The Stupid American Genealogy Thread

[Flagg]

So apparently being super into your genealogy is a peculiar American obsession that most other cultures aren't really in to except for maybe royalty or some shit. Anyway, being kind of into history I like to know who my ancestors were and what they did. I've heard a lot of stories about my maternal ancestry (a lot of which while plausible I question the accuracy of because my maternal grandmother was a lying psychopathic bitch) including that we can trace my maternal grandmothers line back to a passenger on the Mayflower. I don't entirely believe that, though when someone with an Irish, Italian, or other late 19th, early 20th century immigrant ethnicities name starts bitching about how Mexicans and other "damned foreigners" can "get the fuck out of America" I like to bring that up as a cudgel and say "I was here before your ass so you can get the fuck out yourself".

Anyway, I digress. I know for a fact that I'm directly related to a former Governor of Massachusetts (no, not Mitt Romney and anyone about to say that can go to hell). In fact he was the 42nd governor of Massachusetts and he was a Democrat named William Lewis Douglas. To say I was dismayed at first is an understatement. Then I read the article. According to Wikipedia he was a shoemaker who was born in 1845, became a shoemakers apprentice, and was wounded fighting for the Union in the Civil War. But wait, it gets better. He spent some time in the Colorado territory but moved back to his home state and became a factory supervisor in Brockton for 8 years. Again, I was dismayed for obvious reasons. But I read on and was delighted to find out that he started an extremely successful shoe manufacturing and retail business and not only were his workers unionized, he worked closely with the union to resolve labor disputes and was considered to be very fair and generous to his employees. In the fucking gilded age.
He eventually went into politics and served 2 terms as a Democrat in the Massachusetts state House of Representatives and one term as a state Senator. In 1903 he was very prominent in Massachusetts state politics and fought to oppose the rise of the Socialist party. Again, total dismay as I consider myself a very liberal Socialist. But I continued on and found, again to my utter delight, that he worked to get Socialists into the Democratic fold by advocating for a strong pro-labor platform! In fact he was so pro labor that when the 41st Governor of Massachusetts John L Bates (who I want to believe had a butler who called him Master Bates) vetoed 8 hour workday bill it galvanized him to run as a Democrat and with a pro labor stance paired with a record of fiscal conservatism (no one is perfect) and the overwhelming support from the Democratic party, the American Federation of Labor, and strong support from Socialist circles, he kicked the everloving shit out of Governor Bates in the election of 1904. He served a single term before returning to his business. He died in 1924 in Boston.

I have never been particularly fond of my heritage before because I only knew bits and pieces of my paternal ancestry and none of it was what I'd consider pretty. I know that some fought for the traitor states in the American Civil War and are of German ancestry and that's about it. But This Douglas fellow, who shares some interesting facial features with my mom and a few other members on her side of the family, most notably the right eye being slightly more sunken than the left, kind of makes me proud of my ancestry. I mean I'd love to have been able to meet this man and have a conversation with him. And I've never felt that way about any of my ancestors before. Some of you may say, "Well how do you know you're really related to this guy?" and my answer is that my psycho grandmothers middle name was Douglas before she became an apostate protestant and converted to Roman Catholicism to make my grandfathers parents happy and changed her middle name to Anne. That along with this being "common knowledge" amongst the parts of my maternal family that gave a shit and knew what they were talking about (apparently one of my maternal great grandmothers knew him when she was a child not long before he died) passed bits and pieces of information on to my mother.

But I didn't start this thread just to masturbate over my own family history. I'm curious to know if anyone else has any ancestors be they famous, infamous, or indifferent that they want to share information about. And despite the title I don't want only Americans to share their family histories, I just chose the thread title because genealogy seems to be the "in" thing in America now which personally I find a lot less annoying than the 'past lives' horseshit where everyone was Napoleon, George Washington, or <insert their favorite famous historical figure here>. Except for those stupid as shit anscestry.com ads where some douchebag brags about how his great grandfather lived a block away from where Wilbur Wright once took a shit while holding up a picture of the first flight at Kitty Hawk. But I digress, share away!

PS: I wasn't sure whether to post this in OT or History so I played it safe. If one of the history forum mods deems this worthy of being in that forum I'd appreciate it being moved there if you have the inclination.

[Borgholio]

Mom traced my family history back to the 1600. Harder to trace my wife that far back because they didn't have last names in Japan until the 1800s.

Interesting fact - I'm related to Al Capone.

[Thanas]

Oral histories are notoriously unreliable and I wouldn't put too much stock in any of that without hard evidence.

[Flagg]

Oral histories are notoriously unreliable and I wouldn't put too much stock in any of that without hard evidence.

Fuck you. I want to believe.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Wasn't there some member a while back who claimed he could trace his "family history" back to Zeus or something??

[Lagmonster]

Yeah. He was joking, but got banned over it. Really regret it.

[Flagg]

Why did he get banned over that? Was he a troublemaker like me, or did he just take the joke too far?

[XaLEv]

He never actually claimed that he himself was descended from Zeus, just that someone produced a family tree which claims to trace his ancestry back to Charlemagne, and from him back to Trojan war figures descended from Zeus.

[Thanas]

Why did he get banned over that? Was he a troublemaker like me, or did he just take the joke too far?

Basically, he got the boot for being an annoying idiot at a time when the mod staff had a lot to deal with.

[TimothyC]

I've got a paper record back to the 1600s in Virgina - strong enough that for one of my Great Grandmothers to be a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). I've also got evidence that another part of my ancestry came over ~ 1880 on a ship hidden in a load of cattle.

[Simon_Jester]

I remember that DataPacRat incident. Kind of a formative experience for me here.

Anyway, I can't even keep my own great-grandparents straight; I'm not sure this is an American obsession rather than just a 'people' obsession. The only thing I know is that I have male-line ancestry back to some guy who came to New Amsterdam in the 1660s, and that most of the rest of my ancestry is Generic British Isles Mutt.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Mine's in the Encyclopedia .

Almost all of the family was wiped out in the Holocaust, but one of my grandmothers had a pretty amazing memory for this sort of thing. That, and her branch is in the Judainka! (We're descended from a very very famous Jewish Rabbi on that side).

[Broomstick]

Let's see... on mom's side the first one over was a Mary Myers/Meyers/possibly some other spelling from County Cork, Ireland in 1860, just in time for the Civil War. My aunt Ronnie did quite a lot with the family genealogy on that side, and culminated in re-contacting the family in the British Isles and visiting distant cousins. My maternal grandfather came over from Germany somewhere between 1890 and 1900 at the age of 14 but why we don't know, he absolutely would not talk about it.

On my father's side we were dirt-poor Russian Jewish peasants who couldn't afford more than one name to a person, which makes tracing ancestry kind of difficult. Grandma related some considerable oral history but, like Thanas says, that's not the most reliable source. Nothing spectacular in it, rather mundane, other than multiple siblings being born in different countries but apparently we moved around a lot back then. The family started coming over in 1900 (such a wonderful country! They give you a surname at the border!) and stopped coming rather abruptly in 1939. Interesting tidbit - last week someone came into the shop I work in and might be a cousin connected back to the original group that arrived in 1900.

My husband can trace via written records the Scottish in his family back to the 1100's. He's also got a lot of Cherokee in him, and unlike many Americans who claim that in his case it's based on photos, documents, and census records. Specifically Eastern Band Cherokee, which are the ones that managed to stay in Appalachia and were forced-marched to Oklahoma. None of those bullshit claims of having an "Indian princess" in the family, either, just ordinary folks.

[Flagg]

Oh yeah I remember that idiot. I didn't know that's why he was banned but I remember him. The other day my half brother from my fathers side said we were related to Kaiser Wilhelm. He first just said we were related to German royalty that was deposed by Hitler, when I asked who and he responded with... That... Let's just say soda coming out your nose from laughing so fucking hard at something so ridiculous fucking hurts. And it's a bitch to clean off an iPad.

I don't think this counts but in the mid-80's my mom and I lived in Naples, FL and when she and her boyfriend were partying on the beach (this was Miami Vice era southern FL, but no my mom was a nurse and never did coke because she was and is a responsible person and never would have risked losing me or her nursing license, but her boyfriend Lyle (who I wish she'd married but he wasn't interested in commitment and with a 4 year old me around that probably didn't help) smuggled a ton of pot from Jamaica) and none other than Jimmy motherfucking Buffet showed up on his yacht and was hitting on my mother. Just think, if my mom had really shitty taste in music... Is there a "barf" emoticon?

[Lagmonster]

My father's greatX grandmother was one of the very few white women to be an independant fur trader operating in Canada. Her biggest impression on history was to royally piss off the various HBC company officers who were building harems out of as many native girls as they could afford. Not a lot of people in that age willing to strike it out on their own and then make things harder by yelling at the wealthier company men to stop fucking the native girls.

[The Vortex Empire]

My grandfather on my mothers side traced our genealogy back to a French immigrant to Quebec somewhere in the 17th century, don't remember the exact year. This is all from paper records, so that's a sure thing. His original homestead is still up there. My fathers side came down to Rhode Island from the Quebec area in the early 20th century, don't know any details about them.

Not related to anyone of note as far as we know.

[FSTargetDrone]

I've mentioned him a few times before on here, but Francisco Ignacio Madero González, who was president of Mexico was the son of my great-great-great-grandparents on my father's side.



I'm lazy today, so I will just copy the biography about him from PBS' show about the Mexican Revolution:

Francisco Madero

(1873 – 1913)

Francisco Madero was an unlikely candidate to become the man who triggered the Mexican revolution. Born in 1873 into one of the wealthiest families in Mexico, he nevertheless had empathy with the common people. The Madero family hacienda was in the northern state of Coahuila, but the financial influence of the Maderos was felt in many industries from textiles to mining, vineyards, rubber and coal.

As a teenager, Madero took up his father’s interest in Spiritualism, which he maintained for the rest of his life. He was a gentle man, a scholar who had studied agriculture at UC Berkeley in the U.S. Madero also had an interest in homeopathic medicine, and made sure the workers on the family hacienda were treated well.

One of his heroes was the great Mexican revolutionary, Benito Juárez, who in Madero’s mind stood for democracy. So it is understandable that even very early on, Madero was frustrated with the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.

In the earliest years of the 20th century, Madero formed an organization to promote democracy and founded several newspapers that decried the continued power of Díaz. In 1908, he read an interview with Díaz in Pearson’s magazine (a U.S. publication). In the interview with journalist James Creelman, Díaz said that he would be willing to step down and let a democratically-elected president take over in 1910, at the end of his term. Diaz said that Mexico was ready for a full-fledged democracy. It’s unlikely that he meant it, but Madero’s passion for democracy was sparked. In a move that raised his profile significantly, he published a book that same year, entitled La successión presidenciál en 1910. The book was a bestseller, and was read (often along with the Creelman article) all over Mexico.

The book did not condemn Díaz completely. Madero expressed the opinion that the Díaz regime had gone on too long and had gained too much power. The dictator had kept Mexico from its true democratic destiny by assuming the presidency term after term. The book called for Diaz to step down in 1910, and supported free elections.

In 1909, Madero founded the first anti-reelection club in Mexico City. Soon anti-reelectionist clubs were being established all over the country. Madero had tapped into a national dissatisfaction with the dictator. As a result, he was arrested by Díaz’s administration in 1910, but the influence of his father helped get him out of jail. He subsequently escaped across the border to Texas. Díaz did hold elections – but he declared himself President again. In exile in Texas, Madero wrote his proclamation, the Plan de San Luis Potosí.It called for the election to be declared null and void, and for Díaz to be overthrown. Madero returned to Mexico on November 20, 1910, and launched a revolution.

There were numerous uprisings around the country in Madero’s name; many were connected to the anti-reelection clubs he had inspired. In February 1911, the revolution gained momentum as Madero and his men attacked the city of Casas Grandes in Chihuahua. It was a defeat for Díaz’s federales. The next move was to have been an attack on Ciudad Juárez. But only a narrow stretch of the Rio Grande River separated Juárez from El Paso, Texas, and Madero had been warned that if the fight got too close to the U.S. border, Americans might get hurt, and the international repercussions could be disastrous. As a result, Madero planned on holding off his attack. However, his generals, Pascual Orozco and Francisco Villa, were eager to fight. They attacked Juárez against Madero’s orders, and defeated Díaz’s federal troops. It was the decisive battle of a very short war. In May, 1911, shortly after the battle, a peace treaty was signed and Porfirio Díaz agreed to resign and to go into exile. An interim president took office so that official elections could be called.

On the afternoon of June 7, Madero and his Maderistas marched triumphantly into Mexico City and the whole country celebrated. But perhaps prophetically, a tragic earthquake had struck the city early that morning. Rescuers took time off from sifting through the rubble to attend the celebration, then went back to their grim work. Cracks appeared in the walls of the National Palace, a symbol of things to come.

In November, 1911, Francisco I. Madero became the first new President of Mexico in almost 30 years. From the beginning, he was a moderate. He wanted to challenge Díaz, but he did not want to institute policies that went against the rich landowner class to which his family belonged. He kept most of the power structure created by Díaz intact, much to the dismay of those who had hoped for significant change. Very quickly, Madero alienated his former allies, Pascual Orozco and Emiliano Zapata.

In 1912, Orozco partnered with Zapata and declared open rebellion against Madero. Madero sent General Victoriano Huerta to put down the revolt. Huerta, a ruthless fighter, handily eliminated Orozco as a threat and sent him across the border into the U.S., here he was soon murdered.

But Madero had raised public expectations far beyond the modest reforms he was willing to make. The U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, was also concerned about Madero; he thought the new president might overturn Díaz’s former support of foreign business interests and therefore jeopardize U.S control of oil, mining, and other investments in Mexico.

In early 1913, Wilson conspired with Huerta and others to institute a coup to overthrow Madero and his Vice-President, Pino Suarez. What followed was a period known as the decena trágica, or “ten tragic days.” Mexico City became a battleground, as the conspirators fought to overtake the federal troops loyal to Madero. When the smoke cleared, and the bodies were carried off, Huerta had taken control of Mexico, and Madero and Pino Suarez were under arrest. Days later, Huerta had them assassinated, and declared himself President of Mexico.

[SirNitram]

I don't think this counts but in the mid-80's my mom and I lived in Naples, FL and when she and her boyfriend were partying on the beach (this was Miami Vice era southern FL, but no my mom was a nurse and never did coke because she was and is a responsible person and never would have risked losing me or her nursing license, but her boyfriend Lyle (who I wish she'd married but he wasn't interested in commitment and with a 4 year old me around that probably didn't help) smuggled a ton of pot from Jamaica) and none other than Jimmy motherfucking Buffet showed up on his yacht and was hitting on my mother. Just think, if my mom had really shitty taste in music... Is there a "barf" emoticon?

Start running.

Anyway, all I have is apocraphia. A nun, supposedly, came across a while back, and in a storm. A sailor shouted, 'Sister Kemmish, why aren't you praying?', as it was a god's-wrath level storm. She replied, gripping the rigging, 'Now is not the time to pray, now is the time to HANG ON!'. And supposedly a Royal Marine who /shouted himself to death/.

[Flagg]

I don't think this counts but in the mid-80's my mom and I lived in Naples, FL and when she and her boyfriend were partying on the beach (this was Miami Vice era southern FL, but no my mom was a nurse and never did coke because she was and is a responsible person and never would have risked losing me or her nursing license, but her boyfriend Lyle (who I wish she'd married but he wasn't interested in commitment and with a 4 year old me around that probably didn't help) smuggled a ton of pot from Jamaica) and none other than Jimmy motherfucking Buffet showed up on his yacht and was hitting on my mother. Just think, if my mom had really shitty taste in music... Is there a "barf" emoticon?

Start running.

God help us all, you're not a Parrot Head are you?

[Rogue 9]

I have written history tying my maternal line to several Confederate soldiers and slaveholders. My paternal grandmother's maiden name is Benz, as in Mercedes-Benz; her father, however, was a drunk and got disowned before the car fortune, or so the apocrypha goes.

[Flagg]

I have written history tying my maternal line to several Confederate soldiers and slaveholders. My paternal grandmother's maiden name is Benz, as in Mercedes-Benz; her father, however, was a drunk and got disowned before the car fortune, or so the apocrypha goes.

I had ancestors that were "whalers" out of New Bedford, Massachusetts according to my maternal great grandmother as told to my mother. The thing is I put the word "whalers" in parentheses because supposedly at the time the ships that sailed from New Bedford didn't whale so much as go to either Africa or the Caribbean to pick up human cargo and courteously take them to their new homes in the southern colonies to do agricultural work for room and board. In other words they were slavers. But that's very much unprovable as no names were given as far as I know or that my mom can remember. And in all honesty they very well could have been whalers. But probably not.

[Guardsman Bass]

I have a second cousin in Great Britain who does genealogy, who tried to trace back the father-son line in our family. She got to the early 19th century before being unable to go back further that way (the father couldn't be identified, at least in part because the son's mother wasn't married when she had him). Apparently there's an area where last names similar to mine are relatively common, and she found a road with our last name in North Yorkshire.

My maternal grandfather's family came from some town near Frankfurt, although I can't remember what it's called (my mother and aunt visited it about 30 years ago with my great-grandmother). I tried punching it into the Mormon genealogy site and came up with some names going back to the 18th century, although I can't vouch for their reliability. It seems like they moved around Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia a couple of times.

[B5B7]

Its okay to claim to be descended from someone for fun purposes, but it can't be applied seriously.
Firstly, many people were and are adopted (often without knowing) or had a different father (or mother) to that they thought was their bio-parent. Secondly, genes dilute over the generations - so the relationship is like that of homeopathic water. - it is in the labelling, not the actual genes.

[Elheru Aran]

My grandmother managed to trace us all the way back to I think it was the 1200's in Wales.

Baa.

[Ziggy Stardust]

My uncle has spent the better part of the past 20 years tracing our family genealogy. He has boxes of documents in his house, and it is always interesting. Obviously, the further back it goes the more gaps there are, but in general he has a fairly robust paper trail going back to Plymouth Colony (a passenger not on the Mayflower, but on the SECOND ship to go to Plymouth, which IIRC was called the Predator or something). Further back than that, we have nothing concrete, but my ancestors were of Scottish descent with the surname Findlay; back in the day the Findlays were a subset of Clan Farquharson, I believe, though we have no objective evidence tying us to that.

In terms of historical figures, the biggest we are confident we are related to is William Stoughton, the judge at the Salem Witch Trials. Similarly, we suspect we are distantly related to the Bush family (that is, we are related to the Walker family, as in George Walker Bush). Other than that, we, unfortunately, had a large number of slave owners/traders in my family history. In fact, there was some branch of my family that owned a plantation in South Carolina. And due to the common practice of giving slaves the surname of their owner, when you go to the area on the sea islands just outside Charleston half of the local black population has the same last name as me, because (we suspect) they are the descendants of my ancestor's slaves.

Other than that, general speaking I think my genealogy largely consists of fishermen out of Fairhaven and New Bedford and minor landowners in Connecticut,