What "interesting finds" did you come across in your research?

[Lefty48197]

Not necessarily scandals, but positive stories too. I got interested in genealogy when a cousin of my dad's traced our family back to colonial New England before 1640. A fairly prominent family, with deep military ties, and even a marriage to a lady who was a cousin of the colonial Gov. Wentworth of New Hampshire. A pretty fascinating story, as this family started out as member's of the King's army, and wound up taking part in the Revolution.
We have another branch of the family that appears to have fled to Canada after the war of 1812.

Like many English families that trace their roots to Colonial America, we have some that are said to be connected to well documented European royal family histories.

Another fascinating part of my family history is a connection to Robert "Mulatto Robin" Pearl of Frederick Co., MD. Robert was a slave who was freed by his master, and presumed father, upon the father's death in 1699. Robert went on to be a prominent gentleman land owner in Frederick Co. in the early 1700's, and an African-America at that! Considering I come from a lily-white family, that's a little more interesting to me, than it may be to you! I find it to be another great story to pass on!

We also have a Civil War naval veteran, several other veterans, small town politicians, business owners. One angel genealogy researcher sent me a copy of a large newspaper ad for a saloon my gr grandfather ran in western Iowa around 1900. It's one of my coolest genealogy posessions!

One semi scandal was a set of gr gr grandparents who were married, and their first child was born six months later. All documented. That must have raised some eyebrows back in 1869!

Any interesting stories you care to share?

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Several...

one of my ancestors was the first attorney-general of the Maryland colony, which I found rather interesting.

Another, by the name of Thomas Savage, came to Virginia as a cabin boy on a ship of the Virginia Company in 1608; he was given as a hostage to the chief the English called "Powhatan" (the father of Pocahontas) in exchange for one of his tribe to take back to England to be presented to the Queen. He lived with the natives for several years, learning their language (he later acted as interpreter and intermediary between the colonists and natives), and apparently came to be regarded as a son by Powhatan, who presented him with the gift of 9000 acres on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

Some of my ancestors were Quakers; the Quakers were MUCH less liberal in the 1700's (one of my ancestors was basically excommunicated for attending a non-Quaker wedding).

And my 4th great-aunt married Mathew Brady, a somewhat famous early photographer; you've probably seen his work even if the name isn't familiar (he took the picture of Lincoln that the portrait on the penny is based on).

[BlackVelvetElvis]

2. My ggg grandfather was present at the Yorktown surrender.

Which ended the American revolution. He was with the VA militia. His grave is marked with a handmade, very crude stone and one from the government.

I love your story about your possible slave relative. Doesn't a mystery make research more interesting? These people were human and not just names and dates.

[Cooley Hurd]

6. My great-great Grandfather was at Appomattox Court House...

...on surrender day, 9 Apr 1865. He was with the 9th NY Heavy Artillery Battalion.

Also, my great-great-great-great Grandfather, Cooley Hurd, was captured by the British in the Revolutionary War. He served with the CT militia.

My great Granduncle, Clarence Miller, was President of McCormick Spice, Co in the 1930's-1940's. He even left my paternal grandmother (his niece) most of his estate, but his ne'er-do-well, estranged son sued and got the loot. :( Oh, what I could've done with all that SPICE MONEY!:9

[China_cat]

3. After he died

we found out that my grandfather was a twin. Verified it through census records up to age 10 and then his twin sister disappears. Nobody in the family even knew about it, Grandpa never told us. And now we have no idea of what happened to Leona, where she went, if she died, lived, nothing.

I want to know who she was and more about her. The chances that I will ever find out are extremely slim now, though.

[fudge stripe cookays]

5. Have you found the family in censuses just before that?

I would start there.

Chances are, she probably did die, and the family just didn't want to talk about it because it made them sad. My father had an older sister who died before he was born, and the family never talked about her much.

If you know the town where they were living, find the county, then try doing searches of nearby cemeteries to where they were living. You can do it through rootsweb.

Let me know what you're looking for. I'm getting ready to go on a research trip this June. I might be able to help; since I'll be in 3 states.

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[China_cat]

8. As far as we can find from family still living

Nobody knows about this child at all. She was listed in the 1910 census (6 years old at the time) but there's no census records for the area where they lived for 1920 or 1930.

It also gets strange because their mother died when they were 4 and she was sent back to her birth family for burial...not interred in the family plot. We know where Jesse's grave is (g-grandma)but there is no grave anywhere, nor any record of a death or burial, for Leona (grandpa's twin). And my great-grandfather's second wife gave birth to a daughter less than a year after the first one died so we have to wonder what was up with that one.

It's all so tantalizing and I wish to hell there were time machines so I could go back and see just what did happen. My ggrandfather was a founder of the KKK in PA...targeting Jews and Catholics as there were no blacks in the area at the time...so we have to wonder if maybe he found one of those religions in his first wife's background and used that as an excuse to try to wipe her and her daughter out of the family. I KNOW that my grandfather and his brothers by Jesse despised their stepmother, didn't have anything good to say about their father and got out as quick as they could.

The only real justice was that the old man only had daughters with his second wife...except for one son who had birth defects and was considered about as valuable as another daughter.

[cornermouse]

9. You might consider the posssibility that she was mentally

or physically disabled. My grandmother had a sister who was sent to live in an institution at a young age. She remained there till she died a few years later. I don't think the instituions of that day took very good care of their charges in those days.

[Kindigger]

4. My Eight Great Grandpa

James and Anna Dilworth, of Lancaster England, were Quaker ministers. They came on the second ship "the Lamb", after William Penn came over on the "Welcome". (May have ship names transposed.

They were given 1000 acres of land by Penn. A picture of their original log home, with later addition can be found by googling "Dilworthtown Inn" which is now a posh restaurant near Chester, PA. Dilworthtown is a National Historic District.

A newspaper clipping from the 1700's says that "James Dilworth was instrumental in helping George Washington find a crossing over the Delaware River."

Looking at land records, his land could very well be the site of the famous picture. :)

How was I led to these people?

My Dad's first name is Dilworth, which stumped me for a very long time. What mother in her right mind would name her kid THAT? It is my Grandmother's Great Grandma's maiden name.

An unfortunate sidenote: I lost this whole family tree after a computer crash two years ago. Over 5,000 Quakers were lost, as the genealogy program would not let me make a GEDOM file. It kept telling me there were too many errors. The truth is...the program was not recognizing the 18 James', 15 Rachels, etc. as separate people, even though they had different dates, places, and children.

I am still grieving its loss, and have not had the heart to begin reconstruction. I knew the puter was getting ready to crash, but the task of hand writing all the information was impossible.

When I do start again, it WILL be backed up on paper!

[fudge stripe cookays]

7. Oh LORD!

I don't envy you, dear.

I have three whole families traced into the 1600s on mine, and when I went and made the transition from newbie to "serious genealogist". I took my entire tree (where I had just been posting whatever I found, pell mell, with no sources), and began meticulously sourcing every fact about every human being in it.

It took FOREVER, and I back up constantly to CDs etc, because I don't want to go through that hell again!

My Graveline family is a lot like yours. Just about every kid in this family was named in the Quebecois manner. Since the patron saints of New France were Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist, just about every freaking kid, grandkid, great grandkid, etc was named Marie Madeleine or Jean Baptiste! When one kid died, they'd name the next kid the exact same thing, which was also common.

I was using Family Tree Maker for Windows; I think it's version 6. And I've never upgraded. It has always been very stable for me; I've never had a problem creating gedcoms for those folks. Just FYI, if you're looking for something stable. They probably have some decent copies on Ebay or something.

I wish you luck getting your bunch re-entered!
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[franmarz]

10. Tracing genealogy has been an off or on again for about 20 years

Now that I am retired, I have done as much as I think my family is interested in, if they want more , they can go to Utah.
I did discover some interesting moments in our history.
The first ancestor was a Stephen Richardson-a british soldier-who went to Ireland, there-he seduced the governors daughter-Jane Montgomery, in Londonerry, so they had to set sail for America. Here they landed in 1738 at Glocester, Mass. AS the story unfolded, there were 7 sons, also some daughters, but they decided to travel westward. As they traveled, they met a family named Gott.
Now the interesting part is that 7 Richardson sons married 7 Gott daughters, and as they produced children, they named the children after their brothers and sisters. Talk about mixing up the generations, I really had to watch the dates on that one. Some people could care less, and some people love genealogy.What a wonderful pasttime.

[Greylyn58]

11. I have been researching my different family histories

for several years and have found it to be a fascinating and frustrating experience. For every new discovery I make with one family I find another refuses to yield any secrets. My one regret is that I didn't start down this road when more of the older members of my family were still alive.

One of the interesting things I did discover concerns my g-g-grandfather on my mom's side. His name was William Medlin and lived in Union County, NC. Among the things I've found was that he was married 2 times and I'm related through his 2nd wife, Sarah. He was the father of 18 children--11 with his first wife and 7 with Sarah (grandpa kept busy) :)

The most interesting thing I found is that William Medlin was among a group of citizens from Mecklenburg and Anson counties who petitioned the State Legislature for the creation of a new County named Union.

One of the more interesting stories I've found concerned my g-g-g-grandfather, Lazarus Damron/Dameron. He was already married when he met my g-g-g-grandmother Jane Jarrell, but his wife was mentally ill. Do to the morals of that time(18th Century) he couldn't divorce her, so Jane became his Common-Law wife and bore him 5 children. Since they were never married all of their children kept her name. I'm directly related to their first child, Rev. John Jarrell.

During the Revolutionary War, Lazarus had served as a scout in the Revolutionary Spy Service, spying on the Indians and British activities west of the Alleghany Mountains. He was still a teenager. He kept track of the Indians' migrations so that settlements could be warned when Indians approached. He, and other similar "Indian spies", followed the Indians into Kentucky and probably north to the Ohio River, and it was probably through this scouting activity that he became familiar with the Big Sandy River area of Kentucky. In 1779 Lazarus and James Fraley took part in an expedition sent to pursue marauding Wyandotte Indians who were attacking frontier settlers west of the Alleghenies. Again, in 1789, he was one of ten men selected to pursue a group of Indians who had attacked a frontier family, capturing and abducting a woman and her infant daughter. After the victory of General Anthony Wayne's militia at Fallen Timbers, in 1794, the Kentucky area was finally safe for settlement, and in 1795 about 75 families, including Lazarus Damron's, settled in the area which is present day Pike County.

Just some of the neat stuff I've run across in researching my family.

[fudge stripe cookays]

12. That IS interesting!

Amazing that you've managed to find out so much about Lazarus and his adventures. I like finding out about the early settlers and their day-to-day life, including interactions with the Indians.

My 8th great grandfather Urbain Baudreau de Gravelines helped to settle Quebec (New France, at the time). He became a syndic in Montreal. There's a plaza there named after him now.

His father-in-law Blaise was part of a party that went out from the settlement and got scalped by Iroquois.

The interesting thing is that my husband (reprehensor) has Metis (mostly Cree) and Iroquois blood. We tell everyone that his ancestors were scalping my ancestors, but my ancestors were oppressing his ancestors first. :D

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[Greylyn58]

13. I was lucky with Lazarus

There was a book published about the early settlers and families from that area of Kentucky called "The Big Sandy Valley: A history of the people and country from the earliest settlement to the present time" and there was info about grandpa Lazarus and his adventures.

My g-g-g-grandma Jane(Lazarus' commom-law wife)was half Native American. My research says her Mom was full Cherokee. I'm still digging on that portion of the family. Just making some headway.

Sounds like you have some interesting family history as well. :)

[fortyfeetunder]

14. How old was my great grandma?

My maternal grandmother's mom's tombstone has only a birth year

However, research into the one census listed her as being 17 years old, which would have given her a birthdate in four years earlier.

It leads to some startling conclusions. We know her marriage to her husband (the great grandpa) was her second, her first husband mysteriously died shortly after wedding service. (the marriage was not consummated).

So we're wondering...did she get married at 17 or 13?

[VRine]

15. Interesting Suit

I have an ancestor a wealthy planter at Ste. Genevieve MO. who had one family with his French wife and another with his mistress, described in records as a free mulatto. Both had ten children with him.
When he died in 1798, his mistress sued his white family for a share of the estate and for acknowledgment of the paternity of her ten children. She won a small settlement and the right of her children to use his name, as shown in a lengthy transcript (in French) in the Ste. Genevieve Archives.

I was truly surprised that a woman of color could win a lawsuit during that time period.