Research on family tree....

[recycled sixtie]

I see on another post adoption. That got me thinking. I found that one of our cousins did some research on our related families. She found another member of the family who was a man fathered by my grandfather(my mother's father). She met him for coffee and told him who his real father was if he did not know already. When my mother was alive she told me her father had fathered a girl out of wedlock and she later committed suicide when she was a teenager. So that is two known children my grandfather fathered out of wedlock that we know about! All this happened in the UK but people being human it could happen anywhere.

So my question is do you really want to know all the family history because some of it may cause you grief but some could cause happiness?

[flatbutt]

Yes I would want to know. I'd been told that back , way back in my lineage is a Moroccan grand father. I'd love to know for sure.

[KFC911]

I find this stuff to be fascinating....One of my mom's aunts did tons of research and published a book ('bout an inch thick) back 40-50 years ago tracing the lineage (name change and all) back to the late 1600s near Stuttgart via family bibles etc. Unbelievable research for the time...

When I started my last corporate gig, a coworker dropped by and asked me about my name....his wife was the guru for my dad's side, also including a name change, lineage to near Stuttgart, and also the DNA trail back to the 1600s.

Both paths are simply amazing to me....

[David]

I played with ancestry dot com last year and got pretty far with some notes from my maternal grandmother. I found the easy stuff but after that it took a lot of time for each additional ancestor so I got bored. I've considered hiring a pro and doing the DNA test but haven't followed thru.

I didn't find anyone famous or anything too interesting. There were a few interesting findings like first cousins marrying, ancestors arriving before 1776, and that my son is mostly Canadian.

[porsche4life]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Yes I would want to know. I'd been told that back , way back in my lineage is a Moroccan grand father. I'd love to know for sure.

A DNA test would tell you that much.

[GH85Carrera]

Three years ago I spent a lot of time on Ancestory.com. I traced my fraternal line back 10 generations. Past that is just silly wast of time. The number of branches just gets overwhelming.

I did have some people contact me and ask if they could use a photo I had posted. I suspect many people just used them without asking. I have boxes of old family photos that I scanned and posted on my tree.

My fraternal grandfather mentioned one of his relatives that was a full blood Cherokee woman. I never found any record of her.

[bell]

I found out im Scottish.....from the ancient bell clan. ...we weren't well liked back then as we killed a lot of our own clan...we fought along the border....were a border clan..i have info to back before 1000 ad.....

[mreid]

He's what I found out through a combination of ancestry.com, 23 and me, and stories told by my wife's relatives. My dad's family came over from Scotland (highlands) in the early 1800s and we are Robertson and Wallace clan. My mom's side is more interesting. Her father and his brother came from Germany in 1916. Her mother's family has been here since before the revolutionary war. The family names are Morrow and White from North Carolina. Now for the weird part.

My wife's maiden name is Ewing (yes, she's from Dallas, got her lots of points in the early 80's when she was attending UT in Austin). Her mother's grandmother was Scot, however in the 1870's her family was part of a wagon train from North Carolina to Oklahoma when they were attacked by Indians and everyone was killed, except a young girl who hid under a wagon and was picked up later by a family with the last name Scot. They took her as their own. We never knew her real last name until two years ago. We both took the 23 and me DNA test and found out we were fourth cousins. Further research showed that a family with the last name White left North Carolina in 1870 bound for Oklahoma and were killed by Indians with no known survivors. Fact is stranger than fiction.