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does anybody have interesting family history?
Posts
It was 11 generations ago, I'm pretty sure I'm related to ALOT of people.
The aforementioned great-great-grandfather was shot in self-defense by his son, my great-great-uncle. It even made the paper.
Maybe don't click that spoiler if drunken, abusive moonshiners could set off any triggers.
Oh, I know! I'm just constantly entertained at the sheer disparity of people related directly to Pocahontas
One of my great-grandfathers was captain of a B-17. I remember him pulling a hunk of metal out of a drawer and talking about the first raid over Berlin. "This is shrapnel that punched through the side of the plane and fell in my lap. We'd lost two engines and the gunners in the back were all dead, but we made it back alive."
My parents?
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2015/WTP058941.htm
Tl;dr - British people don't move around much, and nobody wants to marry the welsh.
I read a really interesting article on the LRB about the persistence of pre-Christian beliefs in the UK. Not that neo-pagan nonsense, but small local traditions and charms and symbols which predate the Romans and still get used/passed down.
Highlander jokes aside since he died, these are my great grandfather's medals and dead man's penny.
Satans..... hints.....
Anyways, I know nothing about that side of the family.
On my father's side, I'm Theodore Roosevelt's fourth cousin, four times removed, which is terribly unimpressive when you actually think about it. But my grandfather on my father's side was full blooded Italian (born in the US though), and there's a story or two about how that came to be.
My last name is unique in the United States. Or at least it used to be, I think technically there might be a few others recently. But it used to be that if you had my last name, you were directly in my family. I think there were five of us sporting it at the time? I'm the last male heir with the name, which is a weird onus that I think about sometimes.
Anyways, this name is actually pretty uncommon in Italy too. You can't really trace it back anywhere exciting. You can in fact only trace it back to one place - the small town of Senigallia, where the name is a pretty common one. Which made it pretty easy to track back my family history, as that's where my great grandfather assuredly came from.
Which brings me to my next story. My great grandfather, Breno, came to this country in 1904. His wife followed shortly after, in 1910. They were married in 1908.
That timeline might look a bit fishy to you. That's because it is! They were engaged before either of them moved to the US, but my great grandfather wanted to start a decent life here before his beloved joined him. So he did. But she had a different last name than him, and they were worried that she wouldn't be allowed through Ellis Island because of this, as an unmarried young woman. So my great grandfather's brother stood in for him at the wedding. Shortly after, she headed to America, at which point she didn't even say that she was his wife, as that, you know, also seemed incredibly suspicious. So she lied and said she was his sister.
And that's the complicated story of how my family made it to America.
god i love lrb
Now that I think about it I guess that means my dad must have Mexican cousins he's never met.
but they're listening to every word I say
There's probably more but I'd need to talk with my mom for that stuff. She's deep into the geneaology thing and has researched her family extensively. She's only just recently been able to connect a missing link in my dad's side, as in finding out about a previously unknown half-brother a couple rungs up which means a whole new branch of the Branch family (I have heard all the jokes). We did discover though that my dad's ancestors were not predominantly German as we thought, but Russian instead. Explains the general love of vodka and high alcohol tolerance in my family.
1930s:
1912:
1840s:
but they're listening to every word I say
Hah. Imagine doing that today. Forget Maury. It'd be all over Facebook and twitter.
You'd never get away with it.
but they're listening to every word I say
you can read about moses moses online though - sounds like he was almost as awesome as his name suggests
Her ancestors actually went back to England from the American colonies during the revolution
My maternal great-great-grandfather continues the trend of mystery grandpas because he claimed to have come to the States from Spain, but had so little documentation of that move, or prior family, that we don't really know where he came from.
My father's younger brother passed away in his early 20s. He had an issue with heroin, and in 1982 passed away after becoming incredibly ill. No one had a name for it yet, and the official cause of death of pneumonia, but it turned out he was one of the early victims of the AIDS epidemic in the United States before it had a name.
On a lighter note, the same uncle got thrown out of Madison Square Garden as a kid for throwing a camera at George the Animal Steele.
Before that, it goes to England and no one has done tracking beyond that.
On my moms side no one has done any tracking. There's some name changes and odd legal stuff as I think somewhere along the line my moms ancestors illegally emigrated to Canada from what was then Czechoslovakia.
Well the Saxon word for Stranger is Welsh
Oh, god. Watching my cousin's trash-soap-opera lives play out on facebook is bad enough. I can't imagine adding the previous two generations into the mix.
My family would have made a good Jerry Springer episode.
Hello, cousin-probably-several-dozen-times-removed.
My mom's side is deeply Mormon, so our stories are very much interesting to no one else, but there was one dude called Jesse Nathaniel Smith, cousin (iirc) to the Joseph Smith. Also my grandmother's cousin's cousin is a certain Mitt Romney.
Hey man, nice shot?
But my understanding of the story is:
A few hundred years ago, there was a German princess. She was married off into the Russian royal family, as was the style at the time.
As part of the wedding agreement, a town in Russia was set up for the Princess to live in. It was subject to German law, accountable to the German crown, and German was spoken there. My ancestors were bureaucrats there (the original family name was German for 'file worker' -- Fehlhauer?).
Time goes by, and eventually the Bolshevik Revolution comes along. The Communists come to town and say (through a translator?), "Glorious Workers! We have thrown off the yoke of tyranny of the Imperialists! As comrade workers, you may stay here and join in the Revolution and stay and live in the Workers' Paradise, or you may return to your home country."
My ancestors decided instead to go to America because????
When they were coming through Immigration, the government intake bureaucrat said, "Fehlhauer (or whatever it was)? I can't spell that! Here, here's your new last name." (To be fair, it's not far off, and I guess the phonetic pronunciation makes it a pretty good guess)
Which is why despite my pretty strong Germanic descent, there's no family in Germany with the same surname clamoring for visits.
I supposes
I love black liquorish
But I only get ever so often because it's just so good
On my mother's father's side, their ancestor founded a county, as well as signing the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico and fighting in the texas revolution
So, there is that. I suspect there was probably some slavery involved, in the case of the revolutionary.
And I've got a pretty good chance at getting Dupuytren's contracture due to family history (dad) and lineage of mostly being northern European
*Hessian Ancestor Five*