Me and my mum have done some digging. My grandad's mother was born in Dublin, the capital of a newly independent Ireland (it was also still blown to bits thanks to the English), in 1923. Our likely candidate for her father is a guy who served in World War I on the Western Front for the British, before coming back to Dublin and working as a baker - he eventually died in the 1970s in New York. No idea what he was doing in the United States, although this guy isn't 100% for sure my great great grandad. She married my great grandad, who was serving in the Royal Navy at the time, in England in 1947 when he was 21 and she was 24. I assume they moved into his hometown in Northern Ireland afterwards. She died nine years later in 1956, aged 33. She also had a much nicer surname than my great grandad and I wish I had it. Meanwhile her terrorist-loving husband lived into his early 90s after a full lifetime of drinking and cutting off half of his family. Makes me quite sad. However it's VERY difficult to find records on her still. All of this information stems from her marriage certificate - she doesn't seem to have a birth certificate anywhere.
Turns out my sister made a family tree some time ago! So now I can confirm that my ancestors are Frisian. Some have lived in other places in the Netherlands (including my father's parents), but all originally seem to have been from Fryslân, and most of my family lives there now. I am also hoping to move back there, in the future!
Me and my mum managed to trace her mother's side! Every single person in that family was from Wales, until you get to the late 1800s, when a Spanish woman married into the family. We went aaaaaaalllllll the way back to the early 1700s before giving up, because I appear to be descended from Welsh people that never ever left Wales, and have lived there since the tribes were pushed into what we now know as 'Wales'. And since Welsh people weren't allowed to marry English people or even leave Wales until the late 1700s, if there was no movement then there's no way there will have been before that. I'm descended from a very, very, very long line of Welsh blacksmiths. I assume my family owned their own forge because literally every single one of them... was a blacksmith. It's kind of weird Who knew my ancestors were all Gendry Baratheon from Game of Thrones clones.
My whole life I knew that I was "white" and "Mexican". I never really questioned it until I got older and I understood race and ethnicity more. So I was interested in finding out about my own ethnic background. My mom told me that she was from, well, her parents were from the Dakotas (states) and their parents came from Canada. We didn't know much more than just that "she was white". So I took it as face value. My dad on the other hand, I knew he was Mexican but I wasn't sure what part of Mexico and was it part Native American as well? It was hard to find out as my biological father and I have a pretty rotten relationship with one another (message me personally if you want to know more about that), so I just assumed that I was simply "white and Mexican". Last year, summer of 2018, my dad (stepdad) and my mom ordered the Ancestry DNA kit so we could find out more specifics about our ethnic background, this shined a lot of light on what the heck I was really made of (literally haha). The results came back and my mom's side seemed to have come from the British Isles. It wasn't 100% clear where as there was a large amorphous blob over the entire area. It did pick up trace amounts of France, Germany and other Western Europe, but most of it seemed focused over there in the Isles. Not too surprised by these results. It was the DNA results from my Mexican background that got me. My stepdad, while Mexican, is not blood related to me, so his results will be vastly different from mine, since he's half German and half Mexican. Unsurprisingly, his results reflected nearly just that. Most of Mexico, 2nd in line was Germany and 3rd (a surprise to us all, even his own family) was Italy. I assume his grandfather lived in southern Germany? Interesting. I did hear tales from him that his own grandfather was not a "light" German at all, rather he had darker skin, perhaps tan? I thought his results were interesting, because it was more 3D than it was going to be "Mexico and Germany". haha My results were more surprising than that. My biological father always told me that I was Yaqui Native American. Though he could never produce the papers proving that (nor would I want to pursue that) I was in fact Native American. My stepdad told me that, seeing how I'm 1/4 Native "supposedly", I could get government money had I test positive. Once again, I'm not interested in that. We thought that was the case since my blood related grandmother was 100% Native. However, his father must have lied to him because my biological father told me I was a Native American, which was wrong. My test results said that I was native, but I was Native Mexican instead. He was way off with that because it focused on a central state in Mexico that is close to Mexico city on the west side of the country. I found it interesting that not even my own biological father new the truth, but I cannot fault him because back when he was my age, times were really tough for minorities in America. I'm sure they exploited anything they could just to survive in America... Obviously I have no proof that is what happened, rather this is all 100% speculation at this point. If you made it to the end of this post, congrats. I'm uh, not sure if anyone finds this to be remotely interesting but yes, it was quite a shock to me that I am not what I have been told to be my whole life. While that may be the case, it makes me feel that much closer to my Mexican side.
Mom's side: Great grandparents came over directly from Czechoslovakia with their parents (before the split into Czech Rep. and Slovakia). They settled in the central Texas region in a small Czech established community and within a 50 square mile radius, never left. Old traditions are still a major part of life as a result with the local church hosting every other sermon in Czech as I grew up visiting my mom (who lived with grandparents). My great great uncle built the house that my grandma lived in until she was put in a home. Farming was the way of life and for generations, they raised cattle and trained mustang horses. Dad's side: 6th/7th generation Texan so it gets a little more difficult. Grandma is extremely proud of this and being a member of the Daughters of the Republic (big deal for older folks in small Texas towns). This side is all German, though Grandma swears we have Irish and something called 'Black-Dutch' in minute amounts. Like the Czech settlers of the time, they moved to an area in Texas and settled in, not really leaving a 50 square mile radius. My grandma has since moved more, but while I was growing up, everyone was within the same area. Mom and Dad met in high school. Two small towns both attending the same high school in between; one Czech dominant and one German dominant. Growing up, my mom's dad always referred to my dad as 'the German', as the taboo of mixing heritages was still very much a thing when he was raised. My grandma on my dad's side has always tracked everything, though as she gets older the details get fuzzy. I'm fortunate enough to know my ancestry without any genetic testing, though my background in genetics makes me infinitely curious to what extent my Texan heritage goes...
The only recorded lineage of mine is from my paternal grandmother whose ancestry was written starting in at least the 1600s (my family currently has the book). They would have lived in Austria and emigrated to the USA in the 1800s to Nebraska where the line would stay up until the present day. The name survives through the children of my great uncles. I'm just a branch. The lineages of all my other grandparents are German. Their names are more spread out into the US (but mostly midwest). The last name I ended up with is fairly common since it is a family name stemming from a profession (not unlike Smith or Shumacher). Besides that first ancestry I described, my lineages are not very noteworthy. Once emigrated, they were mostly farmers in this region. They were all around to participate in the great wars on the American side, but still no big stories there. Only recently have all fronts begun to "proliferate" into something more significant.
Why would that be weird? Isn't it quite recent that different people within the same family pursue different occupations?
That's true. As we got into the early 1900s they started diversifying - one was even a pastor at the local cathedral of my university until his death in the 1990s. My great aunt lives in that city too. Some others became construction workers, and as English companies opened coal mines in South Wales some went over there to die at young ages in mining accidents/of cancer. It was just weird to see almost two centuries of an unbroken chain of blacksmith -> blacksmith -> blacksmith -> blacksmith. I'm pretty sure that I can find where that chain breaks though. Eventually I'll even have to be descended from a Welsh King or something, since even after the last one was slaughtered Red Wedding style at a peace negotiation most of their kids survived and had more kids that presumably became part of Welsh society
Wow, I'm impressed to see how diverse the community is rather than the blanket terms like "white" or "European". We've gotten down to the nitty gritty stuff and some history has been brought up about our past ancestors, yeah?
I’ve gone from having only a marriage certificate to a full picture. My granddad and my brother look like exact copies of her. My seanmháthair mhór, a woman who fell into serious danger of being... almost completely undocumented and erased from recorded history until a year ago. Dunno what her eye colour was but I’ve inherited her teeth lol
These were some very interesting stories to read! (Now my head hurts from reading- lol ) Mom: All I know is I think she's Half- Scottish? Not quite sure. But I think her ancestors (Including mine) are from Scotland? Am I thinking that wrong? Or is my step-dad's side of the family Scottish. I actually have no idea, I've never been so interested in this to even bother to ask. I'll ask later
It all started in Ukraine my moms and dads sides are all ashkenazi jewish with. Thats it i think. My brother and sister both were both in israel and i was born in Canada. They has ties to Russia and Germany but almost 85 % jewish or 100%. both my parents immigrated to israel in there 20s and in there 30s immigrated to canada, they met in israel and thats where my grandparents are.
What I have learned from doing some research into family history is you shouldn't always believe the commonly held family beliefs or stories you hear growing up. Sometimes they are accurate, but often they are slightly wrong, sometimes very wrong. Also, it is very easy to get on the wrong track. You can't just use one record to form a connection, you need three or four to confirm. A lot of the shared research on popular websites is junk research with basic dates that don't line up. It's definitely an interesting thing to look at and you learn a lot about incidental and historical things along the way.
Necroing this thread because I've done a lot of research into my dad's side of the family over the last few weeks. I don't have much, but records are hard to come by and my dad never really told me much about his family - bits and pieces, but nothing I could really build off easily. First off, what I obviously already knew... My dad's mum/my nan was born in 1949 in Toxteth, Liverpool to a man called Alfred (don't have his exact D.O.B and D.O.D) and a woman called Dorothy (1926 - 1998). She had an older sister, who passed away in November 2020. Her sister had one son who died a few years ago, and his son died two weeks ago (1999 - 2021). As far as we're aware, my nan is the last surviving member of her family and her second name will die with her. My dad was born in January 1971 to my nan and granddad in Toxteth, Liverpool. He dropped out of school aged sixteen (1987) and my granddad gave him a job as a caretaker at the local hospice (which he founded). He met my mum when he was twenty-five (1996), they got married in 1998, I was born in 2000, they had three more kids and he died of a stroke in October 2019. My dad's dad/granddad was born in the Baltic Triangle, Liverpool, in 1939 to a man called Juan and a woman called Lillian. My granddad married my nan in 1969, had my dad in 1971, moved to my town in 1973 and had my uncle in 1974, founded my town's hospice in 1984. He suffered a heart attack due to stress + poor diet + smoking in 1997 but survived: the doctors told him that he wouldn't make it to 60 if he didn't retire, improve his diet, and stop smoking; he carried on working himself to death, eating crap, and smoking... suffered a second heart attack 1999 and died at 59 years of age. What I didn't know was the exact history of my family beyond that. So, the things I've found out... Juan was born in the Baltic Triangle, Liverpool, in 1896. I don't know the exact time period, but he seems to have enlisted in the British Empire's merchant navy in 1911. He married Lillian in 1921, they got nineteen years together before he died in 1940. My dad always told me he enlisted in the British Army and died in World War II as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, fighting against the German onslaught as they blitzkrieged their way to Paris, and never made it to Dunkirk. I can't find his death certificate or anything so that explanation has to be worked with for now lol. Lillian was born in 1903. She lived and grew up in the Baltic Triangle in Liverpool, a five minute walk away from my great granddad, and married my great granddad when she was seventeen and he was twenty-five in 1921. The last of her five children, my granddad, was born in 1939. Sometime in the weeks after my nan and granddad got married in 1969, she suffered a stroke while sat at her fireplace, tried to get up, fell into the fireplace and burned to death. Lillian's parentage is of great interest to me, because her dad's name was Johannes - that's not an English name and as far as I'm aware it's not a Spanish one either. From what I know, 'Johannes' is a German name - and him being a German immigrant is backed up by the fact that he appears to have Anglicised his name in official documents as 'John' after World War I broke out in 1914. I'm wary of posting an identifiable second name here, but if my suspicions about his 'weird' second name are correct, Johannes was Jewish. As for what happened to Lillian and Juan's five kids? Two were girls, three were boys: obviously my second name is lost on the girl's children and one of the boys never had kids; my granddad's lineage resulted in me, my three siblings, and my two cousins; the other boy had a single son, who died in a car accident caused by a falling tree a thirty second drive away from my house in August 2019. If we were royalty I’d have inherited the throne already 😎 Will update as I find out more thank u for reading
