Family history research surprises...

[wheresmymojo]

I'm researching the family history on both my side and DH's.

I've come across quite a few surprises/interesting things and wondered if anyone else had anything they've found in their family trees that took them by surprise?

The ones off the top of my head in my tree are:

• I have a 4th Great Uncle who was a civil war hero in the US (he even has a Wikipedia page); I had no idea we had any ties to the US at all

• DH's family can be traced back to the 1000's because one of them was mates with William the Conqueror

• DH's family is full of Barons, Sirs, Lords and Sherriffs of Nottingham. Some of them have marble tombs and oil paintings

• Mine were poor as fuck, many died in the Irish famine, some lived in Liverpool slums, some died in workhouses. The ones that had a 'good' life still worked down the pits and raised lots of children in just two or three rooms

• In one branch mine eventually trace back to Scottish crofters near Aberdeen (also poor) trying to make ends meet for 10 kids off 7 acres of land

• One very sad suicide with that I think now would've been PND

• Lots of deportations to Australia and time in prison for petty crimes like stealing a chicken (probably to eat) on my poor side

Anyone else?

DH's family can be traced back to the 1000's because one of them was mates with William the Conqueror

So can virtually everyone's!

I know what you're getting at - he has family records going way back, which most of us don't. But, if you go back a millennium, we're all related to someone exciting. I quite like that.

Sadly, the only real surprise (and my mum found this out, not me) was much more recent. She had a second cousin whom no-one ever mentioned much, and she thought the families had fallen out. Turns out her second cousin had Down's Syndrome, and the her parents argued about whether or not to put her into a home. The parent who wanted her in the Home (I don't know if it was the dad or mum) left the other one, and the whole family ignored the fact she ever existed.

She's long dead now, but it is really sad.

My jaw dropped when I opened the envelope containing the copy of my long-deceased (late 1800s) ancestor's death certificate.

The cause of death was murder. Reading that unexpectedly was quite disconcerting, and I felt quite odd for days afterwards.

Sarah...

Yes, I know what you mean. My family though can only be traced back so far since poor people weren't worthy of mention that far back

I have developed and am currently nursing a big chip on my shoulder about DH's family swanning around getting oil paintings while mine were starving

Very sad about the 2nd cousin....I'm guessing that was common until relatively recently

Terrible for everyone involved...

@horizontalis

Did you find out what happened?

My great great great grandmother married a man about forty years older than her , he was a widower . His wife drowned in the river Clyde and he had various adult children one in an asylum .

They had three children - two died , then he died in the street suddenly , she had two further children , one died at age two . In and out of workhouses and asylums and what have you .

Her children were taken away from her and moved hundreds of miles away .

She died in her 50s or so in a long stay hospital .

Hundred years later I - unknowingly - moved across the road from where she lived and round the corner from where she died . Not a clue where she was buried but I suspect necropolis (Glasgow) .

I’m stuck at her parents sadly , I think they were Irish immigrants and I’ve no clue how to start tracing Irish family .

I actually got records of the applications for poor relief , workhouse admissions , enquiries sent to children’s supposed fathers, all sorts . Was amazing to see it written down and know I had it correct !

YY, wheresmy, I think the reason my mum didn't know about it was the few family members who did know just shrugged and said ' but it is normal. Whereas my mum was thinking if only she'd known sooner she could have reached out. It's not ancient history - the cousin died in the late 80s/early 90s and her mum about five years before, so within my lifetime.

I had a mixture of rich and poor on my dad's side - everything from aristocracy to "illegitimate" children. Some truly sad discoveries too, such a high infant/child mortality rate in the old days, you can really see it when looking at a big section of the tree.
Some stories made me impressed and strangely proud of some of my ancestors. My 2nd great grandmother had my great grandmother when she was only 16 and out of wedlock in the 1870s (the "illegitimate" mentioned above - there was a disturbing story passed to my great aunt about her "being taken advantage of"whilst being a servant). She then met and married a man 3 years later (surely a rare man in Victorian times who would take on a 19 year old single mum!) and they went on to have eight more kids!
My great grandmother actually died of Tuberculosis in her 40s when my grandad was only 10 and my 2nd great grandmother looked after him and his 3 sisters too( their dad was busy running the family business). I know she had a lot of children to help but she's still a bit of a legend in my book. Actually thanks for starting this thread OP, it's been nice to tell her story.

One side of the family tree was completed back to the 1700s, unfortunately when my dad was researching some possible discrepancies he found an ancestor from the mid 1800s who was born 18 months after his father died... so we have someone's family history back to the 1700s but it's not ours!

Lots of births happening very soon after the wedding, and a few a fair bit before. My grandmother was absolutely scandalised . Her own children and grandchildren have continued the family tradition so it looks like it's almost only her generation and maybe the one immediately before it that got particularly concerned about sex before marriage.

My great great grandmother was mixed race West African and English. We're all very pasty and don't look mixed race at all.

@blameitonmyjuice Are you on ancestry.com?

They have Irish birth, marriages and deaths on there now.

Am in the midst of reseaching. Discovered a couple of sudden deaths a few generations back of which dm had no clue. Which website/s have you found most useful for tracking ancestors? I seem to be losing track around the first world war even though most stayed in same area.

Yes to births soon after wedding. My grandads grandparents were teenagers - both 15 with the bride heavily pregnant when they got married. My grandad had told my mum about the teenage wedding, as it was still talked about when he was a child, how young granny and grandad had been when they had his uncle. My mum wanted to check the facts when she did the family tree, and that her dad hadn't made it up.

My great great great grandmother was called Betty Battye and she lived in Holmfirth.

I can never watch Last of the Summer Wine again without seeing Nora through new eyes!

I've mainly used ancestry.com - that's where I build my tree and do my main searching for records.

Then when I get someone I'm interested in looking closer at I might also use findmypast. Mainly because it has newspapers going back to the 1700's and everything got reported. Even petty crimes - DH's great great grandfather is in the newspaper for cycling without a light on!

I've also just generally googled people and that way found websites or blog posts other people have made where there are cross overs between their trees and mine.

@LIZS Have you found them on the 1911 census just before the war started?

Once you can find people on the 1911 census it gets relatively easy to go back to 1841 when the census started.

My father was given up as a baby during the war, we all thought his father was a PoW and therefore I was 1/4 Nazi.
Dad did a DNA search via Ancestry, turns out he's 100% Irish and his mother died only about twenty years ago having never married and never had any other children.
She lived with him in a mother-and-baby home until he was 9 months old when she gave him up and never saw him again.
I'm surprisingly troubled by it and don't know whether I can go on researching.

I found out that my GGM was 9 month pregnant at her marriage (original documents). Another GGM died through suicide leaving 6 children. One ancestor was "Leibeigen". One pair of ancestors, because you had to proof you could house and feed a family before you were allowed to marry, married 20 years after the bans were read having 5 children together.
I traced two of four lines until the beginning of records (30 year war), one can't be traced because he was a ONS in the 1960ties and gave a wrong name and one where I can possibly get back to the 15th century.

That we're direct decedents of the Earls of Tullibardine/Dukes of Atholl - aka the head of the Murray Clan. Didn't even know there was any Scottish in us - and now we have a tartan!

Yes have seen the 1911 census but so far only accessed what is available free so not the full details. Part of the issue looking further back I think is that they were a seafaring family so not always present for the census and had a large number of siblings born over time. Is genesreunited linked to the newspaper archive?

Transported to Australia for stealing a loaf. Deliverer of letters. Needle workers lacemakers. Engine builder. Engine driver. Farm labourer. Dutch immigrants. Arrived at the front in WW1 and returned the next week with an arm wound. I often see grandpa poppy waving frantically at the hun from the trenches, over here, over here.. Maybe too much blackadder on my part.

I gave up looking after a century or so in case it became worse.

@Ihaventgottimeforthis - faschism is a problem in the brain, but it isn't genetic.

I'm.adopted and didn't realise the DNA ancestory automatically sent you details of relatives linked and vice versa.
a first cousin contacted me to say she didn't recognise my name... ahhhhhhhhh

My Nan’s parents had 4 children before they married, which was just before her dad enlisted in the 1st world war. I wonder how that worked with illegitimacy so frowned upon.

My mums family have Huguenots that we’re french refugees. Recently went to the street in london that they lived in.

My latest fav research info is the 1939 register. My dad was a baby and hadn’t known he was evacuated out of london then.

I can get lost for hours on ancestry