I joined www.ancestry.com about 20 years ago (maybe 15, not sure). It didn't really work very well back then, in the past 15-20 years people that I am related to some distantly, some close have gone in and uploaded documents and make it work.

So I joined it for a few months again about 3 months ago, and it has been really interesting.

Anyway I found out two really strange things. First both sides of my family have been in the USA since the 1640's. My mom's family came into Plymouth, Mass, and my dad's came in to Jamestown, VA. The other is that my siblings and I are the first coupling of those New Englanders and Confederates during the past 270 years.

My father's side moved south, might have been involved in a variety of nefarious dealings, and eventually ended up in Texas in the 1940's when my Dad was born. His side was heavily represented by Confederate soldiers. He was born in Texas.

My mom's side moved north and eventually West, she was the first one born in Wyoming. They had lived in a variety of NE states like Maine, NH, CT, MA and so on before moving to Wisconsin, and eventually Kansas City, and then after the prohibition Wyoming. Mom's side was heavily involved in both the Revolutionary War, and later served in the Union during the Civil War.

I can't imagine this is uncommon, but it sure is kind of strange, that the North/South union would happen so late in American history for a family.

From DNA testing about 5 years ago, and subsequent DNA testing for health reasons I knew that I was 85% plus British Isles, with a large smattering of other things.

There are a few odd fliers on both sides. There are English, Irish, Scottish, Pennsylvania Dutch (Germans in the 1700's) and a couple of Germans in the 1920's that make up the melting pot of DNA that is our family. Somewhere in the DNA pot that I can't find are what are the DNA of people that are Mongolian, Hungarian, Jewish, and a couple of other small amounts of other things.

What I really found to be strange is that other than the one group of great grand parents from Germany in the 1920's and their preceding relations, you have to go back to the 1700's to find another immigrant. Strange for someone in America, I would think.

My mother really got into genealogy research years ago + she went to old churches, old records, etc. (this was before computers). Some things we already knew. My Grandmothers' mother was a Hawthorne + she was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who himself was descended from Judge Hawthorne of the Salem witch trials. Other interesting things too. My grandmother's father saw Abraham Lincoln when he was a boy as his father held him on his shoulders when Lincoln's train came in the station.

My older brother is deep into genealogy work. Traced us back to two early Presidents. He would suggest that the Mormons have some of the best research archives. You can use their archives, computers, helpful personnel, etc. even if you are not a Mormon. The LDS Texas Family History & Genealogy Centers are located in these Texas cities. http://www.ldsfamilysearch.net...y-genealogy-centers/ You can easily locate the ones in your State.

I love Ancestry.com. I have really been able to trace my ancestry way back on some lines to the 1100s or better, and it's gotten so much better to use over the last 4-5 years. I also have an ldsfamilysearch.net account. It's really true that the LDS church has some of the best genealogical information available in the world. Most of it is made available free to everyone, and I have seen where many groups of non-LDS people use the LDS genealogical resources as much or more than the LDS people do. Familysearch and Ancestry are made availabe free to LDS participants through the LDS church. I have a friend who couldn't find his biological parents and I suggested that he join Ancestry. Three months later he came to me and told that he had found his biological mother, as both of them had been tested and the results showed that they were mother/son. He has since reunited with her and now says that he has two mothers and two families. It was so cool to hear. Searching for family seems to be one of those innate things in our human makeup, and it can be very rewarding. Spending the money to take the Ancestry DNA test will be one of the best investments that you will ever make.

Great thread BWW.

I am LDS and it is true that there is an immense amount of information for members and non-members.

My son served a 2 year, full time Genealogy mission (Salt Lake) for the church. He learned and knows a lot about finding records
and doing research. Many, if not most of the people he helped were not members of our church. He actually learned
some Danish while serving and was able to translate records of our Ancestors that lived there.

Here is a site to look at: familysearch.org

I get interested in this stuff in spurts, and have been an Ancestry member, although not currently.
Familysearch and Heritage Quest -- a database available through my local library -- are helpful and linked to the LDS databases.
Years ago I used Rootsweb, but it got "run out of town" by the bigger, for-profit engines.
Find-a-Grave can be a helpful adjunct.
My problem is that I haven't organized any of what I have found in a way that would be useful to others. Mostly just scribbled notes here and there.

i was adopted in 1951 and started looking for b parents in 1980. have been through maybe 15 "professional" geneologists and 5 actual full time real ones. everything you see on these sites is nothing more than a guess by a computer. and most are wrong. ancestry.com, 23 and me, FTDNA etc all admit and stress that everything they come up with HAS TO BE verified by looking at actual birth/death/military etc records to be VERIFIED. yes a DNA test can tell you if uncle eddy is a relative, but to verify great great great agnes came over on the mayflower takes hours/days/weeks/months of digging up old records, many if not most of which contain wrong spellings, dates, addresses etc. what makes it even worse is that when a son left the east to make his fortune in the west, got married, named his first son abe after his dad, then his brother that stayed in the east named HIS first son abe after dad, the their sister that went north named her son abe after dad, and never knew what the others had done due to poor communications 100-300 years ago. then great great grand son abe decides in 1995 to dig into his roots, finds an "abe" in his line, and his great great uncle now becomes his G G grandfather. this stuff happens all the time. pick your own scenario. old hospitals close down and the birth records are thrown out. an unwed mother puts down a fake sperm donors name on the birth cert. and fakes her name. then 50 years later baby boy jackson does a DNA test and has no jacksons in his line. my wife took a DNA test with ancestry.com 5 years ago. showed her to be 30% american indian. that was crazy. she went back 2 months ago and checked again. shows less that 1% Indian. she contacted em and their response was " the science of DNA testing advances very rapidly, you need to check back more often." but to be fair, these sites fully admit, their findings need to be verified thru RELIABLE verified records, not family folklore.

quote:

everything you see on these sites is nothing more than a guess by a computer. and most are wrong.

John: I certainly do not want to get into a debate and will agree that there are errors. However, I will say that familysearch is mostly correct and there is some great census, journal info, newspaper articles etc. readily available..

I actually did a DNA test a while back. It said I was 1-3% Asiatic

My mother in law did a test. She received an email from a lady that ended up being the child of her brother, who died in 1974!

Nobody knew about. Her brother and the mother had split up before his death.



I wish you well in your search for your family

What I found interesting about the LDS work is that they are now capturing not just names and dates; but words, recollections, memories, stories, before that are lost. The computer age let's you flesh-out those names and numbers.

For instance, I have a rocking chair that dates from the 1870s. It came on a buckboard from Kentucky to Southern Indiana...the rest of the story is lost.

I have a drop-block shotgun and ,30 cal. muzzle-loader my grandfather gave me 60 years ago. There is a story behind those weapons, and the story fades into the past unless someone captures it.

My brother is our family's "historian", but he's 77.

quote:

Originally posted by Jason P:

quote:

everything you see on these sites is nothing more than a guess by a computer. and most are wrong.

John: I certainly do not want to get into a debate and will agree that there are errors. However, I will say that familysearch is mostly correct and there is some great census, journal info, newspaper articles etc. readily available..

I actually did a DNA test a while back. It said I was 1-3% Asiatic

My mother in law did a test. She received an email from a lady that ended up being the child of her brother, who died in 1974!

Nobody knew about. Her brother and the mother had split up before his death.



I wish you well in your search for your family

i have no issues with a qualified DNA test. its what comes after that thats in question. the computer models connect lines back to forever without someone actually verify it by research. my b fathers name is skaggs. on that site on FB, probably 95% of the people claim to be descended from the longhunters and from old peter skaggs, the original one in the US i think. theres a guy in the isle of man thats become, after 15 years of training and doing, the undisputed expert on this name, using cemetery records, DNA, birth/death etc records and really pisses these people off because he proves they are not related to the "famous" skaggs, as they had been told by their ancestors. he DOES show them where they fall into on the tree. so far he's gone back i believe to the 2000 years ago mark, and has recorded something like 10 variations of the name and spelling of skaggs. so many times the name was misspelled on records that the mistake became the new name. he says its like pulling apart a bowl of spaghatti one strand at a time in the correct order and verifying each strand. its fascinating but way out of my league.

More than anything else it helped me close up lose ends on what I thought my DNA and heritage were.

Multiple family members have put a ton of work into it, and I got to reap the benefit of it.

It is funny but true what Bill said, find-a-grave works very well too.

It is mildly interesting, the more I looked the less I cared. I thought it would open up doors of information that I would find fascinating. It is to look at once or twice, but it really doesn't matter that much.

If you haven't done it, you will probably go into it thinking you are related X or Y and find out that A or B is the actual story of your origins. That is how it worked for me.

I have a buddy that went to a family reunion a few years ago + his cousin was going on + on about doing the research + was quite excited. At the next year's reunion, Leo asked him how it was going + the cousin said, "That's all just a bunch of B.S." Seems that he discovered an N in the woodpile + didn't like his findings.

I've had a close friend that also found the same thing out! Apparently in his wife's lineage. She always looked like Dinah Shore, and now he knows why!

quote:

Originally posted by NormanConquest:
I have a buddy that went to a family reunion a few years ago + his cousin was going on + on about doing the research + was quite excited. At the next year's reunion, Leo asked him how it was going + the cousin said, "That's all just a bunch of B.S." Seems that he discovered an N in the woodpile + didn't like his findings.

Funny, the DNA search from my father showed some strange things. In my search I never found anyone that wasn't English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh or German.

I wonder what that came from?