Have you ever traced your family tree?

I didn't, but my Aunt did and made copies for anyone that wanted one. It was VERY interesting. I have famous writers, in my family, a few scoundrels, and our lineage goes back to John Smith. Our family came over with him on the Mayflower, on my Mother's side.

They were from England. He was their cousin. My Grandmother on my Mother's side, was Irish. She was a writer for True Romances Magazine.

On my Father's side, we have not been able to find out much. He didn't have a lot of family. Two uncles and a sister. His Mother died when he was very small. His Father later remarried. My Dad hated his stepmother, and he ran away at the age of eleven. Never went back home and lived off his own wits from then on. His Father passed away when Dad was seventeen, I don't know if he went back for the funeral or not.
My Father was French. And family talk has it, that his Great, three times back, Grandfather married an Indian.

Dad could totally tear down a car and put it back together, by the time he was thirteen. He supported himself by being a "shade-tree-mechanic"
SO! I am English, Irish, French, and Native American. My Mom always said that made us mongrels.LOL!

Worried that I might not like what I find!

scared to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?...

My great-to-the-eleventh grandfather on my father's side barely made it to these shores, hanging on for dear life on a dangling hawser after he fell over board. He had foolishly gone topside during a storm, for--er--personal reasons. It was a bloody miracle. That hawser shouldn't have been there, and he happened to fall overboard on the same side, and happened to grab the hawser before the ship got away from him.

He made it, and survived the first winter when half the colonists--including his master, Governor and Mrs. Carver--did not. He inherited the Carver estates and became quite prosperous under the new private-farming regime of Carver's successor, William Bradford.

Ten years later, a comparable ancestor on my mother's side landed at the old Jamestown colony, decades before everyone would pull up stakes and move inland, to the site of the present city of Williamsburg. In time people would forget about the Jamestown site, until archaeologists would rediscover it in the 1930s and 1940s. That discovery would rewrite the traditional narrative of English settlement of the New World: before a ship named Mayflower set sail for a place called Plymouth Rock, three ships would set sail for the New World, under the auspices of the Virginia Company of London.

i've tried and it was just too much work. so i gave up on it.

I can trace my maternal grandfather back to 1717 in France ... but we are of German ancestory ...

I tried to trace my fathers' family.....but he died when I was almost 10 yrs.......MY mother destroyed EVERYTHING from his family.........SHE HATED HIM........When I had a health concern about 1981.........SHE CAME FORTH WITH ALL HIS FAMILIES MEDICAL HISTORY THAT SHE REFUSED TO GIVE ME (ANYTIME)......

I'm mainly French ancestry, Native American, and English.

Good combination ...

Thank you~:):)

A bit......but my mum has traced it much further back. I find it totally fascinating

Not really. An Uncle (Father's side) did his about six generations. My Mother has plans to do hers.

I do the genealogies for all sides of my family.

not much just a little
most interesting things i found out were, i'm related to Hitler(please no comments about that)
and i'm related to francis scott key who wrote the 'Star Spangled Banner'

I've only been able to track some of my mother's side, and not very far back.

It is an ongoing effort.

as far as I can!

I know I have Prussian ancestry though.

In 1631 France we were Huguenots.

A very small portion of it, which is still quite a lot of people to track down.

I have traced my surname to it's roots.
I found some very distant cousins.
Now I am researching my mom's side of the family.

I was happy to trace my family back to 1802 Virginia, and follow them over the centuries across America. They were originally from Scotland. The other side od my family was much harder to follow, so I won't go there.

only once and im never doing it again

Ihaven't personally, but I have a copy of what was done, and I've found new information on the internet one.

probably wont get far on mom's side, and it would take pretty long on dad's; they're mexicans and had LOTS of kids! lol

I did it. It is tough when therre are no records. Most of the info I got from an aunt who had it all written down in a Bible(common place for Blacks to record this stuff). Guess what I found out? I am 1/16th Native american. Go figure. Elizabeth Warren and I have somthing in common. My Native American were Blackfoot on one side and I can't recall what tribe on the other. However, unlike Ms. Warren, I never claimed Native American status although it was pointed out to me how much money in scholarships/grants goes unused by Native Americans that I could tap into. He seemed perplexed when I said I would never apply for that money because it was not my culture. I feel it is wrong to claim a minority status for financial/educational gain if that is not your culture. I had the odd experience of being asked why I had classified myself as Black when interviewing for a medical school. My response was, "because I'm Black". It wasn't until I had left that the anger hit me and I realized he thought I was white, applying as black because he must have thought my coloring suggesting I was mixed. If I wan't in such a hurry to get the hell out of Philly, I would have gone back and given him a piece of my mind. I got in there, but declined it.

Family came across on the mayflower, from England. The other side was French Canadian and I have American Indian from the Mic Mac tribe of Maine.

Leave off the Canadian and make it just French, and we could be related centuries ago. lolz!!!

Sure could :)

well my mom has been and ive just been reading whatever shes found

At least my mum has, and so I know I'm 1/8 Irish. The rest we assume is English, because that's where I'm from, but most of it we don't really know. BTW, the Guinness shirt I am wearing in the pic says 'An Shebeen', which is Irish for 'The Pub' and is the name of an Irish pub - in Spain!

I've done a bit and found Ancestry.com to be a really big help. It also helps that clan history is well documented so that the records beyond our arrival in North America are easy to access. Finding out a bit of personal and family history is a great winter hobby.

Kent, how much does Ancestry.com charge you?

The rates vary depending on what records you want acces to but a simple registration with access to most records within your own country ( Canada in my case) was about 90 bucks for a year as far as I remember. That also lets you set up a family tree and share information and records wth other members as well as getting notices from Ancestry about any possible family record matches that show up in their system. Most of what I wanted to do was accomplished in a few months, and it was a great way to spend some long winter hours. I was able to get downloadable copies of the actual ships logs showing the passenger list, government census records etc.

Yes, but it didn't take long, because my grandmother on my dad's side was an orphan. My couple of greats back on my mom's side was hung in Texas for either killing someone or cattle theft. Either way, dead-ends. But it was interesting.

My mother's father (by adoption) was an inmate of the workhouse at Hackney in London at the turn of the 1900's and was sent by the McPherson agency to be an endentured farm hand in Southwestern Ontario. He made the crossing at the ripe age of 12 in 1906 and was obligated to work for the family without payment until he was 21. He was a solid, honest and compassionate man til his death in 1984.
When we look at how tough it was for our ancestors, it gives us a better perspective of how good we have it ourselves.

Wow, that is amazing. I have an 11 year old and I couldn't imagine that. My parents were migrant workers until I was born. My brothers tell me that they remember living in tents all over the eastern part of the states picking fruit and vegetables on farms. Of course as young as they were, all they were made to do was carry water to the workers.

My dad was the kid in this picture taken sometime towards of the end of 1940's.
I started chopping cotton at the age of 9. I have a kid on a traveling baseball team and we travel all over to play, he asked me why I quit playing baseball so young.....after a lot of thought, it was because I started working so young. lol I don't regret it though.

Thanks for sharing, and my hat's off to your family for enduring

i REALLY want to know...but i dont want to spend billions of dollars >.<

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