The Stupid American Genealogy Thread

[Simon_Jester]

I've found that the majority of people who actually claim 'interesting' ancestry talk about rogues, weirdos, or people who had a humorous life and/or death.

For example, my mother once told me that on... I honestly forget which side of the family, one of my ancestors was a fairly distant cousin of Zachary Taylor, the only president ever to die of milk poisoning. Does anyone care about Zack Taylor? Not really. But it's an amusing anecdote if true.

[Rekkon]

I recall family members saying we had some relation to Alexander H. Stephens, but I have not seen the documentation (if there is any).

[Flagg]

I've found that the majority of people who actually claim 'interesting' ancestry talk about rogues, weirdos, or people who had a humorous life and/or death.

For example, my mother once told me that on... I honestly forget which side of the family, one of my ancestors was a fairly distant cousin of Zachary Taylor, the only president ever to die of milk poisoning. Does anyone care about Zack Taylor? Not really. But it's an amusing anecdote if true.

I mean I just find it interesting. I don't claim any special privilege or heritage due to my ancestry. I could be related to Augustus Caesar and it wouldn't change who I am. It's just a neat tidbit. Though I'd like it if Douglas was an ancestor and I think there is enough anecdotal evidence for me to believe he was it makes me feel slightly better about my family since the dysfunction is strong on both sides. Plus he sounds like a neat guy.
I certainly don't base who I am based on who my ancestors were or weren't. It's not something you have control over. No one asks to be born after all.

[Zwinmar]

On several branches of the family tree mine goes back to early 1600's Massachusetts. This I can follow the paper trails on and have found that they were heavily involved with the founding of the Baptists in America. Interestingly, my fathers maternal line goes back to the same area.

Other research, not quite as good, links my family to the Stewart, Drake, Grenville, and back to Rollo of Normandy. However, my confidence in this part of it is no were near good enough because of the lack of records.

My paternal family name I have traced back to records in Sussex and Shropshire, with a possible Rector of Tarporley (Cheshire). There are people on the Welsh/English border (if you can call it that) that share the name, primarily around Oswestry.

[Ralin]

I don't know much about my ancestry (though my grandmother assures me that none of them were black), but I had a classmate last semester who's related to Edwin Edwards.

[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.

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

For over a decade.

[Gandalf]

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.

It's also pretty big in Australia, and other places that were colonised (putting it nicely) by Europeans. It's mostly a lot of national identity stuff.

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's also pretty big in Australia, and other places that were colonised (putting it nicely) by Europeans. It's mostly a lot of national identity stuff.

I am curious whether genealogy of this sort is popular in places like Japan, where there is a distinct cultural emphasis on family/heritage/ancestors.

I am curious about South America, as well. It is possible that some former colonies (especially the ones most blatantly exploited) lack the extensive documentation that would permit this kind of research. I mean, I doubt any slave traders coming out of Africa and into the Caribbean bothered to keep track of anything.

[Simon_Jester]

I've found that the majority of people who actually claim 'interesting' ancestry talk about rogues, weirdos, or people who had a humorous life and/or death.

For example, my mother once told me that on... I honestly forget which side of the family, one of my ancestors was a fairly distant cousin of Zachary Taylor, the only president ever to die of milk poisoning. Does anyone care about Zack Taylor? Not really. But it's an amusing anecdote if true.

I mean I just find it interesting. I don't claim any special privilege or heritage due to my ancestry. I could be related to Augustus Caesar and it wouldn't change who I am. It's just a neat tidbit. Though I'd like it if Douglas was an ancestor and I think there is enough anecdotal evidence for me to believe he was it makes me feel slightly better about my family since the dysfunction is strong on both sides. Plus he sounds like a neat guy.
I certainly don't base who I am based on who my ancestors were or weren't. It's not something you have control over. No one asks to be born after all.

Yeah.

I also think that's why people are at least as quick to identify ancestry with rogues and weirdos as they are with 'heroic' or 'famous' individuals. It makes you sound less like a poser, and it has roughly the same kind of "interesting tidbit" potential as being descended from French nobility or whatever.

[Ahriman238]

Well, the mom's side are Irish immigrants from the turn of the century. I could probably get the most information there, from cousins overseas.

On the paternal side of things, both grandparents were chemists and IIRC for a long time safety inspectors for a variety of factories where large-scale chemistry was done. Possibly including explosives during WWII/Korea. The greats were apparently big names in the rather limited field of lithography (A. Hoen and Son) and a generation or two before owned a company making most of the wooden milk-crates for the state of Maryland. I don't know, I was always told growing up that our family history was a long line of people bootstrapping themselves into serious money, then their children or grandchildren drinking it all away.

Now family legend, which is at best unreliable, claims a connection to John Hanson. A Revolutionary War figure, one of Maryland's delegates to the Second Continental Congress and debatably first President of the United States (under the Articles of Confederation, Washington was the first under the Constitution.) Mind, I only know anything about the man because of our family story. On the downside, he owned a vast plantation and many slaves. The other story links us to the House of Vasa (Swedish royalty) through their last monarch, Christina, Queen of Sweden. The family story goes that after Christina converted to Catholicism and was exiled she secretly married her old bodyguard and bore him seven children, the youngest being our forebear. As far as I can tell, history records no such marriage and the official story is that Christina died childless in Rome. I suppose it's not impossible, but it's really, really improbable.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, she was not queen of Sweden, she was king of Sweden. Long story; lady had a screwy life.

And yeah, that's a very good example of a 'we're really royalty' story that is almost certainly made up.

[Ahriman238]

I don't think anyone can claim royalty from a seventh child four hundred years back. Supposedly, we're closer to the English throne (though that connection was never explained to me) in that only a bit over half of England and several thousand Americans would have to die to put us in the running.

*shrug* Like I said, I don't really believe the family story, which tended obviously to focus more on Christina's father Gustav II Adolph, a name that at least has a chance of being known outside of Sweden.

[Rogue 9]

I don't really believe the family story, which tended obviously to focus more on Christina's father Gustav II Adolph, a name that at least has a chance of being known outside of Sweden.

Indeed.

[Elfdart]

Some of my relatives on my dad's side of the family were pretty racist. One of my aunts (not a racist) got into the whole genealogy thing, as middle-aged ladies often do and the results were interesting, to say the least. My last name isn't exactly common anywhere, but is more common in a small part of the Southeast where Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas meet. As my aunt discovered and told everyone at Thanksgiving, about two-thirds of the people who share our last name are black. To which I joked: "Guess we all know what the Old Man liked to do when he got bored in the Big House!"

My elders were not amused one bit, but my cousins and I thought it was hilarious watching our racist uncles squirm at the thought of being blood relatives with black people. But there was one plot hole in the story of Old Massa Elfdart molesting his slaves: Until a generation ago, no one in our family had been anything more than hillbilly serfs sharecroppers who didn't have two dimes to rub together, let alone a Big House and a harem of African slave girls to screw around with (My paternal grandfather lied about his age to get a job in a newly-built mill, becoming the first member of the clan to earn cash wages!). Further evidence that he never owned slaves comes from the fact that he was drafted into the Confederate Army, in spite of the fact that he was almost 44 and had six kids (slave owners were exempted).

My aunt did the cheek swab DNA test and sure enough we are in fact related to most of the black families who bear the family name. Just looking at photos confirmed it for me: The odd combination of jug ears and thick eyebrows turns up way too many times to be coincidence. But if my family never had the means to own slaves, how did so many people descended from slaves end up with the same name and/or DNA as ours?

The answer came in a court record from Georgia. In 1849 my grandfather's great-grandfather had been thrown in jail and fined for serving alcohol to slaves on a large plantation. The owner had pressed charges against my ancestor for "lascivious" behavior on the Master's property (not sure if this refers to the premises or the slaves or both). According to oral histories among my newly found black relatives, when the slaves were freed many of them liked my great-great-great grandfather enough to adopt his name -including the ones who hadn't slept or drank whiskey with him.