Remember way back in February when I was sick and wheezing and coughing my fool head off? Well, since I couldn't lay down due to the coughing fits that would happen I spent a lot of time sitting up. So I did what one would do and signed up for a year's worth of service on Ancestry.com and started inputting everything I knew about the ancestors.
Here is what I have found out:
1. I now have 841 people on the extended branches of my tree
2. If you were a German, Scot, English or Irish farmer, blacksmith or cooper I am descended from you.
3. 7 generations back in my tree is my 5th great grandmother who is first cousin to Francis Scott Key.
4. One branch of the family has my ancestor arriving in Boston, Mass. in 1630 on a ship called the Planter. (This is just ten years after the Mayflower) He was one of the founders of New Haven, Connecticut. And this family had several documented cases of nutters. Something you never want to have happen when there are witch trials going on around you.
5. An Irish many-great grandfathers arrived in South Carolina around 1750. His son married a girl who was a fifth-generation Virginian on her mother's side. On her father's side they were English and the records go back to 1390.
6. I had ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and on both sides of the Civil War.
7. It is much easier to find the really old stuff rather than the newer stuff. The government had set a law when they started taking the census that the information wouldn't be released for 72 years after the fact. This was the average life span at the time and they didn't feel they would be jeopardizing anyone still living by waiting that length of time. What that means is the latest census you can work from is 1930. My mother-in-law, for example, was born in 1934 so I hit a dead end when working on her side of the family.
8. It would be a whole lot easier to get the records matched up to the right person if there weren't 4 or 5 generations of men with the SAME DAMN NAME! Why do men want to name their sons after themselves? Change the middle name or something!
9. I have 2 ancestors of the same generation, both from Iowa, but different sides of the family whose mothers both died in childbirth and they were raised by family members.
10. I think this ties in nicely with my weekly obsession with reading the obituaries and finding a little history of the families.
11. I love the old names. Sarah, Malinda, Mahala, Levi, Solomon, Jeremiah, Joab, Xavier, Duncan, Rachel, Hannah, Jesse (male) and Jessie (female).
12. It is a very common southern thing for women to use their maiden name as the first name for one of their sons. And I knew this so to find it occurring in my own family tree was not surprising. But what was surprising was to find a Mr. Thomas Wicker who married a Miss Sally Talley. And do you know what they named one of their sons?
Talley Wicker.
Yep. Unless there are fake records up on ancestry.com and someone thought it would be hilarious to play an eternal April Fool's Day joke on me. There is a Talley Wicker in the branches. Can you say that three times fast?
I think I will stop there with Talley Wicker because it's an even dozen on the list and really? what can I say after that?
Talley Wicker? LMAO! This is amazing information you have gathered!
ReplyDeleteThat is hysterical! I love it.
ReplyDeleteHow cool that you've been able to go back so far and learn so much.
Talley Wicker. Snort.
ReplyDeleteI can find all sorts of info for my maternal side of the family, including published books but my dad's side of the family, nothing. My great-grandparents all emigrated from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century and I can't find a single record in the Ellis Island archives that matches. Either they came through Canada or they slipped in under the fence.
I had no hopes or illusions that I was going to find royalty or any high-falutin' folks for sure! But I really did want to find some interesting people or people who were artistic and clever.
ReplyDeleteAnd!! I only found one person in the South Carolina crew way back in 1760 who had a slave. So that is great news. I would not have been able to stand it if I came from a long line of slave-owning KKK morons.
And p.s. the slave owner only had the one in one census and none in the next. I don't think he could afford slaves, is what I think. He had to do his own plowing and such.
I found a 92 yr old 5th cousin or something last year and with his help have research my mathernal grandmother's family back to 1600, to the 1st descendant who came to American in that line. He arrived in Jamestown during the second wave of immigrants. And he was French...that was a surprise! He was a Huguenot who came here via England. Of course I'd be descended from rebels...lol
ReplyDeleteI may have to ante-up for that ancestry membership because I am having little luck without it on the other 3 legs of my family lines.
I have the same problem with finding more current information - it's really frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI did some digging into my husband's family, who all came over in the 1800's from the Netherlands. One branch must have really, really liked the name Susannah because, I swear, every single female child (out of a brood of about 12) was named Susannah. Weird.
Slugmama - My family came over to Jamestown in the second wave too. No Huguenots though - all English.