Chasing Leaves: Genealogy Talk

[Waterlilly]

One of my brothers applied (there is more native blood than her). My brother received five acres of land in North Carolina and says he is card carrying Native! My great grandfather was a red headed Irishman from County Clair and yep I got the red hair.

[kassa]

In about nine hours of research, it looks like I have two direct ancestors through whom I can gain membership to the DAR, and one of those I traced back to one who was born in England in the 1600s and ended up in Virginia. As long as the information is accurate, and right now I have no reason to believe it is not.

 

 

I'd be cautious, because a lot of lazy people will glom onto "known" trees with little support and slap them up on ancestry.  Then others come along and because the names match, they assume they're legit.  So the key will be getting the documentation, generation by generation, to link yourself to one of the known branches.  From there the genealogical societies will have reliable documentation.  Just double check the work!   If your ancestry sources are documenting, you can double check.  If not, more leg work.  

 

If they're really well known lines, the work is probably done for you well into the 20th century. 

Skip Gates is filming another season of his genealogy show (Finding your roots?)  Not sure if it's celebs or not, or African American or not.  Starts airing in September.  

 

Can't wait - I always thought it was the best one!

[riverblue22]

That's good news!  I like his show better than WDYTYA.  I also heard he will have a column on Huffington Post starting this fall.

 

ETA:  Apparently the first episode includes Stephen King.

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/

Edited August 21, 2014 by riverblue22

[Sasha]

I have to add be careful when you uncover family secrets. I recently found out when my grandmother was 15 she ran away and married a 45 year old fireman. She apparently left him after a few weeks and they divorced. This was in 1935 and she came from a strict Catholic family.

My sister had to blab to my Dad and he is still upset. I feel like we invaded her privacy. She passed away a while ago and never told a soul. So be warned you can innocently find things better left buried.

[peaceknit]

I heard that, Sasha! My mother has a scoundrel on her side, her maternal grandfather. Family history was always that he had run off from my g-grandmother (and their 3 young children) with another woman, and had been shot by her jealous husband, who had caught up to them in Oregon. Welllllll, I had just jumped into the genealogy bug (got it bad now!), and I wanted to do some more digging. I called up one of the county archives in Oregon to see if I could get the death certificate. I was rattling off what I'd been told to the person working there, and he actually told me that the death certificate stated that it was a murder/suicide by rifle! I was stunned, and when I told my mother she had no idea, nobody in the family did. I don't really know if my grandmother knew the truth herself, she never knew her father, and was only 3 when he died in 1914. It must have been a terrible family secret at the time. My g-grandmother was a devout Catholic and i'm sure would never have divorced her husband. I did some more digging and found out that my g-grandfather had married the woman he ran off with, so he might have been a bigamist too. I saw the marriage certificate. He stated that he'd been married once before (that was a lie-there was another marriage and child even before he and my g-grandmother's marriage that my mom never knew about either.) Also, he said that he was employed in the "Secret Service", another lie.

 

And the big clincher? I got an email out of the blue from a stranger who said they were related to the woman that my g-grandfather had murdered. He asked me if I knew the truth about the situation, and I told him what I knew. He said that it wasn't true, that his g-grandmother had been killed by my g-grandmother after he had harangued her for money to gamble, and she refused him. I also wonder if he had been drinking, because alcoholism runs deep in (both sides of) my family. If I hadn't dug this stuff up, nobody would be the wiser.

[Sasha]

I've got a bigamist in there too with 2 wives and 6 children each in the same small town. The more family lines you check the more scandals you find. Seems like every family had a black sheep. My library has an online database of several historical newspapers. I started searching my surnames and plenty of crazy stories popped up. Adultry made the papers alot. Those farmers weren't just plowing the fields.

Some people may not know but you can use ancestry.com for free at the public library or LDS family history centers. You have to print what you find because it won't let you save it but I go there to find Italian and German records. Ancestry world membership is a bit expensive. Don't overlook the LDS website since it's free and they have a lot of records that ancestry.com doesn't. Historical societies, county or city archives and many others are putting records online for free. You just have to do a bit of searching but you can get a really nice family tree going without having to spend a lot of money.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Sasha

[Driad]

 

Good post, Sasha.  The LDS website is https://familysearch.org/    Lots of information there.

 

Recommending:  http://www.cyndislist.com/    "A comprehensive, categorized & cross-referenced list of links that point you to genealogical research sites online."

 

Unfortunately many people nowadays are hiding the same types of stories.  Makes a genealogist think "If you only knew what our great-great-granddaddy did …."

[Sasha]

Thanks Driad for putting in the links! Cyndislist is a great resource I had forgotten. Plus talk to your family and get as much information as you can. I didn't start my research until after my last grandparent passed away. There are so many questions I wish I could ask and now everyone is gone. My grandmother's parents were Italian and German immigrants and I have found so much information on them and family members in Germany and Italy. She would have been so thrilled. Don't wait!

[Evanscody]

Real genealogist would not hide anything but would state facts based on documents. That's what I see on this show. If the documents are wrong, that's a different story.

[Sasha]

A professional who's been hired to do a job isn't going to hide the facts. My own private files on my family also don't hide any facts or hidden truths. When my mother told me in confidence that her brother is not the biological father of my cousin that is not going into the family tree I might be asked to share with relatives. That is not my secret to tell. It's way different than gg granddad was a bigamist 100 years ago. I'm just saying be careful if you find out certain things that might upset family members don't put them in the Xmas newsletter!

Edited August 23, 2014 by Sasha

[Bubbacat]

Very true, Sasha! My father's mother did NOT want anyone looking into her family's history. She was quite adamant about it, and she would completely clam up when anyone tried to ask about it. So I never got any info from her when I got into genealogy. Grandma passed away several years ago at nearly 100 -- without ever revealing anything about her family. Well, not too long ago, I found out why! Through ancestry.com, I managed to connect with some very distant cousins in Germany and got the whole story. It seems that Grandma's great-grandmother came from a fairly well-to-do family in a small town in Germany. And apparently, she became quite "close" to the local iterant junk peddler! (Great-Great-Great Grandma was Lutheran and the junk peddler was Jewish -- MAJOR no-no in Germany in the early to mid-1800s.) So my Grandmother's grandfather was born a little . . . well . . . premature -- about six months before the wedding, in fact. And his father the junk peddler (my Great-Great-Great Grandfather) changed his name from a very Jewish-sounding name to a much more innocuous German name, and he converted to Lutheran. THAT was what Grandma didn't want us to find out. Not a big deal today, but in Grandma's day and her parents' day and her grandparents' day? Huge, huge scandal! She definitely didn't want any of us digging that up -- even though it was more than 150 years and several generations ago. (And yes, Grandma was pretty much a bigot who really didn't want anyone to find out about her Jewish heritage.)

Edited August 24, 2014 by Bubbacat

[QueBueno]

"I'd be cautious, because a lot of lazy people will glom onto "known" trees with little support and slap them up on ancestry. Then others come along and because the names match, they assume they're legit."

Thanks kassa, I agree and I've found a lot of questionable stuff on the trees others have done; I definitely take it with several grains of salt. One ancestor showed 23 kids from three mothers. Not impossible but yeah, probably not right and it took awhile to sort out which ones were wrong. I've also found inaccuracies in attributing census records to the wrong person, listing someone as a spouse when they're actually a child, multiple incorrect name spellings, etc. Once the errors are out there, they get perpetuated and difficult to sort.

[Sasha]

Agree with using anyone else's tree on ancestry.com. Some of the work is incredibly sloppy. You can't give birth to a child when your 5 years old or have been dead for 50 years! But I will admit if I have hit a wall and I'm really stuck on a person I will search other trees as a last resort. It might give you a place to start but always do your own work.

Another thing to keep in mind is when you are using the search engines, all of these documents have been indexed by humans and humans make mistakes especially with all the different handwritten records. For example I had trouble locating some Olberts because whoever did the indexing thought the handwriting was Alberts. Old cursive writing can be quite different from what we use today. If you are stuck say on a birth record try just putting in the day with no name and check through all babies born that day or week etc. I've found many records by just looking through all the births, marriages, deaths per month or even year. If you have a small county it really doesn't take long.

[maraleia]

Some of my stuff on ancestry is a mess precisely because of other people's trees being inaccurate so I have to go in and clean things up. It doesn't help that my family kept on naming people the same names generations apart. Also, I went a little nuts with branching out to distant relatives which has caused me more problems with the organization of my tree.That's another problem and why I'm grateful that nowadays parents are choosing unique names for their kids. The records will be so much easier to uncover as the years go on.

[kassa]

It also stinks when you try to explain to somebody why their tree is "wrong" and they insist it's right.  There's a guy who has the censuses showing my great grandmother and her siblings listed as evidence of HIS ancestor's marriage to another woman (with a different last name) altogether.  He might be related to me, he might not, but he doesn't seem to grasp that I KNEW (some of) these people and their children, my grandmother and then my father grew up in the same neighborhood as they did, and they're simply not the people he's claiming they are.  

 

There's no reason for him to take my word for it that the "Helen" in one census and the "Daisy" in the other census are both my great grandmother, who was called Daisy until the day she died, but whose name was Helen.  (And as it turned out she was baptized Ellen, which was a surprise to all of us!)  To him it's evidence that they're two different families -- to me it's proof that it's truly my family.

[Waterlilly]

There are innocent mistakes, my Dad had the same name as someone the same age and same area, some relatives have mixed them up, but i remembered my Dad mentioning this person and that they were not related (we used to get mail and phone calls). We do not have a real common last name and the first names were kinda unusual. It is important to read the documents carefully and even dig further because old records can be wrong. Also, in one census my grandfather spelled the last name and in the next added an e.

[bybrandy]

There is a person with my name who lives a couple of miles from me.   I imagine that will be a bit confusing for future genealogists, although the part where he is a man and I am not, should provide some clues.   

 

I am a big proponent of unraveling the family secrets, documenting them and putting them on the tree.    My grandmother never told anybody that her mother had 5 children from a previous marriage.   And when asked about tracing her family even without that information she would always say, "nobody would be interested in meeting me".   

As it turns out one of her five siblings placed an ad in the paper where she had lived the last time he saw her every six months for 20 years, because he remembered her and he wanted to know she was alright.   It would have meant the world to her to know that.   

[Driad]

For anyone new to this -- census information did not necessarily come from the people listed. If the family was not home, the census taker might have asked neighbors, who often did not know the correct names, ages, etc.

[Galloway Cave]

On my mom's dad's side of the family, the family name is spelled with an "o" going back to when they immigrated from Scotland. However, my great-grandfather changed his last name spelling from using an "o" to using an "a" in the late 1880s. He was the only person (of 12 kids) to change his last name spelling. We are full-blooded Scot on that side of the family. I was contacted by someone on Ancestry who claims to be descended from one of the "o" ancestors, only the name he gave was spelled with the "a", and that ancestor was Native American. I keep telling this person the name is wrong and we have no NA in our family so he probably isn't related but he insists he is correct, based solely on misspelled census records and inaccurate death certificates on Ancestry. I even told him we still own the family cemetery and the headstones all have the original family name spelling on them but he won't budge. He has even gone on Ancestry and added notes to the records, changing the name spellings on census records from the correct name to the incorrect name. I have to add a second note correcting his notes. It's to the point I don't even want to look at those records anymore, I get so pissed off.

 

To add to what Driad said above, death certificates and other official documents were often filled out by clerks and mistakes were made when someone was verbally giving information to the clerk.

[bybrandy]

A contact of mine is convinced my great-grandfather had a twin brother named Willie because one year there was a Willie on the census that was the same age as my great-grandfather would have been.   The part where my great-gradfather's name wasn't on that census?   Not important.  Also the part where my great-grandfather's name was Roy-Lee which could easily be heard by a census taker as Willie?    Not valid.    The part where my great-grandfather lived until my father was in his thirties without ever mentioning a twin but while mentioning his other nine siblings?    Some sort of scandal, obviously.   

[millk]

My dad is #4 of 10. His youngest sister was registered with an E in her last name instead of an A. Lots of fun jokes about her being from the E named milk man or grandpa ducking the hospital bill but probably came from E being the common spelling and how we pronounce it and it being recorded wrong. She stuck with the E spelling until she married. But then, my grandfather flipped A and E several times (marriage, work, military, medical records) so its fun. My grandma goes by E now because its easier for her records to be Mrs E than fight over Mrs A.

 

The E vs A thing is handy to find people who don't know me and ask for the A pronunciation. (most Americans go for the A version)

[UncleChuck]

 

Agree with using anyone else's tree on ancestry.com. Some of the work is incredibly sloppy.

My grandmother had a sister who became a nun in a convent at the age of 22, lived behind those walls until she (the nun) died of tuberculosis at age 29, yet some doofus has posted his family tree on ancestry.com showing my grandmother's sister as having married and raised 9 children in a different state.  That poor nun is getting credit for dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and some great-greats...but no matter how much documentation I provide, that tree is still on ancestry.com with ALL the errors intact.

Another grandfather is credited with dying in Montana when he never left the state of MISSOURI because some "researcher" doesn't know the difference between MO (Missouri) and MT (Montana).

 

I have also seen plenty of evidence in those early census forms that indicate the census-taker was just getting approximate data from some friendly neighbor.  Census was done every 10 years, yet some family members might age 12 or 13 years from one census to the next while a sibling might only age 8 years or so.  Odd math!

[Sasha]

Enigma X mentioned doing an ancestry DNA test. Has anyone else had theirs done and what did you think? I just sent in samples for me and my son. My sister did hers with ancestry.com a while back and it took forever to get any decent results. For about a year all it said was 75% central europe and 25% southern europe. Not exactly what she expected for $100. Finally it has broken down into smaller areas like Scotland, Italy, Germany etc.

But we were so disappointed to not show any Native American. Like a lot of families in the South we have all those stories that gg grandma or grandpa was full blooded Cherokee. We do have a Blackhawk and a Blackfoot in the tree but nothing showed in her DNA. I'm a little confused on the database they use to compare DNA samples. Does anyone have a clue how it all works? Or did you get the results you were hoping for?

[kassa]

Mine came back broken down pretty specifically right away (last year).  Remember that each person receives a "sort" of the genes, so it is possible that the identifying factors for the known ancestors of a particular heritage did not make it to you as an individual (assuming they were far enough back).  Siblings will not necessarily have identical "sorts" and their results can vary.  My friend has documentation back to the Netherlands for the past 200 years and her brother shows that ancestry but she does not -- she shows "extra" of their mom's side of the family.  

 

There are tests that can show how much you share genetically with actual family members -- you may find that you are closer genetically to one sibling than another, or one grandparent than the other 3 -- not everything ends up even.  Not sure how you access that kind of testing, but I read an article about it ;)

 

What surprised me is that there was virtually no ancient British blood.  We technically have more Iraqi/Turkish blood than English blood.  My very very English father would have been astonished.  Guess the Romans really conquered!

[bybrandy]

I have tested at all three of the major sites. For finding relatives Ancestrys link to the trees is awesome. But my mom is second generation American so she doesn't have much match wise. 23 and me is in a lot of ways harder to use but they have a much bigger foreign database so I have better matches there.

As for ancestry composition Ancestry was pretty off when it was new but my results have gotten closer and closer to what I would expect.

Edited September 22, 2014 by bybrandy

[Sasha]

Thanks for the info on your tests! I did get my test results and my sister and I are quite different when it came to the percentages. I'd like to think that explains a little bit of why we are so very different in terms of personality and appearance. I'm going to have to study up before I try to do anything interesting with the raw data.

[QueBueno]

Did anyone see "20/20" last night, the story about the professional genealogist who tracks down birth parents, children given up for adoption, lost siblings etc.? So interesting. This one woman had looked for her baby that her parents had forced her to give up, for decades. This genealogist found her in one day. Amazing.

Another story was a man left abandoned as a baby. He found out later he had an older brother also abandoned at the same time and adopted by another family. The genealogist found the brother, who sadly did not want to reunite. One thing that struck me about that story was that the genealogist found the father first, and then in Ancestry.com found a city directory with the father and mother on the same page at the same address. Also amazing. If I were that man, I'd join Ancestry.com and set up my tree with the parents and the brother since he now knows their identity. He might find other blood relatives that way who do want to have a relationship, and maybe someday the brother could reconsider and it would be easier to find each other. I know Ancestry masks the names of living people in the trees, but often the information is still findable.

I am loving the online city directories on Ancestry. Recently I needed to establish that my mother lived at a certain address in the 40's (unclaimed money database). At first I couldn't find any evidence at all, although I had some indirect evidence that she'd lived there. Then I realized that the directories had another section that was organized by address, where you could look up an address and see who lived there. Bingo - it was my grandparents' house.

[kickedinthehead]

Ancestry can be fantastic in a lot of ways. The city directories can definitely be helpful!

 

I haven't been a paid member of Ancestry for several months (can't afford it right now) but I've found several random documents there that helped me track down what information I currently have about my brick wall great-grandfather. He (my paternal grandma's dad) only had one child, my grandmother, before he died at age 25. And I'm his only living direct descendant that's interested enough in genealogy to try to track down more about him, so it's been a challenge to figure out just who he was (my grandma was only a few months old when he died, so she never knew him). I don't even have any Ancestry member trees to go by, at least not for him!

 

Anyway, I still haven't figured out who the heck his parents were (or where they came from), but through Ancestry I found the WWI registration card that confirmed his name and birth date and location (before, I only had a name, which wasn't even his actual name but was close enough that I was able to make the connection). I was also able to connect him to my great-grandmother, to whom he was only briefly married, but they had a custody battle in 1920 involving another man and my great-grandma's half-sister (which I read all about in an old newspaper article found on Ancestry). And in one of those city directories from 1928, I was also able to figure out that he died young after seeing my great-grandmother listed there as his widow. (I found additional details about his death later on, such as the year, and the location where he died -- which was the same as my grandmother's birth location -- but before I came across the city directory, I didn't know if he and my great-grandmother divorced, or if he'd lived to 100, or what.)

 

I'm hoping it's just a matter of time before I find another document with one or more of his parents' names so I can learn more about that particular branch of my family tree!

 

Meanwhile -- in general, I agree about the "take with a grain of salt" mentality regarding Ancestry member trees. I won't rule them out if they look credible (i.e. if parent/child ages make sense, if sources are included, etc.) and I've found some helpful information on a few of them. But I would never just assume the information is accurate without additional research. Admittedly, I "fell" for a few of these trees when I first started researching my family. I quickly became skeptical, however, when through one of them I traced my "ancestry" back to Odin (*snicker*).

 

(I'm pretty sure at least one "Cherokee princess" appeared in the Ancestry member trees version of my family history, as well.)

Edited December 1, 2014 by kickedinthehead

[Bella]

My mom did our family tree back in the 1960s, talking to great-great-aunts in their 90s, etc., getting old family Bibles, and all that.

 

She then proudly proclaimed that we had three different Indian tribes in our background (no Cherokee princesses, however). I later came to doubt two of them. However, I do have a Crow great-grandmother, whom I actually knew and have pictures of. She had stories about her childhood, and one of my aunts followed up on that, gathering info that's currently with one of my cousins. The clincher for me, however, was going to a conference on health disparities where one of the speakers was an older man from the Crow Nation. I couldn't pay attention to what he was saying because I was transfixed by his face - he could have been the identical twin of my grandfather (Crow great-grandmother's son). 

 

I still have doubts about the other two tribes allegedly in my background, but since I'm not interested in getting DNA testing, I'll never know for sure.

[riverblue22]

The newer Ancestry DNA explanations are very confusing to me.  My mother was German.  Her ancestors were Volga Germans--Germans that migrated to Russia in the 1700s and then to America in the 1800s.  They did not intermarry in Russia and kept their own language and culture.   My maternal grandmother's family has been traced back to the Hesse region of Germany.  I don't know where my maternal grandfather's family came from in Germany.

 

Anyway, being half German, Germany does not show up at all in my Ancestry.com results.  They show 39% Great Britain, 27% Ireland, and 11% Scandinavia.  That works for my father's side, but I don't see any of my mother's ancestry there at all.

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to talk to anyone on Ancestry about the results?  I couldn't find anything.  I would like to understand why it worked out this way.

 

ETA:  To answer my own question a little bit, I checked out the DNA message boards and they did seem to provide help.  Someone there mentioned the Ancestry videos that you can watch for further understanding of DNA results.  Haven't found those yet, but the message board looks like a good place to start.

 

ETAA:  Thanks for the phone number.  I might give that a try.

Edited December 16, 2014 by riverblue22

[Enigma X]

Ancestry's # is 1-800-ANCESTRY (262-3787). Be forewarned that the customer service agents know nothing about DNA but will pretend like they do.

[CocoaGoddess]

Bumping up this thread! I was gifted with an Ancestry DNA kit for the holidays, and I've pretty much gone as far as I could go on free sites and family search. There is a particular family line I'm interested in following, but even with a newly purchased Ancestry account, I've hit a dead end. Disappointing. I know that this happens often with African Americans with improper records and lost slave documents and whatnot, but my family has been good about updating genealogy and bibles, but just not for this line I guess. 

 

Kiziah is also an important name in my family! 

[riverblue22]

Have you watched Finding Your Roots on PBS by Henry Louis Gates?  He has a terrific program and I have learned a lot about African American genealogy from him.  You should see if you can watch them online.  His researchers have found amazing slave documents and he also brings DNA research into play.  Maybe he has written some books on the subject.  I would definitely check him out.

[kassa]

Aside from Finding your Roots, Gates has done other genealogy shows,  some focused more than others on African American genealogy.  All of them are an excellent combination of education and entertainment, no matter your background.  

 

Genealogy Roadshow is coming back!  Not sure if it's the same format (I hope they've tweaked it).  I also hope the guy who calls it Jenny-ology will be back.  

[peaceknit]

Kassa, thanks for the heads up on Genealogy Roadshow. I find all of these shows fascinating as a genealogy geek :)

Edited January 8, 2015 by peaceknit

[Chippings]

Okay, best name so far is from England:   Pownell Bastard Pellew (years:  1786-1833).  He is a distant relative on the tree of my aunt by marriage.  That was absolutely his name, and he had a perfectly respectable life.  (A captain in the Royal Navy and Viscount of Exmouth.)   His brother's name was Fleetwood Pellew. 

A very famous person in England (but I had not heard of him til a couple of years ago) is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  He was an engineer who was extremely central in the Industrial Revolution, designing railroads, bridges, etc.  I have heard, since, in English programs, people speaking of "Brunel" and everybody knows who that is.        But does it beat Pellew?  Not sure.

[Spooneroonie]

Kassa, thanks for the heads up on Genealogy Roadshow. I find all of these shows fascinating as a genealogy geek :)

My thanks, too. One click led to four hours over at pbs.org.

[Snarklepuss]

I was very happy to see Genealogy Roadshow come back, but it seemed like a very short season to me.

[PRgal]

I'd love to research my ancestry, but I'm not sure how far back I can get back to.  My family's from China and I'm pretty sure I can only go back to my once, maybe twice great-grandparents, since I can speak with people who "remember."  Many documents were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, so I can't even get to anything in its original form, let alone translated into English.  :(

[JeanneH]

Could someone explain to me (in small, easily understandable words) what "cousin X times removed" means. I've looked it up, but I don't understand what they're trying to tell me. Is it some sort of generational thing? I thought that was addressed via "1st cousin," "2nd cousin," etc.

 

I think the most surprising thing I found about my family was when I was looking into records about the WW2 death of the son of one of my mom's aunts. For some reason I decided to look up the family of the young man's father on Ancestry, and the name of one of *his* aunts sounded familiar. Turns out, that aunt was Caroline Ingalls, mother of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Which led me to a rather crazy story - Laura's sister Carrie married a man named David Swanzey. He was a bit of a prospector and (IIRC) at one time owned a mine. Anyway, one day, before Carrie and David married, David and another friend took one of their investors, visiting South Dakota from New York, out to do some prospecting. The South Dakotans decided that this mountain, which the Lakota Sioux called "Six Grandfathers," needed to be re-named in honor of their visitor. And so Six Grandfathers became Mount Rushmore (after NY lawyer Charles Rushmore).

[PRgal]

Okay, best name so far is from England:   Pownell Bastard Pellew (years:  1786-1833).  He is a distant relative on the tree of my aunt by marriage.  That was absolutely his name, and he had a perfectly respectable life.  (A captain in the Royal Navy and Viscount of Exmouth.)   His brother's name was Fleetwood Pellew. 

A very famous person in England (but I had not heard of him til a couple of years ago) is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  He was an engineer who was extremely central in the Industrial Revolution, designing railroads, bridges, etc.  I have heard, since, in English programs, people speaking of "Brunel" and everybody knows who that is.        But does it beat Pellew?  Not sure.

 

I think only modern celebrity baby names (especially Pilot Inspektor and North) can beat Pownell and Fleetwood. 

[hjmugillecuty]

Could someone explain to me (in small, easily understandable words) what "cousin X times removed" means. I've looked it up, but I don't understand what they're trying to tell me. Is it some sort of generational thing? I thought that was addressed via "1st cousin," "2nd cousin," etc.

 

Removed means the number of generations down from a person. For instance, my cousin is my 1st cousin. Her daughter is my 1st cousin once removed, and her daughter's children are my 1st cousins twice removed. However, her daughter is my daughter's 2nd cousin, and their kids would be 3rd cousins to each other.

Edited March 30, 2015 by hjmugillecuty

[kickedinthehead]

Removed means the number of generations down from a person. For instance, my cousin is my 1st cousin. Her daughter is my 1st cousin once removed, and her daughter's children are my 1st cousins twice removed. However, her daughter is my daughter's 2nd cousin, and their kids would be 3rd cousins to each other.

 

Right. Or, in the other direction, to use my "famous" relative Christy Mathewson as an example -- Mathewson is my 2nd cousin 4x removed, meaning that 1.) he was my great-great grandfather's 2nd cousin, and 2.) the "4x removed" part factors in because my great-great grandfather was 4 generations ago in my line (so, my dad = 1x removed; grandfather = 2x  removed, great-grandfather = 3x, great-great grandfather = 4x). 

[maraleia]

This genealogy stuff is so interesting and brings out the worst in some people. Check this out from the comments section over at the AV Club regarding the show Salem.

 

How would you like it if it were members of your family they were distroying their already tainted names? I am insulted by this show using my real family names. Yes, some were right and some were wrong, but having members of your family hung for nothing is a bit much and now this stain on their names? Too much, I will not be watching. I hope it ends soon.

and her response to the query of which family members she was referring to.

 

I am related to John Alden, Mary Silbey, Mary Walcott, the Tyler family (which includes Mary Parker, who was hung) and the Posts and Bridges. I just don't like the way they are playing with my family history. I know it was a horrible time, but after all they are my family. I do not plan on watching and neither does any member of our family. It isn't right to take real people and make monsters out of them and tell history the way it really was, not making up such horrible stories that people will believe.

The thing is does she not understand how TV works? How about contacting the showrunners and letting them know her connection. Why complain on the web if you aren't planning on doing anything about it.

 

Anyway, just thought this would be interesting to all of you.

[JeanneH]

Removed means the number of generations down from a person. For instance, my cousin is my 1st cousin. Her daughter is my 1st cousin once removed, and her daughter's children are my 1st cousins twice removed. However, her daughter is my daughter's 2nd cousin, and their kids would be 3rd cousins to each other.

 

Right. Or, in the other direction, to use my "famous" relative Christy Mathewson as an example -- Mathewson is my 2nd cousin 4x removed, meaning that 1.) he was my great-great grandfather's 2nd cousin, and 2.) the "4x removed" part factors in because my great-great grandfather was 4 generations ago in my line (so, my dad = 1x removed; grandfather = 2x  removed, great-grandfather = 3x, great-great grandfather = 4x). 

 

Thank you for the explanations. It's kind of funny - to everyone I know, "my 1st cousin's child is my 2nd cousin". I guess we've been wrong all along.

 

So then when someone is your 4x great grandfather, that doesn't mean he's your great great great great grandfather (4 "great's") huh?

Edited April 8, 2015 by JeanneH

[bybrandy]

No your 4x great grandfather is your great great great great grandfather. He's just six generations removed from you.

[JeanneH]

Oh good. Something I *can* keep straight in my head.  ;)

 

Thanks

[kassa]

I am related to John Alden, Mary Silbey, Mary Walcott, the Tyler family (which includes Mary Parker, who was hung) and the Posts and Bridges. I just don't like the way they are playing with my family history.

 

 

A good thing the Lincoln line died out before they made the vampire movie.

[Cara]

Thank you for the explanations. It's kind of funny - to everyone I know, "my 1st cousin's child is my 2nd cousin". I guess we've been wrong all along.

Same here. That's how I've always understood things and everyone I know refers to relations that way too! Oh well! Edited April 16, 2015 by Cara

[Joe Jitsu913]

Genealogy is fascinating to me. I have English and French ancestry. I actually found a possible ancestor who was hung for being a witch in Boston in the 1600s. Her name was Elizabeth Kendall who was suffering from depression and grieving over the loss of her infant. She mentioned how she kept seeing her child in her dreams and she was accused of being a witch. I have much more research to do!