The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
does anybody have interesting family history?
Posts
My mother's mother's line can be traced back to Vaucouleurs France in the mid 16th century. They came to North america and settled in New France in what is now Eastern Canada and New England.
After queen Anne's war many of the French families were deported to places like New Orleans and other swampy cities on the Mississippi river system, my part of that line settled on the edge of the great black swamp in Indiana and Ohio. Some were deported to freeze and die locked on ships in cold harbors like Boston (before it was a Catholic town) or scuttled in the Atlantic ocean on the way back to France. Some became the french part of the Cajun culture. Some were sold into indentured servitude in the southern parts of the east coast.
A famous Pennsylvanian Mennonite family is also in our family tree but they had no offspring. It gave birth to Milton Snavely Hershey who made the chocolate town and company. He even got his face on a stamp.
Spiritually I feel a real kinship to John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed). He died and is buried in my home town. One of the families who help bury him were the Parkers and may or may not be related to my father's father's line of the Parker family. I was actually at his grave Friday looking for mushrooms near the apple trees planted there.
I won't have children but I have a cat and just got a kitten. The cat has been missing since this time yesterday and has never been outside or around other people except for a few minutes. I'm very distraught and hoping to see her again. She is smart and pretty and will be OK even if we don't reunite.
One was shot in a bar fight, one was lynched after the community thought he was giving up the local bootlegging business to the revenue, and one was stabbed. I don't remember why he was stabbed.
Booooo
They would be about the family history and more current events and accomplishments made as well.
My grandparents had a folder more or less filled with a huge backlog of these, and it was really interesting to flip through!
My personal highlight of this was learning that we have a family crest, though not for the reason you might expect.
See, where one might normally have a crest emblazoned with lions, or eagles, or something similarly imposing or majestic...
...we have ducks. With every manner of seriousness.
It hits that perfect point between silly and awesome for me, and that's why I love it.
I want to marry into your family so badly right now.
My brother also played baseball with Eli Manning for a short bit. It was not for long or consistently. Some special league that ran after the normal little leagues of the area. I don't remember much as I was like 6 at the time, and obviously before he was anyone. I did get to meet Archie Manning at least. Not that I cared at the time, but hey it's something!
My lineage is pretty boring outside of that. A lot of fun stories but nothing earth shattering. I have to look into ancestry.com stuff since I have access to an account on it and have some interest in the history behind it all. Maybe I will find out something new and exciting.
I guess you two are
Cut from the same cloth
There's a Duck Tales joke in here somewhere.
Twice
I was kind of hoping you would say that your family owned a large chain of sex shops.
but they're listening to every word I say
At 15 he was captured by the English to prevent an alliance with the O'Neil clan. Instead this formed a bond between them and Hugh O'Neil arranged for his escape.
When he returned to Ulster he declared rebellion against the English and started the Nine Years War. During this time he and his allies were secretly courting the Spanish court for aid.
He managed great success against the English forces, and eventually the Spanish assistance did land, though on the opposite side of Ireland.
However even with his successes he was betrayed by Nail Garve O'Donnell who allowed the English to land in the middle of O'Donnell lands in exchange for their backing his claim to the O'Donnell clan. Though he still proved successful, after a defeat in Kinsale of his and his Spanish allies armies Hugh left for Spain to try to secure more support. Though outwardly supportive and claiming that they would send more aid, the Spanish crown did not. Hugh Roe was poisoned (some say by an Anglo-Gaelic double agent) while still seeking aid.
One night they had a big dinner with a bunch of managers and union leaders and such and everyone but my grandpa got super drunk
The guy next to him past out face down in his bowl of soup
My grandpa grabbed him by the hair, yanked him up to keep him from drowning, called him a stupid son of a bitch, cursed out the entire table and stormed out
He got busted down to driving delivery trucks in Ohio after that
http://www.audioentropy.com/
The other three including his wife were all some shade of abusive toward my parents
http://www.audioentropy.com/
My [maternal] grandfather was an amazing artist, with a lifetime of experience in drawing, printmaking, steel sculpture and graphic design. He created the Motorola logo.
He also published artwork for Playboy, was in an art show at the MOMA in the 50's(?) with a few dozen other artists, a handful of whom I recognized, the most notable being Andy Warhol. One of my grandfather's pieces is in the MOMA's permanent collection.
I'm related to Oliver Cromwell! I'm sorry.
My [paternal] grandmother wasn't able to offer my aunt (who years ago was working on documenting our ancestral family tree) any solid information on her father, due to this interesting tidbit:
My grandmother remembered that, when she was young, her mother would have a visitor every now and then who she just assumed was a good male friend. The weird thing was that he would come over and give my grandmother gifts, and would be unusually engaged with my grandmother. My grandmother has a suspicion that the man her mother had said was her father (somebody who apparently wasn't around super often, and didn't really look like her) was not, in fact, related to her, and that this male friend might've actually been her father. My grandmother said that she brought it up a few times over the years to her mother - "is my father actually my real, biological father?" and her mother would always say "yes, yes, he's your father".
Fast-forward a number of decades, and my grandmother's mother is on her deathbed, with my grandmother at her side. The last time they'd speak, and the last time they'd see eachother - my grandmother's mother said to her simply, "I've lied to you."
And then died. My grandmother is almost positive that her mother was talking about her father, but still...what a way to leave a mystery!
My father's ancestors were Scots, and while the research is less complete on that side, the stories that have survived are more colorful.
There are two theories about the clan name. MacNab (my birth certificate spells it McNabb) probably derives from Mac An Aba, meaning "Son of the Abbot", but a persistent joke is that it actually means "Son of a Father", meaning "we don't know who the daddy is", the Clan of Bastards. Obviously, one of these theories is much more probable, but the other is funnier, so it persists in family lore.
That's the MacNab Clan Crest. The face in the middle? That's the severed head of the MacNeish Clan Cheif.
Then, just before Christmas in 1612, the MacNeishes made a mistake. A shipment of food was going to the MacNab keep for their Christmas feast, which the MacNeishes gleefully hijacked. Even if the mischief was traced back to them, the MacNeishes were confident in their safety, as they owned the only boat on Loch Earn, and nobody was going to swim across the freezing lake that late in the year.
Back at MacNab keep, plots were afoot! The Chief's second wife had a history of egging her stepsons on to reckless behavior, probably hoping to clear the way for her own sons to inherit. And tonight, she was plying the heir, Smooth John MacNab, with drink and inflammatory rhetoric. She did too good of a job though, as the Clan Chief himself became enamored of her plan, and proclaimed that his four oldest sons, including two belonging to his second wife, would go to avenge their honor against the MacNeishes.
Of course, they were aware of the Lake problem. Smooth John's brilliant plan? To row their own boat as close to MacNeish lands as they could, haul it up out of Loch Tay, then carry it over miles of uneven terrain, in the snow, to Loch Earn.
By midnight they arrived, and peered into the MacNeish keep to see everyone asleep, drunk on stolen liquor. Proving that the nickname "Smooth" was for being anything but, John opted to wake them all up by pounding on the front door.
"Who knocks?" called out the sleepy voice of the MacNeish chief.
Smooth John replied in true Highland manner with another question: "Who would you least like to see?"
There was a drunken laugh from inside. "Why, Smooth John MacNab!"
"Smooth John it is, but you'll find him a rough man tonight!" he shouted as he kicked the door open. The brothers rushed inside and slaughtered everyone, except for a boy who hid under an overturned apple basket, and a young woman who hid in the stables, who survived to join relatives further South, carrying on the MacNeish name far from the terrible MacNabs.
Smooth John cut off the MacNeish Chief's head, and instructed his brothers to cut off several others. Then, they marched back home, abandoning their boat on the way. By that time, vigorous exercise had cleared their minds of drink, and Smooth John and his full-brother Duncan were fairly certain what their stepmother had been about. When they arrived back home, the disappointed Chief's wife met them and asked what was in the sack. "Bowls for your brains", replied Smooth John, as he upended the sack at her feet. His father thought this was a grand joke, and impaled up the MacNeish Chief's head on a pike by the road to Comrie, as a warning against further banditry.
Family lore claims the rotting husk of the MacNab's boat was visible midway between Loch Tay and Loch Earn until the early 1900s, although the remains were destroyed in a peat fire. Allegedly a walking stick remains, carved from its keel.