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?

Meant to add - it is remarkable what some of our ancestors survived then, and even more recently. The members of my Jewish family who stayed in Holland didn't survive WW2.

I also have ancestors who were pretty terrible people. I do try to tell myself that has no bearing on me in the present but it's horrible to think that your own relatives could do such awful things. Saying that, I do have others who seem to have been really decent so I suppose that compensates.

I have found my people. OP thanks for starting this thread.

I've got to about 1781 with reasonable corroboration, though I still need proper documentary evidence for some.

My research took a different direction when I came across a reference to someone with a relative's name in a case of infanticide. I had heard family lore around this, but it turns out the rumours etc were highly inaccurate and it was a different sister. This research has been heartbreaking at times and I have managed to look at it in great detail as I have used it academically.

I've only researched my mother's side as my dad's side will require an ability to read and interpret Ottoman sources.

Prokupatuscrakedatus, much obliged 😊

Found in the burial records of a church in a sleepy rural village:

Jane EastMids spinster aged 50 (date of death)

Then written in the margin struck by lightning whilst crossing nether field

I like to imagine that this ancestor, probably an inconsequential woman in her village, was spoken by everyone about due to the tragic nature of her death.

spoken about

Forgot to mention the scandal in my own family.

Discovered that my grandfather (who died when I was about 10) was sent too prison for handling stolen goods and was involved in a couple of other dodgy incidents at the time. My dad was just a toddler when it happened.

We only found this out a few years ago from newspaper reports. Not one person in the family had ever breathed a word about it and sadly they are all now dead so can't find out more. My gran lived till she was 98 and the discovery made me understand a lot more about her and how she was such a tough and determined lady. The shame of what happened must have created a wall of silence that lasted for 80 years even though lots of people must have known what happened.

Love this thread - and to hear so many family stories. Do you find you get attached to particular families? I'm engrossed in one (great great grandparents) who at first I thought had had a nice normal time, but on searching more it turned out they were in the workhouse, moved cities, moved back again, father died young and then disabled son was put back into the workhouse for good. I have the bare facts, but I really want to know the detail - what happened to send them to the workhouse? What were they like? Why did they move cities?

By the way, be very careful with family trees on Ancestry. I've found several on searches that just aren't right. I thought it was me at first, but I've double checked everything (and even I can't be that wrong all the time ) One had my gg grandmother dying three years before I had her marrying gg grandad. I tried to check with the owner of the tree who just told me she was right and that was that, but I've quadruple checked and am satisfied mine is right. But I keep seeing this tree all over the place where other people have found it and just attached it to their trees.

Agree @darklady64 Ancestry trees can be great for giving you hints or leads but really have to be followed up and confirmed by your own research.

In living memory we have
One of my DGM's elder sisters recorded as 'simple' in the workhouse records. She was epileptic years before there were effective drugs and my DGM remembered her having almost daily seizures. This poor woman was married off to a 'confirmed bachelor' a really elderly man, to keep her out of the workhouse/infirmary.

Last year near Remembrance Sunday the library in my home town held a daily roll call of local soldiers who'd died in WW1. The librarian who had researched this mentioned to a cousin that she'd found a reference to someone she thought was from our family. Cousin attended roll call on day his name was read out, sent video of it over to me.
Between us we discovered he was indeed a relative, a brother of mutual grandfather. He died on the first day of the Battle of The Somme with no known grave. His was 19.
He was never mentioned within the family at all. Perhaps the grief was too great..
We've discovered him by chance but sadly there are no photos or anything tangible to connect us to him.

I got side tracked the other day reading as I stumbled across a write up of a newspaper article in the Times of a murder that happened down the road from my ancestors.

Trigger warning re: gruesome violence

A guy who sold cheap pottery door to door knocked on one door and saw the man inside was threatening his stepson who was about five with an axe. It was presumed he started to bollock the man about scaring the child but the man then flipped and decapitated him with the axe.

The child wandered out to find its Mum who had gone to the shop nearby and told his Mum that something bad was happening between her husband and the man who sold her a teapot the previous week.

So the Mother and quite a few neighbours ran to see what was happening - they could see the dead man on the floor. The murderer was losing his shit and started throwing bits of brain matter at the crowd

Then he put the head on the fire and said he was going to eat it

So the neighbours got up on the roof and poured water down the chimney to put out the fire. One neighbour tried to get the murdered but ended up being slashed by the axe (but lived).

It was very dramatic. It must have been the talk of the area for years and years.

DM did this. Turned out to be descendant of someone who owned a county. Went to the church where he is buried expecting a stone. Couldn't find it so popped in the church. Turned out whole church was dedicated to him with a book signed by people from all over the world descended from him!

That’s absolutely horrific OP!

I found four close relatives who’d all shot themselves in the head, and some of their children went on to do the same or similar (one died slowly from arsenic poisoning) all within my grandparent and parent’s generations. Only recently realised the seemingly random numbers scrawled on the edges of their death certificates are ICD 9 codes so now I know where at least some of my bipolar comes from. It’s probably unhealthy but I do love the death certificates!

Also noticed with large families (10+ dc) if one of the elder siblings died they'd use the same name again for a younger sibling born after - has anyone else noticed this in their family trees? Was this common practice?

This seems to be quite common in the old days- I came across it a lot in both my parents' trees and I couldn't work it out when I started my research, all these duplicate names made me think I was getting details wrong - until the penny dropped.

NewName54321 Thank you so much for your concise explanation of familial names/repeats. I'll have to dig out my old laptop to check but iirc I'm sure what you said does tally with my family. These were my Scottish ancestors and actually my Nana's middle name is her grandmother's maiden name and my Mam and eldest sister has a familial middle name so definitely still a family tradition. Sadly all of the male familial names that went back to 17th century were 'lost' after most of my Nana's uncles were killed during Dunkirk and surviving family only had daughters and married men with different naming culture.

Very interesting and thank you again and to LIZS and wheresmymojo for confirming also.

Sad isn't it hudyerwheesht - I had at least one family who used the same name three times

Some of my lot seemed to go to extraordinary lengths to give everyone their own name - there’s gt aunt Dakota circa 1901 who went by Cody and her 12 sisters Texas and Denver and you get the idea. Their parents would have a rough time in the baby names threads.

My DNA is back today, I can't believe it, I have 1000 matches throughout the world. I thought it would be far more concentrated than it is.
Have had a quick look at some of the trees and nothing looks like mine.
I even have cousins in The Congo.
I'm currently walking around annoying the family by saying Fuck me.
I'm in shock at the results tbh.

My greatGF was Frisian and they had this naming tradition. It was really important before heritable family names for everyone was introduced under Napoleonic rule. And they kept it up until they married into other regions.
So with a first name like Herre I could be very sure that he was not one of my line. Or a boy having the same first name as his father was a sign that he probably was born after his father's death or had very many elder brothers.

@RomanyQueen1

It’s so exciting isn’t it Romany!

I have an absurd amount of matches on ancestry, almost all dad’s side, very few are maternal relatives and they’re quite distant. Frustrating.

Thank you to whoever mentioned 1939 Register, even the freely accessible parts have proved interesting already, including addresses.

darklady64 There's someone on Ancestry who has my great, great grandfather (who lived his entire life in the Midlands), commuting between his actual home and one of the southern US states where he did a completely different job, and had another wife and several children.

I did point out that none of what she had him doing could possibly be correct, but she insists that it must be the same person because they have the same name.

I've also come across a tree that has my 5x great grandmother married with two children by the age of five. Once again I was told it must be right 'because people married younger in those days'.

AyahuascaTrip

I didn't know about ICD codes, I'll look out for them (I have bipolar too!)

I've only just started ordering copy certificates so it will be interesting what I find on there and agree that the death ones are the most interesting!

Oh yes, one of my ancestors turned up in somebodies tree dying at 128 years old. I asked for proof .
Online trees are never more than hints.
I am currently disagreeing with a fellow researcher about a pair of parents. If she is right I am back to the 14hundreds, but I havn't yet been able to independently retrace her steps.

I agree darklady and saskia...

I use other people's trees as hypothetical matches but then often have to do a lot of cleaning up when I get to looking a bit closer at them.

It seems a particular issue with people in the States. Quite a few of mine have come up as having moved to the US when they definitely didn't because they had children born in the UK after they supposedly moved.

The vast majority of people in the UK didn't move to the US and stayed pretty close to home so I view any big changes of area with suspicion until I can verify it. A couple of times it's been correct - some Irish relatives that went to the US on the famine 'coffin ships', a couple transported to Australia for petty crimes and I've just found a GGG Uncle of my stepfather who seems to have moved after being jailed for assault (presumably to escape the scandal in the small village he came from).