you found out relatives that you did not know you had because of doing an ancestral chart and was any of it interesting?5 people like this
9 responses
@Lakota12 (42600)
• United States
28 Aug 08
My aunt and dad did all that and Now my brother hass the books.
and one of my cousins have the books on my Grand mas side
My mom told me alot of things but Dont think dad did any work on her side of the family.
after he could go no farther than my great grand dad was from Tenn.
the court house had burnt down so there went the records!
2 people like this
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
28 Aug 08
I tried looking my family up, my husband helped a bit, but when I did it myself, could hardly find anything and would you believe it, the people with the same last names as my maternal ancestors decided to pick the same first names and some of them actually married people with the same last names, so I would think that was my great grandmother until I found out, could not be. They left Kent and went to settle in the states.
Well if you can't succeed, try, try, again.
2 people like this
@MH4444 (2161)
• United States
29 Aug 08
My family is really into this as well. Our family is Irish/Scottish, and Native American. We also have french somewhere back in the 1500's. That part of the family is yet to be explored in depth. My Scottish side is the best at lineage. We all know our family land, and heritage there. I have the crest, a sword, and have begun collecting those. It's really fascinating to follow it all. My mother is good at tracing her side. She is retired now and enjoys that as one of her hobbies. She travels now and gets photographs of the various places we have found. I love to listen to her talk about it. She gets all excited. 
2 people like this
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
29 Aug 08
I was not much into it, until I got married. I heard my maternal grandmother talk about her working in a great house as a nurse maid, and her working in a factory making corsets, about her father being a drunk or was it her grand father and them loosing everything, but she did not go back any farther. All I knew was that her mother could not read or write and had been a milk maid. So much of the information I got was from my father's side and that they had moved to Romania so many hundreds of years ago.
Had to go to the internet to find maps and what the name of the places are now. They changed a lot since then. It is fascinating. My husband's side is more interesting though and they did a lot of research because they had to prove who they were.
1 person likes this
@danishcanadian (28953)
• Canada
30 Aug 08
My step-dad was raised Old Order Mennonite, and my husband converted to the Mormon religion 20 years ago. Both faiths are into that. My husband was amazed by Dave's family tree that hangs in his and Mom's dining room. It really is something to see. His father put it together years ago, and it goes all the way back to 1827.
1 person likes this
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
30 Aug 08
My husband can trace his family back to the 1700s. He has to do some real searching on mine. We have so many Schmidts and Grosses and that is quite common and for first names, on both sides lots of Jacobs, Marias. Katarinas, Elizas, etc. I mean it is one confusing mess.
@Willowlady (10658)
• United States
29 Aug 08
Organized religion often has a thing or two that is good that they do well. I did a family tree thing when my first son was born. We found a Russion in the mix and that 3 brothers came over from Germany and spead out across the midwest.
From my mother I found that we were Irish and Indian. That there was an English influence as well.
Ancestry.com costs money and it may be a good investment. I prefer free things offer footnote.com and familysearch.com as two more sites to further our searches into our backgrounds. Also deadfred.com is a site where if you have pictures you can post them and other people may have an idea of what the story is about the person and the time it was taken. Hope I have helped this discussion.
2 people like this
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
29 Aug 08
My husband's family is Mennonite and he was able to trace his family back to when they left Northern Germany, when they went through Poland, and on to the Ukraine and even when they came to North America. My side was a bit different. On my dad's side, they moved from Germany to Romania but I have no idea as they were not Mennonites. And the place they moved to has a different name now and it is confused with another name that is in Russia. Not only that but they had very common names. I will look into those sites.
1 person likes this
@Katlady2 (9904)
• United States
28 Aug 08
I've never attempted to do my ancestral chart. But my sister has, and so has my sister in law. My sister made it back as far has having some kind of royal Scottish ancestry from something like the 1600s. And from that my sister in law actually found our actual coat of arms and the correct colors for the tartan. I asked my brother if he would wear the tartan once they had one made. He said yes...but he looked a bit nervous. LOL
2 people like this
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
28 Aug 08
I can trace our ancestry back to the seventeenth century, but we have an oral history that goes back to the Haneastic League back in the early medieval period and what my father told me about how the farms were laid out that it was a custom carried out in the late Roman Empire and I even have an ancestor called Valentin. Unfortunately most of their ancestors had a very common name.
I mean if you have some name like Gerenherdt, there is not many of you, but trying looking up all the Smiths, Grosses, Schimdts, Jones,Morris, etc. It is nigh impossible, and even on my mother's side, is Morris from Morris Dancers or from Maurius? Were they descended from ancient Romans or French that came over with William the Conqueror?
And those others with the same name, were they adopted? Did they change their names? I know my father did.
2 people like this
@ellie333 (21016)
•
28 Aug 08
Hi Suspenful, I would love to discover a bit more about my ancestors but I really wouldn't know where to start, I don't even know what my real grandparents surnames are to even know where to start. I have been offered help which I will ask for once I have found out enough information to be able to give for them to make a start but no matter where I have come from I am who I am now. Ellie :D
2 people like this
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
28 Aug 08
Tue trouble is that I can only go so far with my family. One side was not im;portant, adn the other side had to move from Northern Germany to Rumania and since they were not Mennonite, there was no hiostorical reason to keep their records. So most of it was handed down by word of mouth. And we can only trace them to the seventeenth century. My husband is doing the research and he finds it hard because so many of our ancestors had the same first names, and then often they changed their surnames to match the country they were in.
2 people like this
@lucy02 (5016)
• United States
31 Aug 08
I did subscribe to Ancestry.com and was able to trace my father's ancestors to England and my mom's to England and Germany. I am adopted so I have also found my birth mother's side back to England. I didn't find anything really all that interesting. There was one ancestor in England that was fairly well known and had some things named after him there but that was long, long ago. Not anybody I would hear spoken of today...nobody that famous, lol.
@callarse1 (4783)
• United States
31 Aug 08
Yes we are interested. We want to do more research our my father's size as my uncle has already did lots of searched on my grandparent's side. I would love to start making a family tree & finding information out. It sounds interesting. Yes, I bet he is loving doing that with the family. Have a wonderful day.
