For my school project, I had to do a heritage tree. However, now I'm thinking to myself, "Why stop with the births and deaths?" Once this project is finished, I'm going to get immigration dates, dates of movings, christenings, communions, and confirmations, marriage dates, etc for as far back as I can go and as extensive as I can.
On my first visit to New York we got the ferry over to Ellis Island around the time of the birth of the interweb but the place wasn't hooked up and neither was ancestry.com but we were able to key our surnames into their computer base and look up our predecessors who landed there way back when. wwwEllisisland.org is a good - and free- place to start.
sounds like an interesting project. I gotta see if I can get my Great grandma to tell us our family story again. We didn't start being the Richardsons (on my mom's side) until our patriarch picked up the name on a tombstone (I think) while running somewhere. But I'm not sure on the story. I actually have no idea who's who on my dad's side, or even where to trace my family considering my mom's dad. May family has primarily been about the women for a few generations--my mom and her sister, their mom and her sisters, their mom and her sister and (finally) brothers, who are now the oldest living men in the family wearing the surname Richardson. Of course each of them formed their own branch but It would be nice to know how we're all connected again, especially now that the old blood is dying off and the younger generations are seeing each other less.
That would be really cool to find out why he took his 'new' surname from a headstone - what was he hiding from? Why change his name? Why the new identity? That's a reason right there to go digging! (excuse the cemetery pun)
Pun pleasantly accepted. I think he was running from slavery, but it has also been said he was never a slave. I have been meaning to do some digging to get the story straight and try to even find the original name. I know someone knows it, but those who would know it well are very old and spread out. My great-grandma may not even remember, my grandma might, shoot, my sister might. Just getting the original name would open a lot of doors. Really, my family knowledge stops with my GGma and her siblings. I think their dad was a doctor... Gaaah I guess I better ask questions while my family huddles up at GGma's for Christmas!
Hey @Andrae Smith Have you ever seen Roots? A TV show from the 70s. I remember as a kid my parents waited for it every week and I recently downloaded it, never realising it was all true. In case you don't know, because you are half my age, it's a about a guy called Kunta Kinte who was rounded up in Africa and brought to America. It shows what they did to him and of course the other innocents that were taken and how the slave traders and "owners" changed their names, banned them using their own tongue etc. If your ancestors were brought to America this way and you haven't seen the show you should try watch it.
That sounds really cool! Ancestry.com is an amazing site and they have a free trial. Because they are the biggest and the most powerful, they also have the largest document archive as well. Use the trial and print as much original documentation as you can. I have almost 2,000 people in my family tree and I trace my male lineage back to England in the 1400's. I also have a g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandfather who was on the Mayflower. (John Howland.) He also signed the Mayflower Compact. I have George Washington as one of my cousins as well. Geneaology can be huge fun so make the most of it! Now that we have the 1940 census available, most of us should be able to find our grandparents in 1940. Good luck!
As a matter of fact, I have seen Roots. We watched it in one of my history classes. It was certainly pretty sad towards the beginning, but the ending was uplifting. Beyond that though, It really does a good job, in my opinion, of showcasing that aspect of American history in a way that is bold and realistic, a little dramatized, but not brutal on the audience. I guess it was based on a true story, according to my teacher (but I never did a search to back that up, so I guess I better check on that).
I think the grandson of kunta kinte spent his life researching grandpa and wrote the book which was serialized. At the end of the last episode he is interviewed.
Okay that's what my teacher said. We didn't watch the interview though. Don't know how far back in my family lineage the name change was, but I think we were a few generations removed from Africa. It's still interesting, and a bit sad, to see that people's entire culture and identity was completely erased from them here in the states. It gives more reason as to why "African Americans" don't ientify with black africans or blacks in other parts of the world. We often have little sense of culture beyond what many of us picked up in the south and adopted. The slang, the food, the lifestyles that Americans consider black didn't necessarily start with black Americans. But that is also for another thread. >_<
And just out of curiosity, @Duchess-Yukine-Suoh Where is your family originally from, do you know? What nationalities are represented in your families? (ex. my former roommate's dad is Guamanian, but his mom's dad is Dutch and something else.)
My maternal grandmother's side is Polish as far back as we can go. My maternal grandfather is half Irish and half Scottish. My paternal grandparents ancestry is a bit muddled, but they have some German and British and a touch of Irish/Scottish. I'm very lucky, all 4 of my grandparents are alive and well, I still have one living great-grandma, and the others all lived long lives so there's a lot of stories and information.
I think it's neat that you have such a diverse and long-standing ancestry. And It's great that you have 4 living grandparents. Wait, now that I think about it, my maternal grandparents are pretty young, they should be around for a while. As for the paternal grandparents, their a bit older, but they seem to be doing just fine. I only met them in 2011, and have only spoken to them a few times since. :/
It's definitely a fun thing to do. I've traced one quarter of my family tree right the way back to the 16th century, then it becomes piecemeal. The earliest named ancestor was a priest who lived in Tysoe in 1286, and after the village the family was named. I've found that this lot tends to live until their eighties at the earliest (oldest was 102 in the 1700s), so, yeah...there's that Also Tysoe means 'shrine of the lightning-god (Thor).' It's of early Saxon origin. With my first name being James, if I change my name back to Tysoe it will mean 'usurper of Thor's shrine.' Or, to take middle names into account, 'the dark leader of men, usurper of Thor's shrine.' It would be a little pointless tracing the Scottish side of my family, though - that was always Highland, and pretty much all Highland records were destroyed. They didn't use what we'd call 'surnames,' either. One day I'll go chasing round the districts for a whisper of a hint of the few facts I do know from family tradition, but don't expect to find much.
Interesting family histories, guys. And that sounds like a fun project, Duchess ) My brother's done some heritage research but the results were not very uplifting or flattering. We used to be Gypsies and Russian button pedlars or something, even the surname used to mean a "Pouch-Russkie," a derogatory term for door-to-door salesmen from Russia. There're some Swedes on my Mom's side, though, which probably explains why many of their offspring are 6-feet tall, blue-eyed blondes... Unfortunately the sweet swede-gene skipped me on all three counts -_-
