Ancestry

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Chicat
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Ancestry

Post by Chicat »

Any of you ever trace your family tree back through the years?

My uncle has taken the Italian side of my family back to a guy named Bartolomeo who was born around 1680 in the Melfi, Italy area. Apparently my family were blacksmiths and bell makers. According to him, they sold bells to churches all up and down the interior and west coast of Italy and it's entirely possible that it's our bells which ring in ancient Italian churches to this day.

My mother has traced her family back to 1640s Scotland and 1750s Barcelona directly, and even further indirectly (and through some guesswork since international records are spotty). Unfortunately our African roots can't be traced too far back (for obvious reasons), but on that side of my family there are some seriously interesting people, including a mixed race man and his son who "passed" as White and who fought for both the Confederates and Union during the Civil War, and the first Black member of the Brooklyn Fire Dept. in the late 1800s.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Longhorned »

That's awesome, Chi.

My mom has traced both of my parents' lines back to the 18th century in Sweden, England, France, and Switzerland. But what's most interesting is to learn how many generations on my father's side lived in Illinois. I went back to my roots when I moved there.

Last week I learned about my great grandfather, George. 100 years ago yesterday, he was 84 years old and picking up coal that fell off boxcars. People used to supplement their fuel in this way. He was hit by a boxcar, and game over. He's buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, like so many of my ancestors. He had been a baker and cook all of his working life.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by scumdevils86 »

I've spent a lot of time and money on Ancestry.com over the last 2 years tracking my family and my fiancee's family. Good stuff. On my dad's side I have traced back some lines to England in the 1500s and to Sweden in the 1600s. Lotta Sven Jonssons who are the son of Jon Svensson etc etc.

Most of my family on both sides going way back have been just farmers, bakers, railroad men and laborers etc. No one fancy.
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pc in NM
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Re: Ancestry

Post by pc in NM »

I've been active on ancestry.com for about five years. Have traced my roots back to late 1700's Ireland, and my ex-wife's to 1100's English aristocracy....

FYI
- three of my four grandparents were born in Ireland; 4th in Wales (his parents were from Ireland)
- both my parents were born in Wales
- I was first in nuclear family born in USA

Also have done DNA there, which has been interesting, also.
- Ireland - 82%
- Europe West - 14%
- Trace Regions - 3%

I've also done DNA analysis from 23andMe.com - not nearly as helpful for lineage tracing, BUT, I loved this tidbit:
- "An estimated 3.2% of your DNA is from Neanderthals."
- "The average for 23andMe users is 2.3%"
“If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.”

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Merkin
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Merkin »

Someone in my mother's family traced their roots back to Ireland in the late 1700s, this was before the potato famines but after the Brits took away the land from the Irish. All done going through libraries and such, even before the Internet.

However, the DNA test I took through ancestry.com says I am more Scottish than Irish. Mostly German and then Dutch.

My aunt traced my dad's family back to Prussia when they left in 1882. Again this was using just libraries. My ancestor left due to not wanting his sons to be in the Prussian military like he was. Almost all Prussian and German war records were lost in the WW2 bombings.

Took me a year or more of using the internet to find my families home town which was misspelled in the family bible, which has been lost.

Tried a free trial of ancestry.com several times, but really find anything I already didn't know.

My mom's ancestor Celestine M in his Civil War gear. He was shot in the foot and took him years to get any disability.

Image

My dad's ancestor who was born in Prussia but came over as a child, Adolph W.

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Re: Ancestry

Post by Longhorned »

They all look too formal and too stately to be the ancestors of a Merkin.
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scumdevils86
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Re: Ancestry

Post by scumdevils86 »

Found a good picture of my fiancee's 4xGreat Grandpa. Served in A Company of the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry and was wounded in the arm in 1863.

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pc in NM
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Re: Ancestry

Post by pc in NM »

Merkin wrote:Someone in my mother's family traced their roots back to Ireland in the late 1700s, this was before the potato famines but after the Brits took away the land from the Irish. All done going through libraries and such, even before the Internet.

However, the DNA test I took through ancestry.com says I am more Scottish than Irish. Mostly German and then Dutch.
"More Scottish than Irish"??

I think you all might descended from those damn "Proddy Dog" invaders!!! Erin go Bragh!!! :shock:

Actually, you might find better data from Scottish databases through ancestry.com if you can identify one or more individuals there in your family tree...
“If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.”

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ASUHATER!
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Re: Ancestry

Post by ASUHATER! »

Basically sd86 and I are white. Really white. The pasty white beacon in the sun white where you turn pink. And all our ancestors were poor dirt farmers and laborers.
i was going to put the ua/asu records here...but i forgot what they were.

i'll just go with fuck asu.
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azgreg
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Re: Ancestry

Post by azgreg »

I've only traced as far back to a hooker in the late 1800's New Orleans.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Chicat »

azgreg wrote:I've only traced as far back to a hooker in the late 1800's New Orleans.
Your great great grandfather was so much more than that. Don't you sell that saucy little sailor short.
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azgreg
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Re: Ancestry

Post by azgreg »

Chicat wrote:
azgreg wrote:I've only traced as far back to a hooker in the late 1800's New Orleans.
Your great great grandfather was so much more than that. Don't you sell that saucy little sailor short.
A man's gotta make a living.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by wyo-cat »

I had an uncle do all of the research, which I promptly misplaced, but my lack of a good filing system is another story...

We had agreed on my son's name (named after my grandpa) shortly after we knew the sex of the twins, as it turned out, my uncle's research showed that there had been a person with that first name in our family every generation but one dating back to 1703 in Virginia. I thought that was pretty cool!
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Chicat
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Chicat »

wyo-cat wrote:I had an uncle do all of the research, which I promptly misplaced, but my lack of a good filing system is another story...

We had agreed on my son's name (named after my grandpa) shortly after we knew the sex of the twins, as it turned out, my uncle's research showed that there had been a person with that first name in our family every generation but one dating back to 1703 in Virginia. I thought that was pretty cool!
We have that in our family too. Every first born male is called "Dumbshit" and second born males are known as "Numbnuts". If there's a third boy or more, they are ignored completely.

Gotta have traditions...
Of the 12 coaches, Rush picked the one whose fans have the deepest passion, the longest memories, the greatest lung capacity and … did I mention deep passion?
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The Butcher
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Re: Ancestry

Post by The Butcher »

This stuff is pretty amazing. Able to get back to the 900's on both my mom and dad's side. Mom side has been fairly well mapped (her Great Great Grandmother is Elitha Donner - yah THOSE Donner's) so people have taken the time to go waayyy back.

My dad's side is a bit interesting too. English traced way back too. Somewhere along the line there is a Cleaveland (spelled that way) but he's the guy that apparently discovered colonized Cleveland.

Also, Longshanks (from Braveheart) is on that line. William the Conquerer is along the line. I would trace back and if I found someone that had an interesting name, I'd google/wiki them to see who it was. Spent literally days/weeks doing this.

It's like a walk through your history.

I kept thinking, if we came from all these dukes and kings etc, why the F are we so poverty stricken LOL. I think we had some hippy's on our branch of the family that decided they didn't care about money and wanted to do their own thing. How lucky.

FamilySearch.org is another great ancestry tool. And it didn't seem like they were trying to hit me up for money on every turn. I believe that one is free.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by The Butcher »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Cleaveland

Moses Cleaveland That's the guy.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by CalStateTempe »

How expensive is ancestry.com?
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Longhorned »

CalStateTempe wrote:How expensive is ancestry.com?
$45 a month for all-access.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by ASUCatFan »

My Dad's wife has done a family tree for that side of the family back a few hundred years. They even traveled to Eggiwill, Switzerland, which is apparently my paternal ancestral homeland, to do research when they were in Europe last year. The thing is incredibly well researched and pretty rock solid. I also have a fairly detailed family tree from my maternal Grandmother's family, but it was blown apart three generations back by the Ancestry.com DNA test I took recently.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by FreeSpiritCat »

I just became aware of this thread and now it greatly interests me. I don't know a lot about my mother's side, other than I may be related to the Dalton gang. But I have a very good record on my father's side. My ancestors are from Germany. My direct patriarchal line (8 generations back) takes me to the revolutionary war. The two men were kidnapped from their field in Germany by the British and forced to fight as Hessians during the revolutionary war. They escaped, one was killed during the attempt, and the other fought for the revolutionary army. He eventually settled down in Pennsylvania and became a hemp farmer. We were known as hemp farmers for a long time. I know many of my father's side of the family moved to Mentone and Rochester Indiana and became farmers. What a wonderful genealogy. My father was a shining example of that tree, many I know/knew from family reunions. He received his law degree from Indiana Law School in Indianapolis. He was flawed in many ways and I was perhaps spoiled to some degree (he was 44 when I was born) because I wanted me to enjoy life when I was young and be shielded from the world. Nevertheless I still think about him a lot on how to live life with integrity and honesty. In that way he taught me well.

I live with 2 sisters who are liberal, a mother who was a democrat who loved my father unconditionally, and a brother (1 1/2 years older) he is a die hard conservative (everyone needs a thorn in their side). I grew up a Republican. Gerald Ford was the first president when I started to think for myself. I remember going to the Republican headquarters in the small Indiana town, waiting for election results with my father. And yet as big of a conservative my father was my best friend during high school was a democrat. And the family had liberal friends who we visited on occasion. Politics never made a difference on who our friends were. That would be rare today.

I remember when my father died in 87. The town of LaGrange, IN has two funeral homes, and the two were separated by party lines. Yet my father was a good friend of Carney (who owned the democrat funeral home) so the service was there. The county GOP was upset. And looking in hindsight I have to say I am so proud of my father and family who never let politics get in the way of friendship. I am so proud of the family. I sometimes come to tears that I am not able to continue the tradition.

One last story. All my grandparents were diseased when I was born so never knew any of them. Yet my father tells me when the KKK paraded through Rochester, IN my grandfather was one of the few people who would not salute them I am so proud of him. Knowing some of my family tree I have a strong belief I will meet them after death and be able to hug them and tell them I am so proud of them.

I am grateful for my lineage. I had a wonderful childhood in spite of being different. And my desire is to make a difference in other people's life (for the better) before I pass.

Jennifer
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Re: Ancestry

Post by RichardCranium »

I've traced my family name back to the Norman Conquest. The first guy with my name was a Saxon turncoat who opened the town gates for the Normans and was rewarded with a local "lord ship" (which seemed to have the equivalent rank of 'Earl' but he was not called an Earl). Less certain is why he did it - possibly he was the second son of a minor king and had a falling out with his big brother. Some people claim to have identified who this Saxon king was, but I read it as a fantasy - there is just not enough evidence to support it.

A few generations later, while a witch was being burned at the stake the local townsfolk took advantage of the event to get rid of my ancestor too. It seems he was a pedophile and they got sick of him stealing their kids and doing nasty things. His brother took the seat, but three generations later it happened again. Two generations after that, the then lord fell off his horse and drowned in a stream on his wedding day and the "lordship" passed to the family's best friend.

Spookily enough, the two families were good friends again by at least the 1950's. One of the descendants of the family that took over the "lordship" was my Dad's workmates in Michigan in the 1950's, and then in they met up again completely by accident in the 1960's in Tucson - and they lived less than a half mile apart.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Longhorned »

For those of you who trace your families back to the Norman Conquest, or even the year 900 or whatever, are you doing this by tracing genealogies? Or are you doing it through implications of the family name as documented in more recent records?

In the first case, you locate records (birth, marriage, and death certificates, etc.).

In the second case, you find a record for a family name, and then study the history of the family name. Identifying documents is hard enough and filled with all kinds of false leads.

The second case is built on the assumption that the history of a family name corresponds to a direct line through that name's history to the earliest identified documents from, say, the 1700s, for example. The weakness of the assumed correlation is documented in the relatively recent records that one finds. For example, my own last name is the last traceable fake last name that my grandfather used as a con artist in 1930s Chicago. If I followed that last name back to the French Alps in the Middle Ages, that would be a false genealogy.

I can trace my family name to the Norman Conquest, but I have no continuous string of records that correlates the name to the genes. Luckily, we were able to confirm my grandfather's real last name (a very rare name), because there's a widely available book that traces the family tree going way back.
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pc in NM
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Re: Ancestry

Post by pc in NM »

Longhorned wrote:For those of you who trace your families back to the Norman Conquest, or even the year 900 or whatever, are you doing this by tracing genealogies? Or are you doing it through implications of the family name as documented in more recent records?

In the first case, you locate records (birth, marriage, and death certificates, etc.).

In the second case, you find a record for a family name, and then study the history of the family name. Identifying documents is hard enough and filled with all kinds of false leads.

The second case is built on the assumption that the history of a family name corresponds to a direct line through that name's history to the earliest identified documents from, say, the 1700s, for example. The weakness of the assumed correlation is documented in the relatively recent records that one finds. For example, my own last name is the last traceable fake last name that my grandfather used as a con artist in 1930s Chicago. If I followed that last name back to the French Alps in the Middle Ages, that would be a false genealogy.

I can trace my family name to the Norman Conquest, but I have no continuous string of records that correlates the name to the genes. Luckily, we were able to confirm my grandfather's real last name (a very rare name), because there's a widely available book that traces the family tree going way back.
I have found a few valuable links through ancestry.com by using other family trees found through searches (and those other trees' sources - be careful, all members do not have same standards of evidence!).

I did link my Irish Paternal Grandmother to extensive family network (and some pretty rich history, too) in Silverton Colorado - previously completely unknown to any of my living relations....

The possible connections revealed through ancestryDNA have not been as fruitful to me - especially because there are no generations of my family in the US. Most relationships are 4th to 8th cousins, which would go very deep into a family tree - especially difficult for Irish databases....
“If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.”

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Re: Ancestry

Post by RichardCranium »

Longhorned wrote:For those of you who trace your families back to the Norman Conquest, or even the year 900 or whatever, are you doing this by tracing genealogies? Or are you doing it through implications of the family name as documented in more recent records?

In the first case, you locate records (birth, marriage, and death certificates, etc.).

In the second case, you find a record for a family name, and then study the history of the family name. Identifying documents is hard enough and filled with all kinds of false leads.

The second case is built on the assumption that the history of a family name corresponds to a direct line through that name's history to the earliest identified documents from, say, the 1700s, for example. The weakness of the assumed correlation is documented in the relatively recent records that one finds. For example, my own last name is the last traceable fake last name that my grandfather used as a con artist in 1930s Chicago. If I followed that last name back to the French Alps in the Middle Ages, that would be a false genealogy.

I can trace my family name to the Norman Conquest, but I have no continuous string of records that correlates the name to the genes. Luckily, we were able to confirm my grandfather's real last name (a very rare name), because there's a widely available book that traces the family tree going way back.
In my case, we have very good church registry records. The only break in all those generations is at my g-g-g grandfather whose parents records were evidently destroyed by the British in 1812. However, the family was extremely prolific for generation after generation and remained in the same township/ small county for hundreds of years. It was not too difficult to identify his likely parents, though we cannot be 100% sure - at worst we will have picked his uncle.

After that connection was made, it was easy to trace back to the first ancestor in America via available records. Just as that happened Ancestry.com gave me a free trial access to British records, and the family was solidly documented all the way back to the Norman Conquest via church registry records.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by ASUCatFan »

My Dad's wife doesn't add anything to her tree unless she has solid documentation for it. Her tree is very meticulously researched and goes back much, much further on my Paternal Grandmother's side than on my Grandfather's. She was able to find and copy actual records from before the family emigrated from Switzerland in the little Reformed church in Eggiwill when they visited there. The tree from my Maternal Grandmother seems to be partly based on legend and is not very well researched, as my Ancestry DNA results proved.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Gato Salvaje »

My wife is WAAAY into Ancestry.com.
We also took their DNA spit test they offer.
Found out I have Deep deep Acadian (later called Cajuns) roots dating to their earliest arrivals in the New World in the early 1600's. The Acadians are a pretty close knit group that didn't much mix with outsiders, so that line remains pretty well un interrupted and well documented.
The French are pretty good record keepers so we can trace it back to the 480's in France.

Among some of the highlights I found out:

Jaques Archimbalt dug the first well in Montreal
Elizabeth Thibodeau- Ied the Acadians exiled to Maryland to their new home in Louisianna
I can trace my lineage to the family trees of Madonna, Bioncee, and Ellen de Generis trough my acadian roots

Aside from the treasure trove of info on the acadian side, the rest of my info on ancestry was pretty sparse. My Croatian and spanish sides only go a couple of generations back.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by CalStateTempe »

I've requested a membership and DNA test for Christmas.

This is going to be so fun.

Also going to attempt to get Italian citizenship through my dad in 2016.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by scumdevils86 »

I"ve been wanting to do the DNA thing for a while....how detailed is it exactly? Is it just a general ethnic grouping like "you are 3/4 european and 1/4 sub saharan african" or is it more specific?
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Longhorned »

scumdevils86 wrote:I"ve been wanting to do the DNA thing for a while....how detailed is it exactly? Is it just a general ethnic grouping like "you are 3/4 european and 1/4 sub saharan african" or is it more specific?
Really specific, with percentages, regions (not just "European"), and even relative matches, which is especially important for adopted children who don't know any biological relatives.
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Merkin
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Merkin »

Go ahead and try to beat my whiteness:


Image
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scumdevils86
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Re: Ancestry

Post by scumdevils86 »

Merkin wrote:Go ahead and try to beat my whiteness:


Image
I imagine mine would look quite similar. A lot of British Isles, Scandinavia and Western Europe.
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pc in NM
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Re: Ancestry

Post by pc in NM »

Merkin wrote:Go ahead and try to beat my whiteness:


Image
I'm there.... (see above)

That northern Europe stuff might leave you with an elevated Neanderthal percentage - do you have info on that.

I think that the more generations one goes back in America, the more likely ythat mixed race bloodlines will be revealed....

I find that the more one has built a family tree, AND linked it to DNA results, the more helpful that the DNA results are to linking to family - otherwise, you just get vague percentages of shared DNA - that's not too helpful (unless it's brother, sister, parent, or first-degree relative....
“If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.”

― Kinky Friedman
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ASUHATER!
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Re: Ancestry

Post by ASUHATER! »

Good news is that if sd86 and I get the dna test we only need one. Two for one special.
i was going to put the ua/asu records here...but i forgot what they were.

i'll just go with fuck asu.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Longhorned »

ASUHATER! wrote:Good news is that if sd86 and I get the dna test we only need one. Two for one special.
You should totally lie about the cost and profit off him.
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Re: Ancestry

Post by ASUCatFan »

I have to concede defeat to Merkin.

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Re: Ancestry

Post by CalStateTempe »

And it begins.

Able to get back to great grandfathers on mom and dad's side, and the trail goes cold. One immigrated from Italy, the other left the Spanish Catholic church conquering of the southwest.

I guess he wasn't down with the Pope either in his day. ;)

Any tips on how to get through the roadblocks, esp if you don't have heaps of generations in the USA?
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Merkin »

Had a strange thing happen over the summer with my DNA at ancestry.com.

Received a couple of very strange emails from my youngest sister about my ancestry.com DNA testing. I asked her "are you not my sister?". She said that someone has been sending me messages at ancestry.com and I have not been responding to them. I told my sister I never log into that site, so never see any messages.

This person somehow found my niece (her daughter) who did have an ancestry.com account.

To make a long story short, this woman claims to be my half sister due to matching our DNA.

Seems when my dad in the USAF and stationed in a small town in Ohio in the early 1950s, he went to a party with a bunch of other airmen and local girls. And as happens at parties, they hooked up. Never saw each other again. Sure enough, the local girl gets pregnant.

Since this was the early 1950s, her parents ship her off to the big city (Columbus) where she has the baby, and they immediately take it from her and give it to the adoptive parents. The birth mother never even got to hold the baby.

Somehow, in the 1980s the child finds her birth mother and they meet. Her birth mother says that she doesn't want her husband and other kids to know that she had another baby, so they don't keep in touch.

Fast forward 30 years, and she gets a hit on ancestry.com. A few of my siblings talk about it, and decide to let dad know about it. Dad being 82 now.

Dad said he had no idea. His "new" daughter actually has a daughter herself in Phoenix, while she still lives in Ohio. So she flew to Phoenix a couple weeks ago, and met up with my dad and a couple of my siblings.

I will get to meet her in December when I go to Tucson, and she will head to Phoenix.

So something to think about when you submit your DNA!
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CalStateTempe
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Re: Ancestry

Post by CalStateTempe »

That is a crazy story.

How did your dad take the news? Sounds like pretty well, and nice for your half sister to having some sort of relationship with a biological parent.
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Merkin
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Merkin »

Think he was in shock like the rest of us! But we were all cool with it. Just had no idea.

My sisters brought it up to him, none of the brothers had the nerve. At first he didn't want to see her since he felt really embarrassed, but then warmed up to the idea.

Kind of a sad story though, Her adoptive parents couldn't have kids, and sure enough, 9 months later they have a little girl. My new sister said that her mom doted on her biological daughter, and treated the adopted daughter much more harshly. She said her adoptive dad tried to make up for it, and was her rock.

Later, my dad met my mom in the same small town, and they got married when he was stationed in Wisconsin.

My sister went through my mom's old yearbooks, and found the birth mother. So no doubt my mother and the birth mother knew each other.

My mother passed away 6 years ago due to uterine cancer. It would have been interesting to hear her thoughts.

Strange times those days. One day a student is there, next day she is gone, and comes back 6 or 7 months later.
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azgreg
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Re: Ancestry

Post by azgreg »

Everyday life can be so interesting.
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CalStateTempe
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Re: Ancestry

Post by CalStateTempe »

Wow, amazing merkin, thanks for sharing with us.
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scumdevils86
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Re: Ancestry

Post by scumdevils86 »

Crazy story Merk.

I'm so glad I've kept paying for my ancestry membership (and fold3 for military records and newspapers.com for news clippings) over the last 4-5 years off and on. It has given me so much information about my family and my wife's family. Just truly amazingly detailed stuff. I've traced some lines back to the 15th century in some cases.

Semi similar to your discovery merk...through hours and hours of research and digging through newspapers etc (not even through the dna) I was able to determine that my dad had a half brother that died in infancy that he never had heard his dad speak of. Happened almost 10 years before my dad was born and it was kind of a shock.
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Longhorned
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Longhorned »

Insane, Merkin!

Makes you wonder how many sisters and cousins somebody like Chicat hooked up with at the U before Femcat.
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Merkin
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Merkin »

Here is how my new sis found me. We thought maybe it was one of my mom's brothers that hooked up with her, but comparing our DNA history, we only matched on my dad's side, not my mom's.

That 1st cousin blond is a cousin on my mom's said, and not on her list. Don't know the other blond.




Image
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scumdevils86
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Re: Ancestry

Post by scumdevils86 »

I did the DNA thing like 5 months ago and haven't had any hits other than 3rd or 4th cousins at the closest.
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Chicat
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Chicat »

Longhorned wrote:Insane, Merkin!

Makes you wonder how many sisters and cousins somebody like Chicat hooked up with at the U before Femcat.
All of them...
Of the 12 coaches, Rush picked the one whose fans have the deepest passion, the longest memories, the greatest lung capacity and … did I mention deep passion?
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azgreg
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Re: Ancestry

Post by azgreg »

How much is that DNA service if you don't mind me asking?
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scumdevils86
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Re: Ancestry

Post by scumdevils86 »

azgreg wrote:How much is that DNA service if you don't mind me asking?
usually $100 but sometimes they have sales for $80
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Merkin
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Re: Ancestry

Post by Merkin »

Looking it up, I paid $49 in 2014, but hasn't been that cheap since. $79 is the lowest it's been since.

http://slickdeals.net/e/7254018-ancestr ... SiteSearch" target="_blank
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azgreg
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Re: Ancestry

Post by azgreg »

Is that a one time fee or recurring?
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