Genealogy?

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FLYBOYJ

FLYBOYJ

"THE GREAT GAZOO"
28,097
8,751
Apr 9, 2005
Colorado, USA
Have any of you folks gotten into this? Through a co-worker I reluctantly joined a couple of sites and was shocked to make some incredible discoveries, now I'm hooked! I'm even doing a DNA test.

I've been told that once you could establish a record many of these on line sites are pretty accurate. Anyone else have any experience with this?
 
Before the internet came along my aunt traced our history so take this for what it's worth as I was quite young and she just highlighted it. The family was rooted around Edinburgh, Scotland and during the last England-Scotland tiff, we sided with the British. We won....yea us!. My aunt said this act entitled the family to be hereditary standard bearers to the British monarchy but no one has offered me the job. While I was in Edinburgh in '77 I had a dinner with family members who's descendants fought on both sides and this is still a bitter subject centuries later. I just sat there stunned. She also said our surname was one of the oldest in Scotland and originated in Scandinavia from minor nobility. As I said, take it for what it is. Good luck on your search FBJ.


Geo
 
fubar57 said:
Before the internet came along my aunt traced our history so take this for what it's worth as I was quite young and she just highlighted it. The family was rooted around Edinburgh, Scotland and during the last England-Scotland tiff, we sided with the British. We won....yea us!. My aunt said this act entitled the family to be hereditary standard bearers to the British monarchy but no one has offered me the job. While I was in Edinburgh in '77 I had a dinner with family members who's descendants fought on both sides and this is still a bitter subject centuries later. I just sat there stunned. She also said our surname was one of the oldest in Scotland and originated in Scandinavia from minor nobility. As I said, take it for what it is. Good luck on your search FBJ.


Geo
Click to expand...

Thanks Geo...

The rest of you guys roll me! :lol:

Well I'll admit it - as well as having extensive family roots from Puerto Rico to Spain, I have found a massive trail that goes through Spain, FRANCE, Italy, present day Iraq (Sephardic Jews) Russia, Sweden and Norway! (at least according to Ancestry.com) I have documentation to my 5th great grandfather which put me to the late 1700s, from there internet records show the rest. I was told the on line records were fairly accurate but there could always be a degree of error, so I joined multiple sites to see if they all came up with the same results. Well according to Ancestry.com, Geni and Family tree, Christopher Columbus is my 15th Great Grandfather! And that's just for starters!

With some of the finds, it prompted me to do the DNA test so folks don't think I'm insane when I tell them this!!!

I hope to know more in 6 to 8 weeks…
 
700,000 SFP's that should tellyou something :) They'll probably be able to build a phylogenetic tree out of that.

Wondering if you'll find any Djengis Kahn DNA in your Y-chromosome. A large percentage of European males seem to have that ;)
 
The majority of my family's ancestry was maintained by the ladies in the family over the generations, the most recent records were kept and organized by my Great Grandmother (passed away in '76). Since then, a cousin has been keeping recent information up to date. But we have a long line of military and nobles, so records were fairly well preserved as far back as Medieval Europe.

I have a strong Germanic and Scottish lineage as well as Native American.
For the Scottish: there is both clan MacBean (Gillies MacBean, well known for his exploits during the battle of Culloden, is a cousin) and Royal Stuart. We have at least two relatives who served in the Black Watch regiment.
The Germanic: Saxon Nobility (would have to ask Mom the name again - sounds similar to Messecar) and Prussian (including relatives who served as Teutonic Knights, one lost during the battle of Jerusalem, not sure of the other(s)...)
Native American: 1/4 Oglala Sioux and just a trace of Iroquois way back in the 1700's
There are a few other lineages from way back, including Dutch lineage: the family of Hugeboom

There have been some pretty colorful characters in there as well, including one ancestor who lived in the American west (19th century) and had this uncanny ability to have two calves for each of his cows while neighboring calves would seem to disappear. Just about the time the locals would start getting irritated to the point of a "neck tie party", it would be herding/roundup time and he happened to be the best trail cook in all the territory...so this usually saved him from a "neck-stretching". However, I think his shenanigans eventually caught up to him.

The other fascinating part of the family's history, is that from the time my ancestors arrived in North America (first ones here were 1699), they have all fought in every war and with the exception of the U.S. Civil war, none perished, but always returned home. The Civil War, we lost quite a few on both sides :(
 
Marcel said:
700,000 SFP's that should tellyou something :) They'll probably be able to build a phylogenetic tree out of that.

Wondering if you'll find any Djengis Kahn DNA in your Y-chromosome. A large percentage of European males seem to have that ;)
Click to expand...

I won't be surprised! William the Conquer and Conquistador Alonso Aviles de Avila (he marched with Cortez) are also in my tree!
 
It's amazing what you can find when you start looking. Although... My father once started searching (before the internet) and he did not get further than an unmarried nurse who seems to have fled from a little poor farmer's village in Drenthe to the more anonymous City of Groningen, after her unholy pregnancy. She covered her tracks so well that my father got stuck there. So the only thing I can say about my tree is that come from a bastard son somewhere late 1700... :lol:

If you get those results of the DNA test, keep in the back of your head that the results can be misleading. Although they have a database of 850,000 people, it doesn't tell you how balanced and diverse this population is. Things can be biased if populations are not thoroughly randomized. They'll probably compensate for this, but keep an eye on that. Most of our calculation powers are used to compensate for bias in a population structure when doing association studies. And still our results are not 100% reliable. But at least they should tell you the margin of error.
 
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Almost forgot to mention that the Saxon Nobleman in my family had a habit of charging a heavy tax for those travelling the road that crossed his lands...aparently it was roughly 100%.

This went on for a while until he levied this steep tax on the King's entourage. Very shortly after that, he made the decision to go to North America...one step ahead of the King's Sherriff. His destination was Canada and remained there, his descendants eventually moved to the U.S. in the early 19th century in the northwestern Territories.

So my family has Canadian connections, too. Beauty, eh? :lol:
 
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Interesting stuff. All I can remember from a trace my sister did, back about 40 years ago, is that the family name originated in Ireland, then re-surfaced in Leicestershire back in around the 1400's (where I once had a fairly wealthy uncle), and then moved back to Ireland, and back to England via Scotland! There is some very distant relationship to minor royalty way back, but nobody has offered me a King's job yet, so I'm keeping an open mind on that point!
So I see that it should be Karl, Marquis de Rochford then ?
That explains a lot ..............................
 
Airframes said:
Interesting stuff. All I can remember from a trace my sister did, back about 40 years ago, is that the family name originated in Ireland, then re-surfaced in Leicestershire back in around the 1400's (where I once had a fairly wealthy uncle), and then moved back to Ireland, and back to England via Scotland! There is some very distant relationship to minor royalty way back, but nobody has offered me a King's job yet, so I'm keeping an open mind on that point!
So I see that it should be Karl, Marquis de Rochford then ?
That explains a lot ..............................
Click to expand...

It might well do mate !

There's also the town of Rochford down in Essex, maybe I am king of that ?
 
Marcel said:
It's amazing what you can find when you start looking. Although... My father once started searching (before the internet) and he did not get further than an unmarried nurse who seems to have fled from a little poor farmer's village in Drenthe to the more anonymous City of Groningen, after her unholy pregnancy. She covered her tracks so well that my father got stuck there. So the only thing I can say about my tree is that come from a bastard son somewhere late 1700... :lol:

If you get those results of the DNA test, keep in the back of your head that the results can be misleading. Although they have a database of 850,000 people, it doesn't tell you how balanced and diverse this population is. Things can be biased if populations are not thoroughly randomized. They'll probably compensate for this, but keep an eye on that. Most of our calculation powers are used to compensate for bias in a population structure when doing association studies. And still our results are not 100% reliable. But at least they should tell you the margin of error.
Click to expand...

I'll keep all that in mind Marcel.

My grandfather on my father's side is my elusive one. According to some of his own documents he lists himself from the Canary Islands, but I found evidence that he was born in Puerto Rico. He was not a pleasant person and may have had a history he wanted to hide. All of the older women of my family hated him.

It was on my mother's where everything was easily traced. My 4th great grandfather married into a prominent family that carried the names, "Lopez de Victoria," and "De Arellano." From there my family tree seems to go forever, but I was able to find documentation that verifies my link to the Lopez de Victoria and De Arellano families during the mid 1800s. It was made a point to list my 4th great grandmother on the birth and death records of all of her children and grand children!

It's been fascinating and my Spanish and knowledge of European history has been improving since I got involved with all this!
 
Back around 20 years ago I bought a family tree program and started to get into it. I had an aunt on my mothers side and one of my dads cousins that had a lot of family info that got me started and I filled in a lot of the gaps by talking to other relitives. I'm glad it did it at that time because they have all since passed away and that info would be lost. No famious long lost relatives but we traced my mothers mothers side back to Germany in the 1700s. I eventually ended up with several hundred people in the program. All this was before I was on the Internet, I really need to see what those ancestry sights can dig up.
 
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