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?

I have found the birth date of their first child as October on one site, but on another it's listed in December, which is also when his parents' marriage is listed, same year.

As a pp said, could be as births, marriages and deaths were registered in quarters. Or the birth-date was October and the Baptism was December. Possibly on the same day as the marriage, or the week afterwards.

I think you're both right. Looking at the list of possible children, it's now obvious that the December is the quarter (the others are given as being June and September of their respective birth years). So it seems the parents married 2-3 months after their first child was born.

But what's only just struck me is that this happened in 1917 - there was a war on! I don't know how I could have overlooked that, and maybe that's why they didn't get married before the birth.

The bride was around 20 at the time of the marriage. I won't know how old the groom was until I get the marriage certificate, but could well be that he wasn't much older. It's sobering to think that my grandfather could have been one of those very many young men to have endured the trenches of WWI.

Would it be possible that one of them had to wait until they turned 21 so they were of age and could marry without their parents' permission?

Or maybe, as you say, there was a war on and they had to wait for the husband to come home on leave.

There were a good number of babies born around 9 months after their father went to war I found. Lots of ‘night before I leave’ encounters

One of my friends found out her grandfather was an officer in the German SS during WW2. She was quite traumatised by the news.

Was once teaching WW2 to year 9 and a kid brought in a pic of 'great-grandad in the army' that she'd been telling me they had at home. There he was in full SS uniform. Kid didn't have a clue, didn't even realise it was a German uniform

@joystir59 and @mollysshadow
All the files form that time (army, organisations etc.) are collected and you can ask for information. You can find out when sombeody joined, what they joined, how, what they were up etc. I did this for my ancestors (nobody joined anything they could possibliy avoid but no heroes either).

Do you find you get attached to particular families

I do! I had one Family with 4 siblings. Could find all sorts about 3 of them. Census records, marriage certs, births of kids/grandkids and all their marriages. Then nothing of the one apart from birth cert and 1901/1911 census. Spent years trying to find him.

Then one remembrance weekend Ancestry had free access to all its war records for the Friday-Sunday. So I just typed in as many surnames as I had in my tree and see who came up. I found my missing relative there. A record of his death, in France. He was 19. I actually cried!

Oh, that's so sad, Watching.

It is @hoteltango.

I have GGM who had 22 children including 3 sets of twins. Sadly only 11 survived. I cannot imagine labour and childbirth that many times. ( I had awful pregnancies), let alone the heartbreak and trauma of losing that many of your children. I want to love further back but don't have time atm, this info as from our family bible.

That's incredible, MoreHairyThanScary, and also tragic. I think that's what makes looking at family history so interesting. It makes those realities more personal, rather than just something we learned about in history lessons.

I vaguely remember hearing that my grandparents were too poor to buy proper shoes, so my father went to school, even in winter, in plimsolls. It's a small detail but does show something of what life was like before the welfare state.

In my meandering around the web, I've found WikiTree, which might be of interest to others. Couldn't find anything about my family on there, but possibly because I don't have enough firm data yet.

Can I show you one of my ancestors, during a time we were actually liked. Love the Yorkshire accents.

Romany funerals used to be massive when I was growing up in Yorkshire.

I'm a bit obsessed with this at the moment - trying to work out who my missing great grandfather is, as he's not who we were told he was... My G-grandmother's husband was sadly killed in WWI, but there are still 5 children born after them with his name on their birth certificates. Now I have my Ancestry DNA done I need to see if I can work out who he actually is!

I've gone back to pre-1000 (well, as sure as you can be...) on two lines - as soon as you get any type of nobility you can go back pretty quickly - my v working class ancestors were descended from Scottish royalty!

Familysearch is a great free resource to start with, and if you're looking for any Lancashire relatives (historical Lancashire so including e.g. Cumbria and Liverpool) then the Lancashire Parish Records site is super useful.

Where my DH grew up there is an area in the cemetry were the dynasty / clan / large family unit of the local Sinti/Roma ( I don't no which) buried their dead - large impressive stone monuments, very unlike the other graves which look more like flower beds.

Prokupatuscrackedatus

This is normal, I asked a family member where my mum was buried they said the name of the church yard. I said where abouts it's huge. he said oh you won't miss it, and I didn't
They bought enough land in the yard to bury a couple of generations and they are like huge statues.

I must admit that even with my DNA and thousands of cousins from 1st - 8th I'm getting stuck now. It's so time consuming though and I work from home atm on other gypsy related things. It's difficult to keep motivated and I'm burning the candle at both ends.

I've gone from thinking I was British as born here, to so many places it's unbelievable. I had no idea how large the family was and how many other families married into it.
haven't found any skeletons yet, but as a friend so kindly told me, I'm the skeleton in peoples families.

That video is awesome! ‘Barbaric Romany rites’ 😂

I didn’t know it was pronounced that way, Rom with a short O, in my head I read it like Roam - or is it just the accent?

Most people call it Roam, but it is Rom as shortened.
The tribes originating from India were called Rom and those considered the bottom of the caste were Dom, short for Domba, they were the "untouchables" and consisted of musicians and singers.

My Ancestry came as such a shock to me, before I even started DNA that it's given me a new direction where I hope to gain some paid work Can't tell you what as I'd have to kill you. But an example how ancestry can change your life.

Ancestral themed work sounds utterly amazing! So exciting. But I don’t want to be killed just yet so I’ll try not to ask!

I knew my dad and maternal granddad were Americans but nothing more than that - I thought my maternal grandma was English but none of the dna tests show any links to England yet, but Ireland and Scotland are definitely there. They do get updated from time to time as the database grows and accuracy is improving etc. The big surprises for me were Native American- dad is around 33% with some ancient Mayan (!!) but I’m only around 9-11% - and the Sephardi Jewish and the Louisiana Creole.

@jenfur I have messaged you

My gg grandfather was Swedish. He naturalised as a British citizen and I have copies of his forms and he lists his birthday as January 1867. But in the Swedish household records, where he lived as a child with his family, his date of birth is listed as June 1867. The Swedish birth record is also June. I can’t work out why he made himself older. I sometimes wonder if he wasn’t really him and stole someone’s name and changed the Birthday.

My g grandfather on the other side was unofficially adopted. He was born in 1896, was illegitimate and first shows up on a census in 1901 when he was 5. He is lodging with the family who adopted him but there is another lodger who has the same surname as him.try as I might I cannot link the lodger and my ggrandad to this family who brought him up. And where had he been for the first 5 years and why did he have to move to the other family? All questions I’ll probably never know the answers to but it upsets me a little.

Oh and I have the strange naming thing too. My great granny was called Mary her older sister was called MaryAnn, Mary Ann didn’t die young so I’ve always thought it weird that they named another daughter with practically the same name.

My great granny was called Mary her older sister was called MaryAnn

You’ll probably find they were both named after people. I had sisters called Lizzie and Bessie on my tree as a way to get around the fact both grandmothers were called Elizabeth.

I'm surprised at the emotional toll that researching your ancestors can have on you. How much you care about people that you didn't even know existed. I've lost an awful amount of sleep since I embarked on researching my family tree.

I am members of both Ancestry and Find My Past and have taken the DNA test on Ancestry. I found out last week that for a limited time, DNA from other companies can be uploaded onto Find My Past so I did that and am awaiting their results.

My research started by wanting an Irish passport! My mum's dad was Irish. However, I can find zero trace of him or his brother. We can find his parents but absolutely nothing for them. Although it turns out that his mother reinvented herself before she came to England. It looks like she'd been married before, had a child, was widowed but then turns up in a workhouse when pregnant and has another baby. Nobody knew any of this and I thought my research (and that if my cousin) was writing until I ordered her death certificate.

I'm beginning to think that my grandad and his brother were adopted by his parents but I'm completely lost as to where to go from here.

I have a bit of a dilemma surrounding a new first cousin. I haven’t submitted my DNA but two of my paternal 1st cousins (different parents but both siblings of my father) and their children have done. They have been contacted through Ancestry by someone who’s DNA shows that they are the first cousin to one and a half sibling of the other. That would also make her my first cousin.

The person who’s possibly her half brother has not replied to her message and I can understand that he’s probably in shock. His parents are still alive although very elderly.

My problem is that I’m the only one of her many cousins who lives in the same country, quite close by in fact. I do feel that I’d like to meet up with her at some point but I’m concerned that it would be weird when my uncle, her father, doesn’t know if her existence.

She has contacted me, I have built an extended tree on Ancestry so at least she can see where she came from.
Would it be wrong for me to accept her and have some kind of relationship when her closest relatives won’t do the same.