Have you ever traced your family tree ?

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

If so , where did you start , and how far ( year wise ) did you go back ?

I was just joking with my mom and how we could be related to Bush by some sick twist of fate lol . My ancestry wraps all over the world from Africa , to lands of Cherokee , to Spain , to the Netherlands to France and who knows where else . It would be cool to trace my ancestry , its something I have always been interested in .

[madison2000]

1. I got back to primates very quickly so I stopped. n/t

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

2. I don't know whether to laugh or what ...

so I guess you found out you were related to Dubya :shrug: ?

[madison2000]

5. I've never really been interested, but one of my aunts is researching

my fathers side of the family so I will be interested in what she comes up with. So far, a Serbian orthodox priest and another serb who was killed by nazis during WWII. Only one of my grandparents was serbian, so thats just a little piece of it.

[autorank]

3. I'm adopted so it's pretty hard but...

My family had a Mayflower ancestor, John Howland, who they'd talk about from time to time with some pride. I decided to do a little research when I was about 12 and found out that he was indeed distinguished. As I recall, one of his distinctions was shooting and killing a competitor of his. Seems Howland and Miles Standish had some exclusive deal to screw the Native Americans (i.e., trade with them). The interloper, a true capitalist, wanted to compete so they shot him. Big investigation. I brought this up along with the hard evidence the next Thanks Giving. What a riot! As I grew older it became a family joke, we're related to the first perpetrator of murder for profit in the "New World."

Be careful, you never know what you'll find.

[Maple]

4. Ask everyone

in your immediate family for every name they remember of a past relative. Also any dates they know. Get locations, stories, anything they can remember

You could get a couple of generations back doing that, and discover what country each group came from. Then you can check with the records in those countries.

[Coastie for Truth]

6. My grand dad told me that we were related to Leon Trotsky

-- my aunt would always tell him "Poppa - quit filling his head with nonsense" -- also dated a girl who was a 3rd or 4th cousin of mine - who said that "we" were related to Leon Trotsky.

So, I quit looking.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

7. Wow ...

[Maple]

11. Yeah I got a lot

of wild stories too, but it was fun discovering the truth. :D

[disillusioned1]

8. Here's Bush/Kerry family tree

Seems they're related:



http://msn.ancestry.com/landing/strange/bush4/tree.htm

[CottonBear]

9. My Aunt married Davey Crockett.

She was his second wife. The first one died very young. My Aunt's nephew went with Davey to the Alamo. So much for that branch of the family tree! My grandfather was the executor of Crockett's estate.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. You need to work backwards from yourself.

Interrogate your grandparents if they're still living, find out all you can about your great-grandparents and beyond and then start working to fill in the gaps. You'll need to consult census records, deeds for homes, military records, immigration, etc. You can find a lot of information online but some of the sites charge fees and you'll also probably need to visit libraries, National Archives, Family History Centers (run by the Mormons.)

My uncle (father's brother) traced that side of the family back to the 1500s in England, all with good documentation. I am finding my mother's family much harder to trace but it it fun turning up a fact every now and then. Be aware that what the family tells you may not turn out to be true. For example, my great-grandmother who was supposedly born in Dublin turned out to have been born in NY, but her parents were Irish-born.

Good luck! For starters, Google Cyndy's genealogy site, which lists hundreds of links, including some for African genealogy, etc.

[latteromden]

12. Yes, actually! Well, my Norwegian side. Turns out I have family there,

but I haven't been able to find out whatever happened to the old family farm. We're actually planning to go visit the area sometime (Sogn og Fjordane kommune <"county">, i vest-Norge ).

Edit: Okay, I just realised that, in my last sentence, I started rambling on using Norwegian words. Sorry about that. :X I stuck English translations in there, even though a Norwegian kommune isn't really an American county, but it's as close as I can get.

[barb162]

13. yeah and I got nowhere. I can't go beyond my grandparents and they are

dead.

[Thor_MN]

29. If they lived in the United States, You could probably go back further

via US Census info. If they can be found as children with their parents, that can lead back until immigration. The hardest part is usually getting back to the "old country." Death certificates can also lead back, they usually have parents names on them, but that sometimes is misleading. The information is often provided by a grieving relative that may not be in the best state of mind at the time.

I am fortuante in that much of my family came from Norway to Minnesota and has remained here. Both Norway and Minnesota have very good records for tracing family history. I have info on some branches of my family back to about 1490. Much of that line is work done by others, but I have done quite a bit tracing my family and families of cousins back into Norway and Sweden. I have info on all 16 great,great grandparents and 29 of 32 of my greatx3 grandparents.

[barb162]

32. I tried looking on the Ellis Island page and got nowhere; I don't

know which ports they came in to the US or if they perhaps came in through Canada. They came about 1905-1910ish. They were from what is now the Czech Republic (at that time Austria-Hungary, sometimes called Bohemia and sometimes other name as the borders were changing). Also there is the problem of misspellings of eastern European names when the customs people wrote names.... I found last names of my grandparents on that Ellis Island site but no first names matched at all; first names weren't even close.

Let me ask you this, if you know the first and last names and the basic area down to a town or city in Europe where you think they came from, what do you do next, especially if you don't know the language there. Do you write to the city or town government there in their language for birth records?

[barb162]

34. ps, all 4 of my grandparents came here as young adults and I

am amazed at how far back you have gotten on your family tree.

[CBHagman]

38. You'd be surprised at how much you can find.

I have been interested in my family history for decades but really didn't get down to business doing my own research until about five years ago. The good news is that this is an interest you can return to again and again over the years, and there will always be something more to look up.

Let me tell you what happened to me. I had some information, thanks to the efforts of relatives, about my mother's side and my paternal grandfather's branch of the family. That left my paternal grandmother, who died almost 43 years ago. I had two photographs of her, a prayer card from her funeral, my memories of my father's stories of her, and a single memory of seeing her once during my childhood.

I used the prayer card, which had the date of her death, to assemble enough information to write to the vital records office of the state in which she died. Through that one effort, I got her full name at baptism, her date of birth, and the names of her parents.

All that proved to be a jumping-off place. From there I moved on to obtaining her birth certificate, my father's birth certificate, my great-grandparents' marriage license, and more Census listings, city directory entries, death certificates, and other documents than I can name. I've located a second cousin, found other distant relatives on message boards, and even landed a photograph of my great-grandfather, circa 1886. I've visited the old neighborhoods and churches my ancestors frequented, and I've attended church where they worshipped and paid my respects at their grave sites.

So please don't give up. You can find something, even if you've lost many, many relatives with firsthand knowledge (that's also my problem). Who would have thought a prayer card would have turned up all that I've found the past five years?

The other posters' advice regarding getting documentation is excellent, and there are many ways to go about that. Interviews, looking up newspaper articles, writing to vital records offices, and searching online play their roles, though you will not want to confine yourself to any one of those.

Family Tree magazine has many excellent articles, suggestions, and online links for research. Consider also state and county resources, such as nonprofit genealogical societies. They're absolute gems.

Be warned that you will run into mistakes even in official documents. There will be transcription errors, fudging about ages, and possibly even successful attempts to cover up scandal (i.e., suicides listed as having died "accidentally"). But the more you accumulate, the more you will be able to make some educated guesses about your family.

Happy hunting! Here are some really useful links:

www.familysearch.org (Contains the 1880 U.S. Census, as transcribed by LDS volunteers)

www.ellisisland.org (But remember that people came in through many ports and immigration centers, not just Ellis Island!)

www.usgenweb.com

www.cyndislist.com/

[LDS Jock]

14. I've worked on mine, off and on, for years

As others have mentioned, the first step is to question your ancestors still alive. Learn as much as you can about them and the people they tell you about who have already passed. It is amazing how much people can tell you. I would also recommend making sure to write down and document every thing you find, whether told by relatives or on documents once you begin searching them. You can get a free download of a computer program to help you keep track of everything here. The Personal Ancestral File is the program I'm talking about. http://www.ldscatalog.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10001&categoryId=7000000&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=100069&level=2&bcname=Software%20Downloads%20-%20Free&top=Y&resetCat=N&replBC=subcatlist100069

That same site also gives tips for beginners. http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Home/Welcome/frameset_information.asp

This site and the program are provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The are also the owners of the largest genealogical library in the world located next to the temple in Salt Lake City. Anyone, including non-members, have access to all their records. You don't even have to go to SLC to access the info. Local churches across the country have family history centers in them. You are welcome to come and use their resources, and the volunteer will also help to guide you. They are not to proselyte while you are there, but if you ask them why the church takes such an interest in genealogy you are fair game. Also too, before someone brings this up, the church does this partially to get names to do baptisms for the dead in the temples. The research you do is yours alone, and will NOT be submitted to a temple for ordinances unless you do it yourself. Do not be afraid to use the resources because you don't want them taking your info. It will not happen.

Depending on your individual family, much of the research may already be done. For example, using the church's resources, once I got back to a certain ancestor I found someone else had done 250 years of additional research for me. It was all listed, names, places, dates, and also documentation where the info came from so you could verify it yourself. The last step is important. Some of the information you get there might not be accurate, so it is always a good idea to verify information. And it is also a reminder, please document where you get your own info. You may need to go back and recheck it from time to time to get additional leads. It is also handy so you can keep info in two places. I have my hard copies of everything, which amounts to hundreds of pages of info. I also have it all my computer with the info of where it came from in case I lose my info or it is destroyed and I need to replace it. It is a lot of work, but lots of fun once you get going. Give it a try and don't be afraid to ask questions. Genealogists love their hobby and enjoy helping newbies get going.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

17. Thanks a bunch LDS Jock :)

[LDS Jock]

18. if you have any questions as you go along

feel free to ask. I love doing it. I got burned out a bit, but now you are getting me thinking about starting up again. If you are ever in SLC for any reason, you really should go to the Family History Library. It will blow you away, and I promise you you will leave there with a fist full of new documents about newly discovered ancestors.

[JVS]

15. OH! This just screams for the "have you ever traced your family jewels"..

copycat thread!

[1monster]

16. Once you get back about four generation (in this country), there is loads

of information on the Internet. Just google the name of a family ancestor and see what comes up. I've got my husband's family tree all the way back to 1639 when the founder of the American branch came to Connecticut from Wales. I have my father's paternal branch back to 1852 when the founder of that family came to Pennsylvania from Bravaria. My paternal grandmother's family is traced back to her paretns (still have lots of research to do).

My mother's family is more difficult because her mother died when she was 18 months old and her father farmed the kids out, however, we have traced some of it. Her maternal grandmother's brother was Amelia Earheart's father.

It can be a fascination journey thorugh history. I was amazed to see how many times two different families could marry into each other. But then, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in this country, there were not that many families to choose from, and most quite a few of the women folk died in child birth. The husbands would remarry and go on to have very large families.

[LDS Jock]

19. death from child birth.. it is amazing how often it happened

It is also amazing the number of children people had. You are right, men seldom stayed single for long, and once remarried, it was back to having babies. The differences you see between them and now is what makes it so fascinating to do.

[Steve Nash is god 13]

20. nope

:dem::yourock::beer:

[Mr. McD]

21. My family has been traced to around1100 A.D. and before.

My ancestors were regarded as the heads of the ancient race of Conn,( Conn of the Hundred Battles 2nd century Irish king) and the lineal heirs of the kings of the Dalriadic Scots.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

22. Cool ...

[aquaman]

23. My wife is obsessed with this stuff........

I had to complete a genogram in grad school and since then my wife has gone crazy researching both our families. I have German, English, Irish, and Swedish blood mainly. I am really white. I teach at a local college and they asked me to teach a cultural diversity class. I declined and stated that I was way too white to teach a diversity class and I meant it. We have traced one side of my family to the 1500's. Interesting stuff.

[Seabiscuit]

24. Early Middle Ages. Alsacian region of France, near Lake Geneva.

Sugnet derived from pig farmers in Alsace who invented "suuiii" as pig calls.

BTW, the best sausages in France still come from Alsace.

[Vert]

25. sort of

My father's brother's family is Mormon, so he's traced quite a bit of my paternal ancestory and supposedly it can be found on the LDS site, but I haven't found it yet. My mother has been occasionally tracing her lineage, but it's going slow. I'm thinking of picking up where she left off as I know it's important to her.

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. Yes...

I sort of fell into it by accident...came across a genealogy site, decided to see if I could find any of my known ancestors...I did, so I decided to see how far back I could trace my ancestry. The furthest back I was able to get with my father's family (direct male line) is to the first immigrant to the colonies, in 1665. I was able to go back a lot further through female lines, though. The first ancestor I found in what's now America arrived in Virginia in 1608. And crossinng the Atlantic, I've traced a few lines all the way to the sixth century...once you find a connection to European royalty (which is actually quite common), you can go back through the ancestors of Charlemagne...582 AD is the earliest, though. And if you connect to one European royal family in the Middle Ages, you connect to all of them...so my ancestry includes not only English, Irish, German, Scottish, and Dutch but also French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, et cetera.


And I discovered that I AM related to Bush (ninth cousin, twice removed) :(

[Momof1]

27. Yep, back around the 1600's

We came from France the (Guillames) (sp???) It was really fascinating because when my family moved over here they changed their names to Converts...

And the name then changed down the line to Confer's.

My cousin the one who actually did the family tree, published a book about it. I would love to do my mothers side of the family one of these days.

[elehhhhna]

41. 1600's here, too--from Holland

We had the family crest (from Great-Grandpa, who brought the docs here when he came over in the early 1900s) but the family in the Netherlands was not aware of it--boy were they thrilled!

Hub's great aunt perished on the Titanic, and her younger sister was Al Capone's manicurist at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago.

It's amazing how interested ones children can become in history when they feel a connection.

[achtung_circus]

28. You start with what you know.

There is software to help keep things straight if you are so inclined. paper works well, too.

Start with births, deaths, marriages. There's a lot of material on-line, databases, documents, the Mormons.

My family has bee traced back to 1734 when an ancestor landed in the city of New York, wife and kids in tow. They were off the ship Pink Mary which had travelled from Amsterdam with a load of Palatine Germans. I guess you'd call us Tories cuz we came to Canada after the Revolution.

[Thor_MN]

30. One thing to watch out for is for family trees going back "too far"

It's not uncommon to hear of people who trace their family back to a 12th century Saint or further. Most of these rely on being related through "Bob" living in London "about" 1563 or something like that. It's fun to collect names, but you really aren't doing yourself a favor by taking leaps of faith. If you want to be serious about it, try to document everything as best you can. There's no doubt that there are people alive today that are related to say, St. Francis of Assisi, but the odds of your ancestor "Bob" being the same "Bob" in a major city that was the illegitimate 6th great grandson of whoever might not be that good.

As for me, all my ancestor's were poor farmers. One of them was from a family that had six children of seven do very well for themselves. Guess who's a descendant of the one that was obsessed with finding gold on his farm where the only shiny stuff was mica? It's written in a local history book that you can still see holes in the ground where he used to dig. I guess that I can say that I'm related to the parent's of that successful family, but that's about it.

[sandnsea]

31. Yes, it's fun!

I found alot of cool stuff on my family. I had some info, but it was all online anyway. I have such a unique maiden name, there is never any doubt that if I find that name, those people are my people. So that helped alot. Also, my paternal family were French and came down from Canada in the 16-1700's, so they're included in some local tourist history type sites as well. I learned alot of little things, like one was a baker, another was in the French Navy. But I've still only got my GGGG's to 1750 or so in Kaskaskia Illinois. I just cannot find anything on them before that. Some of the maternal lines I've traced back to Virginia though, so that's been fun.

cyndislist.com

That's the best place to start. I had thought at one point to suggest a genealogy forum, but I've got so many irons in the fire. One of these days I'll get back to it.

[livinginphotographs]

33. My mom did.

She found out that I'm distantly related to Celine Dion.

I could've gone my whole life without knowing that. Ugh.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

39. And also Madonna .

[Stop_the_War]

35. I have traced it back to a Revolutionary War soldier....

I traced it back 10 generations to John Matthews (born 1749, died 1800) who was a Private in the 3rd MD Regiment in the American Revolution.

[steely]

36. I did! - it's fun and frustrating, but you can always put it down...

and pick it up again later.

I've been doing it off/on since '88.
Listen to what Thor says above, document as much as poss.

Start with youself, get your parents', and maybe pick one side.
hammer at it until you hit a wall, and then start on another line.

sometimes you may find someone already did a piece.

It's hard to say how far you go back, because I have 1 or 2 lines back to the 1700's, but that leaves A LOT of people out. Many were poor, and the documentation is hard to find for a good portion.

The more unusal the surname, the better sometimes.
Happy hunting as they say!

be careful with info on line, you should respect family privacy of those alive, and you have to watch out for some online subscription services, as they will automatically re-sign you up for another year if you don't watch and aren't expecting it (ancestry.com for one).

[bobthedrummer]

37. We are related to a Viking-Rolf, the Norseman circa 920 A.D..

also the Fitz-Randolph's (Hearst). 7th generation American here-literally back to Mayflower.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

40. I thank everyone for their responses :)

Thank you ! :)

:bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:

[mark414]

42. my dad has a little

our family came over from ireland in the late 1800's and mostly settled in chicago. my dad has gone down to chicago to visit cemetaries and get copies of birth and death certificates, although a lot of information was lost in the chicago fire. through chance, he discovered a 4th cousin of his that lives in maryland and works for the CIA, and has found out the littlest things, like the fact that a distant relative of ours drowned in the black river in ireland in 1830...it's pretty cool stuff

[outraged2]

43. My mom did

She has traced her father's family back to the Dark Ages. Evidently our tree goes right through to Sureties of the Magna Carta. I take it all with a grain of salt ... goes back a bit to far for me to trust as reliable. My mom swears by it though. There is fairly good documentation after the first family members reached Virginia back in 1685 though. Who knows? :shrug:

[giant_robot]

44. One of my relatives did an awesome family tree for a reunion this summer.

However, after meeting some of my distant relatives at the reunion, I wish I could prune off a few limbs.

[Shopaholic]

45. We can trace my Dad's family back only to about the 1600's in

England. My Mom's family line is descended from royalty so therefore is much easier to trace that way, way back! I was pretty impressed when I found about the royal bloodlines then started reading how seriously insane some of these folks were and well, let's just say it lost it's luster for me! Anyway, we jokingly refer to my Dad's side as the "white trash" side of the family and my mom's side as the "blue bloods."