Fun with genealogy.

[Spider Jerusalem]

I feel rather...weird. Been bored, and doing a bit of genealogical research online...I just found out that I am distantly related to no fewer than twenty United States Presidents. Washington, Jefferson, and the Roosevelts I can live with. Even Grant and Nixon. But the Bushes? Ouch. I feel...unclean, somehow.

[areschild]

1. Lyndon B. Johnson

married into my line. At least, he was a Democrat.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Yeah...

and at least Johnson actually cared about stuff like civil rights, too...if it wasn't for Vietnam, we'd remember him as a great President...

[areschild]

5. Thanks.

I needed that. :)

[SWOtivated]

3. Im related to the Roosevelts

And Churchill, I can live with that. Although Ideologicall FDR and I have had our differences.

[trof]

4. Hi, cousin.

George Washington's grandfather was my great, great, I-forget-how-many
grandfather.

[SheilaT]

6. How in the world do you find out that stuff?

n/t

[bbernardini]

7. Yeah, how?

I'm just getting started on that sort of thing, and I'm pretty lost.

[carpetbagger]

8. Here's how to do it...

1. Look at every scrap of paper in your home, and write down all the information you can find of birth dates, death dats, marriages, etc.

2. Call all your old relatives and hit them up for information. "Who were your grandparents, when were they born, died, emigrated, married, what did they do and where did they live, where are they buried, what were they like?" That kind of stuff.

3. This should get you a list of names dating back 3-4 generations. Hopefully, someone's already collected a lot of this. Hit Google with first and last names, or first and last names with towns, or two names together. The names with "genealogy" added are also helpful.

4. Go to rootsweb.com. Type in your name (Bernardini?) and see what pops up. Two free resources here are the Social Security Death Index, and the Obituary Daily Times (obits.rootsweb.com). These will pull up more recent information of deaths, and many of the obituaries are online or otherwise available later on in your library.

5. Get your hands on some of the census and other databases. Ancestry.com has a money-back guarantee, something like 30 days, on this. So get all your information together and start going through them. Everything 1930 and older is released, so you should (if your family lived in the US then) be able to get names, ages (although these aren't always accurate), and other useful information from here. They also have some useful databases, so get all the information you can out of it in the 30 days. Another alternative would be to go either to your local library or to your local LDS church to look at this stuff, which is often on CD. The Mormons are very gracious and helpful with all comers, Mormon or not, and they've got little family history libraries in many, if not most, of their facilities. (The reason is that they baptize their ancestors).

Then just keep repeating steps 1 through 5.

Also, there's a site, something like ellisislandrecords.com or org, that has some of the immigration records available.

[underseasurveyor]

10. Another good website

is cyndislist.com

TONS, tens of thousands of links, ideas and resources.
A good place to start.

But by far the MOST important step is to talk to those older relatives and write it all down before they are gone.

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. THe Web can be a useful tool for discovering information.

There are a LOT of family associations for different surnames...HERE http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Genealogy/Surnames/?tc=1 is a good place to start for that. And a lot of them have quite extensive research compiled. So looking for your last name or that of known ancestors and going from there would be another angle of approach in addition to those already mentioned. And if nothing else some of them can fill in the distant end of the picture, too.

I was doing this, researching the history of some of the surnames in my line, and discovered that I'm apparently descended from the Viking raider from whom Normandy takes its name...there are Sinclairs in my mother's line; the name comes from the Abbey of St. Clair, where Hrolf Ganger signed the treaty with Charles the Simple that made him Count of Rouen and lord of what would become Normandy. WHich means I'm also descended from Charlemagne, and related to almost everyone of significance in Western history since 1000 AD or so (and likely can claim most people of European descent as cousin on top of it).

Strange feeling...somehow history seems a bit closer when you can read of something and think of the people as not distant unknown historical figures but relatives. If I were a conspiracy theorist I'd probably start believing in the Illuminati, at this point. Heh.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

11. Remember that not everything online is 100% accurate

but it sure is fun.
I'm not only related to the Bushes but Bill Clinton as well.