Genealogy

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It's one of my hobbies. Perhaps, we could use this thread to see if anyone else has the hobby or anyone has problems/roadblocks.

 

[Val]

Nah fuck it. Last time I looked at my family tree, I found out I was the sap!

 

[Swammerdami]

I joined talkfreethought recently, planning to observe a little before making a big splash with some outrageous controversy! But I may as well get my feet wet by mentioning that I'm also a genealogy hobbyist.

I could babble for hours about this hobby, but for now I'll just say that ... it got rather out of hand. ::gak:: Charlemagne appears in my fully expanded pedigree 70,945,747 times (but only 10,121 times when all but "most probable" lines are excluded).

 

[ZiprHead]

Welcome, Swammerdami.

 

[Playball40]

It's one of my hobbies. Perhaps, we could use this thread to see if anyone else has the hobby or anyone has problems/roadblocks.

And he's amazing at it too. Don - I sent in the test...looking forward to seeing what comes back.

My hobby is Doctor Who. I love collecting memorabilia, travelling to conventions to meet actors and of course watching and listening (through Big Finish). I enjoy other pop culture but Doctor Who is my favorite.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I joined talkfreethought recently, planning to observe a little before making a big splash with some outrageous controversy! But I may as well get my feet wet by mentioning that I'm also a genealogy hobbyist.

I could babble for hours about this hobby, but for now I'll just say that ... it got rather out of hand. ::gak:: Charlemagne appears in my fully expanded pedigree 70,945,747 times (but only 10,121 times when all but "most probable" lines are excluded).

Welcome to the forum. Glad to hear of another hobbyist.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It's one of my hobbies. Perhaps, we could use this thread to see if anyone else has the hobby or anyone has problems/roadblocks.

And he's amazing at it too.

Thank you!

Don - I sent in the test...looking forward to seeing what comes back.

Congrats. That will be cool for you to see.

My hobby is Doctor Who. I love collecting memorabilia, travelling to conventions to meet actors and of course watching and listening (through Big Finish). I enjoy other pop culture but Doctor Who is my favorite.

That is cool, too. I used to watch the ones with Tom Baker on public television when I was a kid. I've only watched the newer ones a few times, but they look fun.

 

[Swammerdami]

Was Bygod Eggleston of Settrington related to Francis Bygod of Settrington?

My own pedigree quest got off to a lucky start: when I was a child some great-great-aunts and a great-great-uncle sent me old family records. I got interested again decades later, in retirement. My lines go back to early American immigrants (though apparently none were "Mayflowers"), but there the trail mostly runs cold. Internet genealogies often provide leads — the parentage of early American immigrants and whole pedigrees for them — but about 95% of these turn out to be wrong. (100+ years ago genealogy was a fad and many fake pedigrees were sold to American social-climbers.)

One of the more interesting fake(?) pedigrees I've come across is that of the American colonist Bygod Eggleston — he is supposed to be ancestral to millions of Americans. Can anyone come up with any other human ever with 'Bygod' as a forename? If he really is the ONLY person ever with that name, there should be an interesting story behind it, right?

There is an English noble Bygod family (also spelled Bigott, Bigot, Bygot, Bigod) which traces their ancestry all the way to Vikings who followed the Norman conquerors to England and were rewarded with large land grants. The line seems to have gone extinct when Sir Francis Bigod was hanged for treason after  Bigod's_rebellion. (Francis had a son but that son died childless.)

Fifty years after Sir Francis' hanging, Bygod Eggleston was born in Settrington, Yorkshire — the very seat of that last cadet branch of the Bigods. Coincidence? Surely not — unless his name was some ejaculation, 'By God!', unrelated to the Bigod family. But was he just christened after the martyred Francis Bigod, or was there a blood relationship? The Egglestons were Puritans who hated Romanists, while Bigod was a Catholic in revolt against Protestantism. (At least Bigod Eggleston's children were Puritans — I don't know about the parents who christened him.)

On the Internet you can find pedigrees showing Eggleston to be the grandson or gt-grandson of Francis' daughter Dorothy. But there's no documentation and the lineages seem to contradict known facts. (Or was there a barely-remembered love-child scandal with the lovers dead, and therefore no offense taken, by the time Bygod was christened?)

One of many MANY little genealogical mysteries that come up.

 

[beero1000]

I have only rudimentary knowledge of my family tree. A name change, holocaust, and repeated emigrations will do that.

 

[Kharakov]

I trace mine back to a really bad decision.

 

[Old Woman in Purple]

I've dabbled as an "Internet Researcher"; does that count?

As far as I can tell, most of my ancestral lines have been here in the USA [with a few brief side-tangents via Canada] since before the Civil War, one at least arriving as early as by ~1710. They are made up of long lines of mostly farmers, with the occasional baker or some such (until my parents generation). Lots of unspectacular [in either direction] nobodies that lived their lives carrying on carrying-on.

I was more active with this in my teens-thru-mid-30s, writing letters to older family members etc., developing a 'report format' that makes sense to me. Of course, [fast forward to the current 'internet age', with the myriad available computer genealogy programs] my preferred format ISN'T one of the available options in ANY program. In spite of still being interested in genealogy, I've mostly stopped researching because I find it so frustrating to hobble along in the report forms I'm forced into. That or to continue to do everything 'by hand' in a word processing program, which makes it impossible to share large amounts of genealogy data, cuz I can't transfer that to GEDCOM format.

Sigh.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I believe we have an ancestor in common.

Cousin!
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's one of my hobbies. Perhaps, we could use this thread to see if anyone else has the hobby or anyone has problems/roadblocks.

I did some research, essentially I guess because I initially knew too little about my own family. So, now I know where I come from and what my great-great-grandfather did for a living.

So, I have one cobbler ancestor, born before the French revolution!

Still, that should sort of sober you up if you have any idea of being somewhat exceptional.

I think it also definitely gives a bit more the sense of being connected to other people, including perfect strangers. Which is probably rather a good thing.

But I also think it can be too much of a good thing. You should know when to stop, unless there's some really good reason to keep digging.
EB

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I have only rudimentary knowledge of my family tree. A name change, holocaust, and repeated emigrations will do that.

Sometimes I can get past the name changes, sometimes not. Emigrations can be hard, too. I have a great, great grandfather whom i cannot link back to his birth town in Europe or find his original last name. Doing a genetic test provided hints because i found a dna relative that through a process of elimination has to be related to him. I think even if I had these roadblocks gathering the info about the lives on my ancestors makes me feel more connected. Their struggles have been frustrating and inspjring and studying their lives has been educational.

 

[Rhea]

So how does one preserve the name change for future gens? My FIL changed his last name when he emmigrated. Where would we record that so 100 years from now our descendants aren’t frustrated?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

So how does one preserve the name change for future gens? My FIL changed his last name when he emmigrated. Where would we record that so 100 years from now our descendants aren’t frustrated?

So many things are digitized these days. Normally, in genealogy you trace backward. So there ought to be digital records to trace back on--such as a future obituary that might specify his birth surname or have info on his brothers and their unchanged names. A naturalization record may have both names also and/or may link to a ship arrival date and time/name. With people coming to the US on airplanes much more frequently, I am not quite sure what this piece will look like in 100 years. I am also not sure what a site like ancestry.com will look like or the Internets. For now, I would say that generally (goes beyond just your FIL), placing vital info in an obituary is very helpful as well as electronically recording family trees etc for future use.

 

[Rhea]

So how does one preserve the name change for future gens? My FIL changed his last name when he emmigrated. Where would we record that so 100 years from now our descendants aren’t frustrated?

So many things are digitized these days. Normally, in genealogy you trace backward. So there ought to be digital records to trace back on--such as a future obituary that might specify his birth surname or have info on his brothers and their unchanged names. A naturalization record may have both names also and/or may link to a ship arrival date and time/name. With people coming to the US on airplanes much more frequently, I am not quite sure what this piece will look like in 100 years. I am also not sure what a site like ancestry.com will look like or the Internets. For now, I would say that generally (goes beyond just your FIL), placing vital info in an obituary is very helpful as well as electronically recording family trees etc for future use.

Good ideas, thanks. Unfortunately, his obituary is already written and his siblings were all girls. I wonder if his immigration or military service papers might have his original name. I suppose we could carve it on his headstone now or put it in my husband’s future obituary.

 

[gmbteach]

I am trying to get started with family tree stuff. I have gotten as far back as great grandparents. They are buried in Glossop, which is not far from a whole heap of place names bearing my maiden name. Unfortunately, I live in Australia and so I can’t do my research as much as I want to.

 

[Ford]

My mom spent a lot of her life tracking down ancestors long before there was Ancestry dot com. After decades of documentation, late last year she was accepted into the Daughters of the American Revolution. As I understand it, you have to have a straight line back to someone who actually served in the Revolution, and she did that. I'm a direct descendant of someone who fought at what later became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.

 

[ZiprHead]

I was told many years ago a great aunt on my father's side of the family did the genealogy of her family and traced it back to British royalty. Supposedly there was a castle and everything.

My mother's side is all German. Mom's maiden name was Bahnemann and grandmothers maiden name was Roth, pronounced "Rote".

Here is my wife's family's genealogy. http://www.genealogy.com/forum/general/topics/ai/10944/