I see on Yahoo.something that Barely Abother is related to Brad Pitt and that Hillarious Rotten Clintoon is related to Angelina Jolie. Abother is even related to George W. Bush by some relative who died in the 17th or 18th century...

It got me wondering: To whom am I related? I don't expect to be related to any name that anyone would recognize; I just want to know who is in my distant family background. My mother's side would be easy to research, but my grandfather came from Eastern Europe in the early years of the 20th century. I am thinking WW2 may have obliterated the records, et cetera. How do I get started finding out who I am?

Probably the best way to find out who you are and to whom you are related is to run for public office. The news media would then be happy to do the research for you.

The real question is, do you rteally want to know?

Yes. I understand from my late grandmother that I had a relative in Poland who negotiated the release of 38 Jews from the Nazis. I was told about this event in July 1975, just a few weeks before she died. I was just 17 at the time, and so remember very little about what she said. All I can remember is it is supposed to have happened in Podhajce (unsure of spelling), and I'm unsure as to when...

Find a good genealogy society, not an internet scam. All the real ones share info between themselves even in different countries. Just don't send money to anyone with claims of finding your past in 3 days type of thing. It takes a lot of research, records need to be crosschecked to insure validity, etc.
Good luck.

Homebrewer:

I have done a lot of genealogy research into my family. Right now there are a number of good websites out there for research. Most cost a fee per year, but if you are seriously into genealogy, it is well worth it.

www.genealogy.com

www.ancestry.com

Also, but a copy of Family Tree Maker. It has a lot of functions built into it to help find possible relatives. You enter the information you know about yourself, parents, grandparents, etc., and the software runs searches online.

There is even a project called the "World Family Tree." Genealogists all over the world do their family trees, and upload them to one main server. You can run searches to see if names, dates and places of birth/death match known family branches on that main server.

PM me if you want more information.

I think the Mormon church is really into geaneology too. I'm not sure if you have to sign up to use their archives though!!!

the chef

and remember how saeed found gayana's in the picture in african hunter

Familysearch.org start here free

I was able to follow one branch back to the 1300s...
But keep in mind that when you get that far back that the names may have come from the owner of the land, the name of the community, the wife's name, some other relative, a fork in the road or a nick name for something stupid that you did.

I understand the family tree is easy to follow for people in Alabama, as it is a wreath.

quote:

Originally posted by k-22hornet:
I understand the family tree is easy to follow for people in Alabama, as it is a wreath.

And it doesn't fork.

I'm surprised West Virginia hasn't yet taken a hit in this thread..

if somebody know of a swedish forum for finding you anchestors, i would appreciate it.

If a man and wife get divorced in West Virginia are they still brother and sister? How's that?

Here in the southeastern US, it's widely suspected that many family trees do not fork.

One of the problems folks in my family ran into trying to research our family tree, is changes in the spelling of the last name.

Either by removing letters, or adding letters, while the basic pronunciation of the name remained the same.

Also, I am in a somewhat unique situation, in that my Dad was 53 when I was born in 1950.

He was born in 1897 in Tennessee and his Dad was born in 1861 in Tennessee, and that is as far back as I have been able to accurately track things.

Unless your family was of historical significance for generations you will have to do a bit of travel and sleuting on your own.
The internet can help but visits to churches, graveyards and news paper archives is where the pay dirt is found.
Getting in touch with distant relatives can give clues as to where to look.

ancestry.com is pretty cool. You basically piggy-back on other people's research.

I did it- my mother's side goes back to the 1600s, and branches of my father's family go waaaay back.

Seems like before say 1600, if your line isn't tied to nobility the names aren't recorded.

Some of our lines go back to multiple kings- Denmark, England (Henry V, Charles I) and if you trace to Chalemaingne you automatically get back to Abraham-then all the way to Adam- now that's a tree.

Another branch went back to Roman times, relatives of emperors etc.

Really a lot of fun

BUT after a few generations, what does it matter? Everyone is related and sooner or later you can trace to one of these well documented lines.

My mothers side was fairly easy because at least one person in each generation was involved in local politics. The trail was easy to track back to the boat.

My dads side seemed to dissapear at mt great grandfather till we reciently discovered that we had the wrong middle name. My brother found a 3rd cousin that we were not aware of that had the correct name. Now we have an area where he came from and our last name is on maps, churches and a town in the area. Still need to do the footwork to get the particulars.

I knew the name of my grandfather and greatgrandfather, and found a geneology web-site run by a group with my last name, and they traced several thousand people descended from one man at Jamestown, VA thru about 9 generations--sure enough, they had my earliest known relatives. They were also doing Y-chromosome analysis with FamilyTree.com., and I matched exactly with a handful of people with the same last name split off from a descendant in early 1700's.

Good luck, and I bet you find some very interesting stories.

K-22 and 577......