Geneology research

Chuckman

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Ladies and gentlemen, I suck at this stuff. Does anyone have a particularly favored site or way to find info on family in the past?
 
Info like names and dates or info like "surprise you have some slave DNA" or "surprise you might get Parkinson's" ??
 
Info like names and dates or info like "surprise you have some slave DNA" or "surprise you might get Parkinson's" ??

I absolutely believe I probably have some slave DNA, lol....mainly names & dates....

I know my maternal grandfather's family, all the way back to Jamestown. My mom's mom's family, not so much. My dad's family, extremely little.
 
You might call around to some public libraries; oftentimes they have free subscriptions to genealogy.com (or something similar) and a volunteer to help you out.

The catch is you have to work at the library... but that's why they do it (to get traffic in the door). Some will even do workshops-
 
I've done a lot of research on ancestry dot com, easy to use but not exactly cheap.

My younger sister started with ancestry years ago and was able to contact some distant cousins who had also done extensive research. She has traced maternal side back to Germany and Scotland in the mid 18th century and fraternal side back to (last I heard) Germany in mid 19th century. This said, she has been working on this for many years and still researching.
 
Martian origin :)
 
I absolutely believe I probably have some slave DNA, lol....mainly names & dates....

I know my maternal grandfather's family, all the way back to Jamestown. My mom's mom's family, not so much. My dad's family, extremely little.

If you live close to the town that you believe the family grew up in you can do a lot of record searching at the library or even the local historical society. If you don’t, then honestly your next best option is to use the ancestry.com site.
 
My neighbor works for one of those big genealogy places, but I don’t know what she does. When my Dad retired he spent a ton of time doing his side of the family.
 
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fullsizeoutput_ac8.jpeg The good news is there is always some extremely distant relative who took an interest in their (your) family lineage and if you can find their research, you will benefit from their work.

My family has been in NC and SC for ten generations so I stumbled into some of this over the years.

A retired cousin researched my mom's side of the family...

That piece of paper is 5-6' wide
 
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Ladies and gentlemen, I suck at this stuff. Does anyone have a particularly favored site or way to find info on family in the past?

Raleigh is genealogy central for NC familial lineages. The Elizabeth Rainey library is a genealogy research library. There is a genealogy room somewhere dntwn Raleigh. It keeps moving. And then there is the state archives but ive never been there. GenSoc websites b y county. Great genealogy rooms at the Salisbury, Concord, Dobson, etc. Librarys. Very helpful people work at all these places. I got a copy of a will from 1792 at Rainey. Very cool.
 
View attachment 91749 The good news is there is always some extremely distant relative who took an interest in their (your) family lineage and if you can find their research, you will benefit from their work.

My family has been in NC and SC for ten generations so I stumbled into some of this over the years.

A retired cousin researched my mom's side of the family...

That piece of paper is 5-6' wide

is the glock 43 on your maternal side?
 
Sounds crazy but check with the Mormons. They've been putting together an extremely large database.
 
I have used Ancestry.com quite a bit. Around Christmas they usually run the 6 month subscription for half price. If you find a connection to someone like royalty, you can go back quite a bit from there. 37 generations on this one line.
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If any of them are from Johnston County, Smithfield has a good place. It will also have stuff like Civil War rosters
 
For the record... I REFUSE to voluntarily send DNA anywhere to anyone for any purpose.

With that out of the way, my mom had great luck tracing her family tree to Russia after thinking we were from Poland over 40 years.
 
My wife, daughter and myself have all done the ancestry DNA tests and it pretty much confirmed "most" of what we knew, I'm 47% Irish and the rest is western euro, my entire bloodline is from pretty much one corner of Europe.

I have gotten more family history blanks filled in over the past year than the past 50 years of our family doing a family tree, I am speaking with 1st (most of whom I've already known) through 5th cousins via ancestry and its actually pretty damn cool, I still have family in Ireland, England, Scotland and pretty much every Western Euro country and its kinda cool actually, at first I thought these people would be wanting to come visit us here, but instead the vast majority of them have pretty much said "Come here and you've got a place to stay and a free tour guide", we are seriously thinking about visiting some of these places to see where our roots came from.


EDIT: If I have time this weekend I'll try to put up some screen grabs of my ancestry information and how its setup, I was not thrilled about sending in my DNA at first but the amount of information you get is well worth it imo, besides most of us have willingly "put" our DNA in places all over the country or world LOL, spitting in a tube and mailing it off isnt a big deal to me because if someone really wants your DNA to have it processed, I assure you its VERY easy for someone to do it without your consent so meh.
 
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genealogy.com a few years ago. Did the free 2 week thing. traced family back to 1562 England. Confirmed a lot of it with long living relatives at a fam reunion a few years ago.
 
My dad's side goes back to the late 16th century in the Black Forest region of Germany, with a snort of Irish from my paternal grandmother. Mother's side is allegedly Swedish, but that witch would lie when the truth would do her more good, so who knows?

I'm torn on the DNA testing. DoD's already got mine on file, but I'm not sure about 'ownership' & privacy issues.
 
I traced my fathers side back to the 16-1700s in England, seems as though my folks were some of the first settlers in Haywood Co, then moved to Cocke Co Tn before winding up in the back woods of Johnston Co.

Interesting stuff for sure, this past year I visited their grave sites, unfortunately two of the four I went to visit turned out to be unmarked. My roots to The War of Northern Aggression and The Revolutionary War are buried in them there hills.
 
My wife, daughter and myself have all done the ancestry DNA tests and it pretty much confirmed "most" of what we knew, I'm 47% Irish and the rest is western euro, my entire bloodline is from pretty much one corner of Europe.

I have gotten more family history blanks filled in over the past year than the past 50 years of our family doing a family tree, I am speaking with 1st (most of whom I've already known) through 5th cousins via ancestry and its actually pretty damn cool, I still have family in Ireland, England, Scotland and pretty much every Western Euro country and its kinda cool actually, at first I thought these people would be wanting to come visit us here, but instead the vast majority of them have pretty much said "Come here and you've got a place to stay and a free tour guide", we are seriously thinking about visiting some of these places to see where our roots came from.


EDIT: If I have time this weekend I'll try to put up some screen grabs of my ancestry information and how its setup, I was not thrilled about sending in my DNA at first but the amount of information you get is well worth it imo, besides most of us have willingly "put" our DNA in places all over the country or world LOL, spitting in a tube and mailing it off isnt a big deal to me because if someone really wants your DNA to have it processed, I assure you its VERY easy for someone to do it without your consent so meh.

Did this as well, at my mom's request, DNA pretty much destroyed a few old lineage stories.
Turns out the pale face red beard is pure euro trash, primarily from the British isles and Scandinavia.

The genetic matches rapidly led to a tree that led to a wealthy/influential guy one of whose descendants made a pretty large tree that has its own website. Could probably learn a lot if I'd pay Ancestry's fee or log in with mom's account. Did find some living 3rd? cousins over on the coast no one knew about.
 
I was adopted so I may sue this thread.
It's okay. Jesus lineage was recorded back 42 generations on Joseph's side, but Joseph wasn't his biological father.
 
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We used Ancestry a lot last year. Traced my dads family back to Augustine Washington, George’s dad. Moms has some interesting characters that participated in nearly every armed skirmish in the early south. Wife’s family back to Lithuania on dads side (dad is first generation American so that was no surprise) and moms side back to Hesse-Cassel Germany.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Branches of that family tree get extremely wide the farther back you go. I was always told that my dad's side were direct descendants of Robert the Bruce, first king of Scotland, but I learned that it was just by way of one of his descendants several hundred years later, Helen Stewart who married one of my French ancestors in eastern NC around 1800. The story goes that Helen's ("Nellie's") family was so incensed that she married a frog that they held a mock funeral for her, and never spoke of her again.

See? People didn’t like the French then either.
 
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I was adopted so I may sue this thread.
I was adopted too, but found out who my birth parents were, and have had a lot of success finding out other stuff on ancestry.com about who they came from and where, mostly on bio-mom's side so far. I do want to do the DNA thing eventually.
 
With 3 grandparents directly from Ireland and one full blood blackfoot Indian I dont feel the need to spit in a tube.
 
I started looking at my genealogy back about 1997 when I'd have to drive to the actual courthouses to gather information. Over the past couple of years using Ancestry I've located a lot of information on the family tree. Last Christmas my wife gave me the Ancestry DNA and now I've got "proof" of who my relatives are. I located my dad's brother's kids who never knew that he wasn't who he said he was (changed his name and then disappeared again). My cousin was blown away - said it was like finding out you were adopted. Then I found my dad's sister's kids - both of whom are now in their 80's and live within 10 miles of me and never even knew their mom had a brother (actually had two brothers). After I contacted one of her kids and gave him the story he was blown away and his brother actually took the Ancestry DNA and found out we were 1st cousins. Haven't heard anything back from him yet. Sometimes your relatives don't want to claim you! :D
 
Family has traced us back to one guy named Casper in north west Germany. It's believed that he moved, fled from political prosecution from the Netherlands changing his name at the time.
 
My dad's side goes back to the late 16th century in the Black Forest region of Germany, with a snort of Irish from my paternal grandmother. Mother's side is allegedly Swedish, but that witch would lie when the truth would do her more good, so who knows?

I'm torn on the DNA testing. DoD's already got mine on file, but I'm not sure about 'ownership' & privacy issues.

Yeah, if companies like retailers, hotels and the big tech companies all have data breaches why would anyone think that their DNA information would be safe and secure? The questions is simply what would the damage be if your information was stolen?

Gov't/Medical Ins access to deny or charge you more for health/life insurance.

Dr. Moreau out on an island cloning you and blending you with a sheep or wild boar?

Anything else?
 
genealogy.com a few years ago. Did the free 2 week thing. traced family back to 1562 England. Confirmed a lot of it with long living relatives at a fam reunion a few years ago.

My mother's family I can trace back to the 1400s in England, and coming from some French and Italian. My grandfather however many grandfathers ago was a sea captain who brought people to Jamestown, he had property on the James River that has a historical marker today, Basse's Choice.

My mother's mother's side is harder to figure out, and my dad's side? His dad came from Finland and then abandoned the family when they were all kids, so I have no clue.

I'm a try genealogy.com, but I have no desire to do any of the DNA testing. I'm not particularly against it, but ambivalent.
 
One of my real impetus for undertaking this is I'm trying to build a database of family who served in the military. Off the top of my head between me and cousins and uncles and grandfathers I can count probably 20 people maybe more. But there has to be more given the amount of family I don't know.
 
Ancestry is the best-known commercial site. It costs a couple of hundred a year to subscribe, but its interface is easy to use and it has tons of people's family trees online, so you may find a lot of research already done.

FamilySearch is the site for the Mormon church. It is a totally free website, but its interface is not as intuitive as Ancestry's. One huge extra for FamilySearch is that it is not limited to what is accessible online from your home. The Mormon church has a nearly unbelievable amount of offline information that you can order (like a lending library) for delivery to a local Family History Center (like the one in Durham). You can also go to a Family History Center to use a variety of subscription services and they are staffed by volunteers who can help you with your research.

Other commercial websites like Archives, Newspapers, NewspaperArchive, Genealogy, GenealogyBank, etc. offer access to more limited or specialized types of information.

Fold3 is a specialized military website.
 
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Cautionary tales. Had an uncle who taught journalism at a local university. He was a genealogist and he did wood cuts of coat of arms. He did family history for my mother and father back four generations. My amateur research, later verified by another well known and published NC genealogist proved some of his study wrong. My FIL spent about 5 years doing genealogy research and desktop published a family history that was quite voluminous. 75% of his study was proved wrong with a DNA test.
 
I was adopted too, but found out who my birth parents were, and have had a lot of success finding out other stuff on ancestry.com about who they came from and where, mostly on bio-mom's side so far. I do want to do the DNA thing eventually.


Remember one thing Millie. Biology means nothing. My brothers daughter is not his biological daughter. But when she got married he walked her down the aisle and her bio dad sat in the second row.
 
I was adopted so I may sue this thread.

One of my brothers did the DNA genealogy thing and we identified my maternal lineage to the UK, but as my father was adopted and Cherokee, we got a huge net over North America.
 
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