Discovering Where I Come From
By StacyB
@Srbageldog (7716)
United States
March 11, 2018 6:31am CST
I've spent the majority of the night on Ancestry.com researching my dad's side of the family. I literally knew nothing about them other than a few names. I never knew my paternal grandfather. He did some horrible things when my dad was little and went to prison, so my dad didn't really know him, either.
It's been interesting learning about his family, though, and finding out names and surnames in our family tree. Some of them are pretty amusing. It's too bad there's not more info available, but then Ancestry.com is all user generated. None of the existing family trees that list my grandfather even have his children listed. I may have to contact my distant relatives who made the trees and fill them in on some info.
Have you ever done genealogy research and found out more about your family roots?
9 people like this
12 responses
@GardenGerty (157546)
• United States
11 Mar 18
My dad had done thousands of entries on Family Tree Maker, but as his mind has gotten poor he has forgotten how to access and does not even think of his computer, I am sad to say. I do know that he gave me all kinds of paper copies. I need to go through them.
2 people like this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
12 Mar 18
I am glad he gave you the paper copies, but am sorry he is unable to work on his family tree any longer. He's given you a valuable gift, though. I wish my parents knew more about their ancestors.
@Courtlynn (66921)
• United States
11 Mar 18
My Aunt is big on the genealogy stuff. So she's done that on our family (moms side) and told me a bit about my family on my dads side, that I didn't know.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
12 Mar 18
@Courtlynn She deleted her Facebook account without telling anyone so now I have no way to get in contact with her...I don't know if the phone number I have for her is still the one she uses. She is kind of weird, but then that's just my mom's entire family. 
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
12 Mar 18
That's awesome your aunt has researched that stuff for your mom's side. My aunt (also on my mom's side) did a lot of genealogy research before but she has only shared some of the info. It would be nice to know more. I thought she had made a family tree on Ancestry but I can't find it. Maybe she deleted it or something.
1 person likes this
@Courtlynn (66921)
• United States
12 Mar 18
@Srbageldog hmm hope she can give you more info
1 person likes this
@Ithink (9980)
• United States
18 Mar 18
Yes we have, I have a distant cousin Indian that was named .. get this, she was named Mindwell. What a name. We have an Indian Chief too. My mom has a lot of the papers and now since I hope to get better she is going to let me borrow them and make copies and stuff. I love reading history and when it is family it just makes it even more interesting.
1 person likes this
@Ithink (9980)
• United States
19 Mar 18
@Srbageldog My aunt and mom have been working on the family tree for awhile now. I wish we could go to my grams and go out back into the woods. There was an Indian burial there and I always meant to go but never got to. Yes there is some weird names out there that is for sure. I'm thinking I might join that ancestry place when I have time to make use of it thou, don't want to pay and then not be able to use it.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
18 Mar 18
That is definitely a unique name! I have a male distant cousin whose name was Pleasant, which I find hilarious. I've heard of that as a female name but never as a male name before. And people claim modern names are "weird"! I guess they must have never taken a gander at their family tree and seen all the unusual old names from the past.
That's awesome your mom has documents that you can borrow and make copies of. I wish my family had something like that. Of course, for all I know someone, somewhere does and I just don't know about it. I agree, history is interesting, more so when it's family you're learning about.
1 person likes this
@momalisa65 (1971)
• United States
18 May 18
I love doing genealogy research. I have trees on Ancestry, FamilySearch and MyHeritage.
Ancestry is my favorite as for finding my way around the tree, but I get a lot of info from Family Search. I don’t like how other people can change what I put on Family Search though, and they can add wrong parents for people I put on the tree.
MyHeritage lets me copy people from other people’s trees, but sometimes I’m not sure if all the info there is accurate or if people are just copying and recopying wrong info.
I have a couple thousand people on my Ancestry tree so far and it’s fun to do.
1 person likes this
@momalisa65 (1971)
• United States
22 May 18
@Srbageldog Yes you should add what you know. I wish more people were interested in genealogy and would make public family trees so we could all figure out how we are related.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
19 May 18
I still need to figure out how to navigate these genealogy websites. There's not a lot of info on Ancestry about my mom's side of the family, or my dad's mom's side. So perhaps I need to put it there myself! At least what I know, anyway.
A lot of the family trees I found for my dad's father's side didn't even have all of his children listed...he had 10 kids but the most anyone seems to know of are just the oldest two. I have found myself yelling at the computer "No, he had more kids than that!" LOL I understand the frustration about finding wrong info.
@LadyDuck (457881)
• Switzerland
12 Mar 18
@Srbageldog The mother of my father lived with us. She used to talk to me every day about life when she was a kid and then a young girl. She mentioned the names of her parents and grandparents. The same used to do the mother of my mom. I spent part of my summer vacation in her home in the countryside.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
12 Mar 18
I used to ask my maternal grandmother about her family and what life was like when she was growing up, but she was always very vague about it. I once asked my paternal grandmother about her childhood and her family and she called up my dad and demanded that he put a stop to my "pestering" her. So I never asked her again.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
16 Mar 18
@LadyDuck That is wonderful that you got to hear your grandmother's stories.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
17 Mar 18
It is hard to trace back that information if you don't have names to start with. You might be able to find your great grandparents on ancestry and learn more by tracing back their families.
1 person likes this
@nela13 (55698)
• Portugal
17 Mar 18
@Srbageldog It would be really interesting find out where I come from 
@scarlet_woman (23465)
• United States
12 Mar 18
only to the extent of finding dad's family.turned out his dad had a 3rd and possibly 4th wife.was surprised they turned up in VA instead of WVA tho.
i guess the mines bought their land..
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
17 Mar 18
That's interesting they turned up in a different state. I was surprised to discover that my ancestors were from Texas. I don't one what European countries they originated from, since there've been here since the 1700s.
1 person likes this
@CaptAlbertWhisker (32507)
• Calgary, Alberta
16 Mar 18
Yup and I am a total Mutt. I have European, East Asian, Native American,Southeast Asian,Pacific Islander and 5 percent middle eastern.Native American and Asian are my dominant genes.
1 person likes this
@CaptAlbertWhisker (32507)
• Calgary, Alberta
17 Mar 18
@Srbageldog Suddenly I remember the White supremacist who have dna test only to find out he is 25 percent subsahran African. In theory I think you got the middle eastern dna because some Middle eastern countries use to be a part of the Roman empire.
In theory I think you got the middle eastern dna because some Middle eastern countries use to be a part of the Roman empire.@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
17 Mar 18
I think most of us are mutts. It's cool you know your ancestry! I did a DNA test and was predominantly Irish, British, and Scandinavian, with a small percentage of Native American/Asian, West African, and Middle Eastern genetics. I also had a higher than average amount of Neanderthal variants in my DNA. I guess I'm not fully homosapien.
@andriaperry (116860)
• Anniston, Alabama
11 Mar 18
Its free at the local libraries. I had looked into a little but I get bored with that type of stuff.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
12 Mar 18
That's awesome that it's free there! Yeah, I always start looking and then grow bored after a while, especially with so little info to go off of. It's just all names and dates, basically. No details about anybody, like who they were, what they were like, what they did for a living. It would be neat to know those things.
@Hannihar (129388)
• Israel
11 Mar 18
I started out looking for family here in Israel and then a friend of mine on facebook said she would help me but what she did was help me find out information about my family that I did not know and then when i looked again for it I cannot find it and when I tried to find it myself I could not. Now, I feel sad.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
12 Mar 18
Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that. I hope you're able to find it again.
1 person likes this
@Hannihar (129388)
• Israel
12 Mar 18
@Srbageldog
Thanks StacyB, but, the information is gone. I just remember a little bit in my head.
1 person likes this
@Srbageldog (7716)
• United States
12 Mar 18
That is good. I'm glad you have access to that information. 
1 person likes this
@rheicel (7068)
• Philippines
17 Mar 18
Nope, I haven't done it. It will be hard for me to trace my roots from my father side because my great-grandfather changed his surname.
