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?

OP if you come from poverty, and your husband comes from wealthy lines, look at you now. You'll find that you have gone up (unless you're still ) and his ancestors have spunked the wealth gone down in the world (unless you're married to the lord of the manor, of course!)

My lot were miners (one a hero who died saving the lives of others when a mine flooded) and tenant farmers, poor poor poor. I love that not one of my living relatives has to scrape a living like our ancestors did.

I also found Romany ancestors not that far back; putting a lot of clues together, i think my DM's grandfather was from a settled Romany background. He was widowed with 4 children under 7 at the age of 24. His wife died of pelvic inflammation, 2 months after my grandma was born in 1902.

He didn't hang about though. My grandma's half brother was born 10 months later. She was placed with her mother's half brother to be brought up and didn't know she was adopted till her half brother turned up, when she was 18 and told her the whole story.

My GGGG grandfather died in the asylum at Haywards Heath, described as a 'pauper lunatic' Reading between the lines, he was in his late 80's and his son had died a few months previously. I suspect he had dementia and no one to look after him.

Another ancestor lived till 101 in the mid 19th century and was listed on 1851 working as a farm labourer when he was 87.

It's incredibly absorbing!

@LIZS
It was a tradition and in some areas even necessary (Frisland for example) to remember the names of the grandparent's generation. No name should be lost.
So they did not name the child after the dead child but after the person the dead child was named after.

got confirmation that my GM was illegitimate (she refused to talk about her family, other than a couple of aunts), and I think her mother went on to marry the father, but buggered off to Canada with him, leaving GM to move in with an unrelated family, aged 15 . Am waiting for the next Canadian census to be released, to see if I can trace what happened to them, and the two DC they had subsequently.

DH's GM was adopted from Sicily, but the church records of baptism and marriage are pretty good, so I've tracked her family back to c1600.

One branch of DF's side goes back to 1300, another to before that, but I'm not convinced about the evidence from other people's family trees - I've found that any whiff of being alive at the same time as James 1 get's him put on every American family tree .

@mamagedmis and anyone else wanting to research their family history - do check out www.rootschat.com which is a free family history forum brimming with support and experience to help you on your way. (I am not on the payroll, if there is one, but am part of the community there).

Like a PP, i’ve discovered that my GGM (who died when I was about 23 so I remember her well) was the illegitimate daughter of her oldest sister rather than the youngest of a large family. It’s surprising that the family went to such an effort to hide it, why they didn’t fib when they registered the birth. I wonder if she knew, I suppose she must have done.

^^ tag fail - meant for @managedmis

AyahuascaTrip

I have Sephardi ancestry too, but possibly a bit more recent than yours. My family came to England, but had been living in Holland for a couple of hundred years before that.

The history and culture is really interesting - have you checked out the amazing food?

@NannyR What happened with your GGM?

Did she go to Canada or was she left with other family in the UK?

There's just so much loss and tragedy in people's lives back then - so many deaths, especially of their own children.

I wonder how they got through it all - part of me wonders if it was somehow easier to deal with when it was expected and the same for everyone else?

In the working classes the fathers would have had to be back at work irrespective of any losses the next day I imagine. No wonder they were emotionally distant...

@AyahuascaTrip

You found your Father via Ancestry DNA?

Did you make contact?

DH's family became wealthy industrialists in the 19th century, were philanthropists and prominent figures in their locality.They funded schools, hospitals and churches and generally seem to have been decent folks.
But then there is still the tragic death of a 15 yr old boy in an accidental shooting from which the family never really recovered. There was a suicide by shooting when a business was in trouble. One relative hooked up with a woman whose whole life was a pretense to cover the fact that she and her first son were born illegitimate in a Scottish slum. They were together for 40 years but couldn't marry until both his parents were dead.
Seems to me that all families, no matter how apparently humble will always have something interesting in their past.

This thread makes me want to do some more tinkering on my Ancestry tree

I got into it in a major way a few years back and started to link up all the people my parents had talked about. Luckily I knew what all my grandparents were called (I never knew any of them) and what some of their parents were called. I also had photos of some of them.

As I went on I realised how many connections there were going to be, given that the families were huge. One matriarch - my great-great grandmother - was one of a large family and had had a massive family herself, so lots of people on Ancestry had her in their tree. But I'm the only one who has a photograph of her (in her best 19thc black silk).

Annoyingly though, none of my forbears have any scandalous stories attached. DH turned out to have all sorts of surprises including a distant Anglo-Indian connection, a very posh double-barrelled Mayfair family, and a possible bigamy/mysterious 'disappearance at sea'.

One of the great moments was tracking back to an early 19thc name and not being sure it was correct - then suddenly realising that a miniature prayer-book (about 2 inches square) which we've had in the family forever and known nothing about had this name written in her own handwriting on the flyleaf. At once it brought the whole thing to life and made me think about how some tiny fragments of lives survive while others disappear into total obscurity.

YY to the same names used over and over, too. And used between families connected by marriage, as well.

wheresmymojo we’ve had some contact, he’s not as excited as me or as keen to meet. He’d only been married for six months when I was conceived 🙈 so it’s probably quite a sensitive situation? But it gave me such a feeling of peace, it was amazing to find him there all ready and waiting with his dna results and a big family tree.

saskia no! Tell me more about the food!

@thatwouldbeanecumenicalmatter

I've found the same thing quite a lot in my tree, when a child died young they just re-used the name for a later child.

I think it must have been common practice from the amount I've seen it in my tree (I have about 1700 people in my tree now).

They weren't very inventive with names either...basically all the names were just repeated generation after generation. It gets very confusing, with having a lot of Irish ancestors I have hundreds of Mary's, Joseph's, Patrick's and Michael's!

I found three generations of sons called Hercules, which was a bit out of the blue, in amongst the Williams and Alexanders and Peters in NE Scotland .

@wheresmymojo they left my great grandma with her grandparents, then they also went to Canada a few years later, but the family never settled there and moved back just before ww1. As an aside, I find it an interesting train of thought to think that my whole family as I know it now wouldn't exist if they had been happy there and decided to stay.

Taking of names there are some blinders in our family trees...bear in mind these are all Irish & British (a few go back to Normandy)

• Anchitel
• Radalphus (x lots, though I think this might be what became 'Ralph' eventually)
• Zebedee
• Oldcott
• Coulton
• Barwell
• Cave
• Theody
• Zebulon
• Gundreda
• Senecha
• Titus
• Appolonia
• Cannon
• Penina(h) (again, lots of these)

It was also not uncommon for children going into service to “renamed” by their employer, so the maid was always called e.g. Sarah and when she was replaced the new maid was also either called "Sarah" or it was prefixed onto her own name (Sarah-Jane, Sarah-Ann)

Sometimes employers would rename them if they felt they had a name that was 'above their station' so one story is, for example, a servant called Rosetta was felt to have far too pretty a name for a servant and so was renamed Susan.

With regards to families using the same names, I have one branch of my family tree where the same two names were used alternately for the oldest son in the family, but all the brothers, cousins etc with the same surname would follow the same pattern. This has made tracing this branch really difficult as you have several people with the same name and surname, with similar date of birth and place of birth and with similar fathers name too! Luckily the surname is fairly rare and concentrated in a small area of the country, but its been an interesting puzzle figuring out who's who!!

AyahuascaTrip it's incredible! It's a mix of kosher versions of various Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African foods, because people moved around so much they picked up new dishes and ingredients in each place they settled.

Have a Google, there are quite a few sites and blogs with recipes, or there is the Converso Cookbook which has authentic 15th century recipes. jewishstudies.washington.edu/converso-cookbook-home/

@gokartdillydilly

I feel a lot of pride in my family...I have a professional job and my children will be the first generation that will (hopefully) never know poverty at all.

I feel like my family worked hard to get into a slightly better position than the generation before, and ultimately my comfortable life is partly as a result of their hard toils. I wish I could show them how their hard work has paid off for the family in the end.

On the other hand DH with his fancy relatives whose family have never known poverty and have always been middle class or upper class (even his parents owned and ran a private health practice) is a personal trainer.

Also - my side is full of strapping 6"+ guys (even in poverty signing up to WWI they were 6 foot plus).....I reckon those of my side that made it through poverty, malnutrition, famines, etc and didnt die must have some bloody good genes!

My Nan's great grandparents were Jewish immigrants in the 1820s called Gern & Daniele, but not sure where from.
My Nan was determined she was 100% English haha.

My great grandad was a bare knuckle boxer.
He had my grandad in a bigamous marriage- turns out he had a total of 22 children in his 2 marriages & the second family had no idea! Half of them died as children.

Another great grandad had the family surname which everyone I meet assumes is foreign but I've traced it back to the 16th century in England.

We have a place named after a fur trader ancestor in Alaska.

Ahhhhh look at all those chickpeas! 😍😍😍 can’t wait to try or adapt (not terrifically keen on eating meat) some of the recipes.

It’s amazing what any of our ancestors survived, most of mine (the European colonialists) made me feel very uncomfortable for a long time. Some on the paternal side were confederates despite being Catholic and living in a neutral state. It’s hard to understand. Others on the maternal side went west and persecuted Mormons. They all seem so greedy for land but it’s easy to judge from 2019 isn’t it.

My great-great grandmother died at the age of 30, Tuberculosis, in the slums of Dublin, leaving behind 5 children. My great-granny would have only been a baby. I loved my great-granny she was a tough woman but the thought of her growing up without her mammy in those days.

Found some suicides, criminals, people admitted to lunatic asylums and workhouses, many many infant deaths and a foundling while doing research. Life was bleak in the 1800's.

I'm not a fan of meat either, so I adapt them too, haloumi makes a good alternative in a lot of dishes. Saying that, some things like shakshuka, are vegetarian.