I've been playing around on Ancestry.com, and it's amazing!

[Critters2]

In just over an hour, I've traced my paternal grandmother's family all the way back to Scotland--to Yetholm, Roxburghshire, Scotland, to be exact! Also discovered that one of my great great grandmothers arrived in New York from Hamburg, Germany at the age of 7. Imagine that! Wonder what caused her family to bring her across the ocean when she was so young.

And now this line dies out with me. Nice.

[skooooo]

1. Are you paying for it..

..or did you do this from the free services. Fun isn't it??

[Critters2]

2. I started out using the free services, but then decided to pay for it.

I signed up for three months. At this rate, I'll have lots of info by then. I've now got all of my lines back to Europe. I'm hitting dead ends now, so will have to do more of my own research. The "leaves" are drying up.

Yeah, it is fun! Are you a member?

[skooooo]

3. I joined for a while ..

..in the past, but was thinking of joining up again. I had a lot of stuff printed out, but can't find it now. Did you come across any interesting stories? When did your family come over here?

[Critters2]

4. My family came in the early to mid 1800's. My dad's side from

Prussia, Pomerania and Scotland. My mom's from Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Here's the most interesting thing...two sets of my relatives from different sides (one maternal, one paternal) came over on the same boat, sailing out of Liverpool! Then one family went to upstate New York, one to Kentucky. Two generations later, two of their descendants would marry. Cool, huh?

[applegrove]

5. Genealogy is so much fun. You can find out all sorts of little mysteries once you get

online. The Latter Day Saints site is pretty good for census and other stuff. Plus it is free. Also go to the local town where your family is from and see if they have a free genealogy site that lists graveyards and census and such. You don't have to pay that way.

[dpbrown]

6. I love it. I've done my family tree in some places back to the 15th Century

My paternal great-great-grandfather is turning out to be a dead end for now, though.

But I've learned a lot!!!

My 17th great-grandfather was Geoffrey Chaucer.

[Critters2]

8. Chaucer! Wow! So far nothing that interesting in my background,

but I'm only back to the mid-1700s.

[Muttocracy]

7. is this the one the Mormons put together? I remember using a couple of these a few years ago

I should take another look - I bet there's more info up. But my ancestors were poor and immigrated to the U.S. in the 1600s and 1700s so there's not much in the way of records.

[skooooo]

9. Dead ends..

Yeah, we've run into a few dead-ends like that. I'm going to have to take another look at the site, now. My curiousity is up.

[Crabby Appleton]

10. I have ancestors from Ancrum, Roxburghshire, Scotland

that left there in 1750 for the colonies.

[Critters2]

11. Do you have info on your ancestors there? I get back to those who

left Roxburghshire to come here, but that's as far as I get. I can't find the parents of those who first came here. I'm wondering if there might be church records, or city records to get me the names of ancestors in Scotland.

[skooooo]

12. You got me hooked again..

I joined and am building my tree up tonight! lol

[Critters2]

13. Sorry...or You're Welcome!

Whichever works! :hi:

[skooooo]

14. It's proving a little more difficult...

..than I thought it might be. People put their names down so many ways, different birth dates, etc. It will be worth the effort, though. One thing I've found, is that it's sometimes difficult to keep all these relationships straight without something visual!

[Critters2]

17. If you're on Ancestry.com, be sure to click on the leaves.

They're links to historical records, or, better yet, family trees that other people have done with connections to your family members. That's how I got so far back so quickly.

Also, there's a DU genealogy/ancestry group. There may be some there with more experience or expertise.

[skooooo]

19. Also..

..seems to get easier the farther you go back.

Sure is fun!!

We have a lot of old pictures from our family - say of people who were born as far back as the 1840s or so.

[Crabby Appleton]

15. My sister and a cousin are the ones that did the research

so I don't know exactly where and how they got all the data. The trail seems to not go back any further than the ones that were born there but came here & one generation before, with most of the references to that branch having a citation of LDS or someone else's family tree notes of ancestors of Thomas Robertson which seems like the source of most of the info.


164. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, International Genealogical Index (R), Copyright (c) 1980, 2000, data as of January 2000.
165. PORTIS-1764.FTW, Date of Import: 18 Mar 2002.
166. Charles Coulter, Family Tree of Thomas Robertson, (Imported Gedcom file from Charles Coulter), "Electronic," Date of Import: 18 Mar 2002.

[Critters2]

16. I was just looking at the LDS site, It doesn't go any further back than what I have.

Thanks, though. I'll keep hunting.

[Angel]

18. I've searched mine as far back

as 1330 - Haigh, Lancashire, England so far. I use a site called www.familysearchindexing.com. I can get the Europe records free when I volunteer to index records. Indexing is almost as much fun as learning where your own family came from.

[Critters2]

20. 1330! That's impressive! I'm only back to about 1750 in one line.

Thanks for the link! :hi:

[Drunken Irishman]

21. Scotland? That sucks.

[OnionPatch]

22. Thanks, what a blast.

I always wanted to join and add to the small bit of research I've already done, so I just joined about an hour ago after reading your thread. That was a load of fun. I found several family trees already completed by other family members and also just found out I'm distantly related to Pearl S. Buck!! :wow:

On edit: OMG....Now I just found out the worst thing ever....I am distantly (I mean really distantly) related to the Bush family. :hide: :banghead:

Thanks a lot for starting my year the right way! :mad:

;)

[Critters2]

24. Sorry.

:yoiks:

[OnionPatch]

31. That's ok. I also found out about some really cool people I'm related to.

Again, this is very distantly, but it sure feels nice to have Henry David Thoreau and Georgia O'Keefe on the tree! :)

[ElboRuum]

29. Don't sweat it...

I'm sure if you shake anyone's family tree hard enough, a few rotten apples will drop out.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

23. I get very frustrated at their thwarting of research.

I wish I could get this info from free sites.

[Critters2]

25. Try familyresearch.org

It's the Mormon site. It's free. I've found pretty much the same stuff there as I have to ancestry.com

[buzzycrumbhunger]

26. Another great site

and free, to boot, is Geni, which you use to build your family tree. You can upload your GEDCOM (do it AS you join, if you can, because they haven't tweaked it yet to be able to add later) and you can invite your family to join and build from their perspective, which just adds to the tree. I was going to fill it in and then share, but made the mistake of adding email addys and invites went out automatically (another caution), but everyone joined and gleefully started adding info and photos, so it was more fun.

I can track my family back to the Orkneys, mid 1700s (apparently, they buggered off to the islands after the English made life miserable), but my mom's side gets stuck at Catherine the Great. Usually, if you have royalty in your family, it's easier to document much further back, but I guess we're missing a key name to connect all those dots.

You can also search for family through the Ellis Island records if your family came via that route.

[Critters2]

27. Thanks for these links! I think most of my ancestors were here

before Ellis Island was in use, though they all seem to have come through New York, so I'll doouble-check dates. I'll look at Geni, too.

Thanks! :hi:

[hunter]

28. I have at least two great grandparents who made shit up.

One the Mormons would like to keep it that way, because it's well known these days that human women just don't carry babies for ten-plus months, and the other who fled Ireland to the American wilderness because someone didn't want to be hung dead by the English. Yeah, that's the ticket, I'm Scots-Irish! Damn the Papacy!

What a crock. Kiss the Blarney Stone for me.

Ancestry.com isn't always accurate.

[oshyposhy]

30. If you don't know about the message boards there

be sure to check them out, for both surname and county/state of where your family lived. I found loads of family cousins researching same lines (we had common 4th great grandparents) and it really helped fill in gaps. Also your local library should have a program you can link to from home (FREE) called Heritage Quest, which gives you access to census records and old books that give detailed info about county information that your ancestors might be in. This is how I found out that my 3rd great grandfather was shot in a street duel over a gambling debt. Good Luck and happy hunting!

[orleans]

32. it dies out with you? that sounds rather depressing

you could do one of two things:
keep in mind all the lives you have touched and positively affected, and know that your spirit is carried on through others that have been a part of your life

or:

quick! adopt!

yes, ancestry.com is really fucking addictive--i did that for about a year. it was like sex--at first i couldn't get enough, then it crossed my mind how much time and energy i was spending on the family history, i realized i had become obsessive about it--relatives shunned me because they were sick to death of me talking about it, then i grew weary and tired and shouted: GET OFF ME! YOU'RE ON MY HAIR!

then i came here--found du

(wash, rinse, repeat?)