So, i was writing a post in another thread and it got me thinking about one of my pet projects / hobbies that I have had for almost a decade now. That is, geneology and family tree. I have been doing mine for quite some time, managing to trace my family back quite some way. My family has living in the same valley for about 700 years (under the same name) and longer from there. I've also traced it back to about 500 CE with certainty and sources. to about 264CE with some amount of certainty and then to 500BCE (ish) with some doubt/assumptions. I've got kings, emperors, dukes, counts, lords, bourgeois, very rich people and also very, very poor people as well. Have you done any research into your family history/geneology? Any interesting stories and people?
Yep, though not as many as I once thought.* But I daren't go down the genealogy rabbit hole now. Maybe later. *Ran into two people with the same name, one of them my ancestor, one not. The one who wasn't went back to William the Conqueror's dad and William the Marshall. I was sorry to "lose" them.
How have you been doing you genealogy research? I’ve been considering, for some time about doing mine. Thanks in advance
Allegedly I had an uncle who traced my family all the way back to the Roman Empire and even further to the Etruscans. I'm a little skeptical of that, but it makes for a nice story. About all we can say with certainty is that my grandfather Antonio moved to Rhode Island from Naples around 1910 to work in the stone quarries, soon to be followed by his 13 siblings, all of whom had between 8 and 10 kids, which rapidly netted me around 100 ancestors at just the grandfather/great uncle level. Multiply that by the other three sets of great grandparents and things got out of hand very quickly. Needless to say the Potvins are like the Smiths in the Italian American world of surnames. So, yeah, Roman Empire my nutsack. We can't even figure out which Maria married which Tony fifty years ago. And with all the hunchbacks, club-feet, and weird genetic eye diseases, not all of those great-cousins wandered too far from the gene pool.
For North Americans at least the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) can be a valuable resource for genealogical research. Due to their belief that one can be baptized posthumously (which is not up for discussion or debate here) they maintain extensive family history records of even non-members of their faith. My grandmother did some research a few decades ago and found them to be quite helpful, although I don't know if there are any fees/contributions required to gain access to their information.
Went to school camp at a local resort when I was 7. Classmates got all excited because the hostel's street had my family name. That's basically how I got interested in genealogy Since then I apparently grew up to look exactly like the namesake; just two centuries after. It isn't all that rare in Europe, but entertaining nevertheless. When I started my career at my current workplace, I received some confused e-mails seemingly addressed to another department. Turns out there was another fellow with my family name working there. We met, discussed bits, shared some family names and turns out he's my cousin-third-removed and my grandfather spent a summer at his great-grandparents' shop & home. There's three main lineages of my family spread between three cities; of which one lineage was rather famous (with the namesake of that street, turns out he founded & funded that town). I'm especially glad for this as all three lines seemed interested in genealogy and had their own little research, all pointing to the same origin: a 17th century fortress captain in service to Austria whose heroism afforded him a title & an estate. Which makes sense since the family name refers to a "last stand".
I did my research through access to the archives of numerous departements. For the most part, I visited (or had relatives and friends visit) Ireland, England, Australia & Switzerland. Switzerland was the most helpful and managed to reliably track my ancestry back quite a way. Church records were also vital, but if it's a catholic church, be prepared for latin. Arguably, i've never managed to learn latin too well, but I picked up enough to get my way around latin church records. There are also plenty of sites. I've used numerous sites to access further archives as well. Once I reached people of some kind of nobility, you can use their family tree. Most nobles spent a lot of money on family tress and are now readily accessible online, for the most part. I have a roman emperor too, Gordian I. He didn't last very long (see the year of the five emperors). But at least I can trace back to them reliably throught Gordian's daughter. Sadly though, I can't seem to trace back further back from Gordian I precisely. Supposevly, his mother was descended from Elpinice, an athenian woman from the Philaides family living in 500BCE, but i do not know how. Don't know who his father was either
I have a Scottish cousin who is writing a series of fictionalised stories starting with all his sets of great great grandparents, and concluding with his parents. I share a common set of great grandparents with him (born in Dumbarton 1875 and Portobello, Edinburgh in 1876) and he asked me to write four stories about them (as it happens he talked me into writing a fifth) based on the research he'd already done and what memories remain - two of their grandchildren are alive, though not sadly my Mum. His aim is to put all the stories in a book and get it published. The idea to build up a social history of Scotland (and parts of Wales and Ireland) since Victorian times, through the medium of a fictional family memoir. There's a bit of guesswork necessary as regards places and dates, but we have some known events and incidents as well as literary leaps of the imagination. Ultimately, it would be good too to record the stories in audio form, which I suspect would make for a great family resource to pass through future generations.
My family on my dad's side is third generation American, and my mom's side had people come over on the Mayflower. My great grandfather on my dad's side emigrated from Germany riiiiiiight before the Hitler shit got big, I believe. My Mormon mother has done the majority of our family history stuff. It's interesting, certainly, but from how hardcore she goes into it, it's a touchy thing for me.