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Chasing Dead people ...


KathieB

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We have been researching genealogy for years now and have our findings on line. A few days ago we had a message from a relative in France, who was able to connect our Louisiana French family to their ancestral village in the Burgundy district of France. A few messages were exchanged, and we'll be meeting him and his family when we go to France in May. He and Lloyd are both 10th generation decendants of Jean Daubard (1639-1694). Lloyd's mother was a Dobard; the spelling changed when they arrived in Louisiana in the mid 1700s.

This doesn't have anything to do with miniatures, but I just had to share! :)

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yay! what fun! Years ago when i really started trying to find things out, way before puters LOL, i called a town in canada to see if they had birth records dating back to a particular time, for my mom's dad so not that far back! they said no but asked what his name was, i told them, Earl Cuthbertson, and they said "we have an Earl Cutherbertson in town" and gave me his number? I called and talked to his wife and she got me in contact with her daughter who does genealogy too.....she sent me (marriage etc) certificates back to Scotland and a book she wrote on her side in canada.....i eventually got to Scotland to see the places.....sooooooooooo awesome! LOL so congrats!!! what fun!!!

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Congratulations Kathie!! I, too, found a relative back in September. My maternal grandfather passed away when my mother was 14 and we knew little of his family. After joining Ancestry.com, I was contacted by a member who was related to him. Her father and my grandfather were brothers and we've become fast friends as well as cousins. We've lived in different parts of the same town and had no idea the other one existed.

It has definitely be a blast.

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That is amazing, Kathi! I understand your joy.

We have traced my grandmother and grandfather back to their villages in Russia. However, if my grandmother had only told us more about her life and family, she could have made our research much easier.

My grandmother was never divorced when she left Russia. Oh, the horror of it!! I don't know why she didn't understand that there's nothing new under the sun. So, we are left with wondering and wanting to ask why.

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Happy for you, Kathie :) We have traced our ancestry to France also, but have not found any living relatives! I think genealogy is fascinating, just to see how the generations progress. A friend of mine went back to Ireland as a young lady, and her family there about fainted when they saw her -- she was a carbon copy of a great-aunt who had died in her twenties. They had a portrait of her on the wall the likeness was uncanny. Maybe we all have a "twin" back up the line! :)

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It's so nice to hear success stories!

My father's family in the Czech Republic remains a mystery beyond my grandfather as we do not know the name of the ancestral village; finding family depends on knowing where they lived. With all of the elders gone now, there is no one to ask and no papers within the family. Ship manifests only report "Austria" as his birthplace, as the Czech Republic was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time. Ditto marriage and death certificates. Having this solid brick wall in front of us makes the breakthroughs in other lines all the sweeter.

Mary, I understand your frustration with family secrets. It was not until my maternal grandmother died that I learned she was my step-grandmother. Grandpa divorced his first wife in 1920 and gained custody of their three children, including my mother. #2 wife had five children of her own, and they had two more together. (His kids and her kids never did get along very well. Their kids were both special, the kind of relative you'd pick if it were up to you to choose. :) ) I was curious about why the father got custody of the children as this was not the norm in that time period, so I got a copy of the divorce papers, which revealed some pretty seamy stuff. I know now why this was never discussed in the family, but still ... stuff happens.

I was too dimwitted to understand the significance of the event when my biological grandmother died sometime in the 1950s. My mother went to the funeral but didn't say much except that her mother had remarried and had a son, her half-brother. So I have some shirt tail relatives out there but don't have a way of finding out her last name and have had no luck tracking down descendants of her siblings. Again, everyone of that generation has passed.

I keep hoping someone who knows will find our website and speak up.

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Wow,great stories All....My ancesters come from Scotland/Canada on my Dad's side and England and Germany on my Mom's.And my best friend has Welsh sheep rustler's in her ancesters...and Vikikngs.Too funny!!! :)

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such fun stuff!!! I so wish i had time to just do genealogy! I have traced some lines pretty far back but my dad's remains incredibly allusive! Last name (and what my surname should have been) was Regan but was adopted by his father's sister and her husband....his mom died in 1918 from the flu epidemic when my dad was a few months old, and his dad died in a railroad accident a couple months later...so aunt and uncle (who had no kids and were Rodgers) adopted all three kids...so his line, of Teeter and Regan remain a mystery! though this past fall, when i went to the philly show, i stopped in at the johnstown, pa flood museum cause dad had told me we had relatives who died in the flood...found a teeter but alas no real info! oh and also on the way to philly went to Boalsburg pa, named after my mom's ancestors, the name Boal being traced back to a celtic village in spain! love knowing where i come from! all those generations (including one man who owned most of Stanton Island before the Revolutionary war) coming together to make ME! LOL

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hmmmmmm LOL I assume it is german and was likely something like dieter back in germany LOL....i remember vague stories of relatives like someone marrying beneath them? or relatives that spent time with my dad's family during the depression and never saying thank you? discord? LOL I did buy a book at the johnstown museum and it mentioned a woman, teeter, whose arm was severed and then died as a result, during the flood...and remember that a Teeter had taken pics or written a book about the flood many years ago....hmmm LOL

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I grew up where certain things were never mentioned. NEVER. I didn't learn of many things until a few years ago when I began asking questions, and seeing records.

My grandmother was German but lived in Russia. My grandfather lived in another small town only 5 miles from her.

I have found their "church" papers (I can't think of the correct name right now) which was signed by the same pastor. They left Russia three months apart to go to Canada.

My grandmother had been married to her husband in Russia for 11 years. I would think they would have had children, but there's no record of it.

A few years before her death my grandmother told one of my aunts that her husband beat her terribly. Many times after she was beaten her mother would have her lie on top of her stove to help relieve the pain. She did lose at least one baby because of a beating. My aunts and uncles do not want to think that Grandmother may have left children behind in Russia.

The ship's manifest and her passport shows her using her married name. But by the time she reached Ellis Island she was using her surname.

Both my grandmother and grandfather ended up in the same town in Canada. Had they planned it? I don't know, nor does it bother me. BUT! All hell broke lose when I brought up the scenario to my aunts! Whoa!!

I couldn't find when and where they came to the United States from Canada, nor could I find their marriage license. A cousin of mine suggested that they may have never married. OH MY GOSH!!!! The $#@) really hit the fan then, and I became a bad person in the eyes of my aunts and uncles.

I had asked my aunts and uncles if they knew my grandparents wedding anniversary, but they didn't know. They became extremely irritated that I even asked. (By the way, my mother had already died during this time so I couldn't ask her. I think she would have responded the same way. She never told me she had been married before until I was 26 years of age, and that's all she said....nothing more.)

So, I thought it would make my aunts and uncles happy if I actually did find their marriage license. I paid to find out that information. When I received a call that it had been found and was being mailed to me, I was so excited!

I called one aunt in particular who thought I was an awful person for drudging up all of this. I told her I had found their marriage certificate, and that I would give her a copy when I received it. She was interested then to see their marriage certificate.

So, I get the marriage certificate which shows the date, etc., and it's obvious because of the date, that my grandmother was pregnant when they were married! Big deal Lucille!!

I took a copy of it to my aunt never mentioning any dates, and my relationship with my relatives has gone downhill since.

I've learned to not tell anyone in my family if I learn something new. After I found my sister (looking for her for 18 years) she told me that my mom had run away from home when she was 15 years old to get married. Because my aunt was getting very old I wanted to ask and know more about my mom while I could. So I said, "I didn't know that mom had been such a rebel." I was chewed out for saying that, when I didn't mean anything bad at all.

When my mother had 3 months to live I asked her if she would write a note or something , and tell me that she loved me. I told her that I would like to have it to look at it and hold it after she passed away. She said that she didn't want to. I told her that I could have everything set up, and she could simply say the words while I recorded it. She said she didn't want to.

After my mom died I went into a deep depression. Everyone thought it was because my mom and I were so close, but, actually it was because we weren't close.

I do know she loved me; she was just closer to my sister.

As far as not mentioning anything, I am an open book (except on the internet). If someone off the street asked me about my sex life, I'd tell them.

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the secrets are the best because it tells you who they were, not just simple facts! and funny, it reminded me of a paper i wrote once (being that is one of my jobs) and in the researching i discovered that a large portion of the puritan population actually had babies less than 9 months after marrying! so even the puritans did it! LOL my mom died when i was 18 and although i asked questions as a kid (and always snuck old pictures out of trunks) no one seemed to know much! even my dad, who lived till 1999, didnt have much to tell me...so i have always kind of been on my own in terms of looking for ancestors!

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Congratulations on your find :-) I've been gathering info since 1969. Looking up here on this 5' shelf span at binders plus many many papers needing to go in those binders makes me shudder. I've met with brick walls all around but go searching now and then.

I've used the LDS church program since getting my first computer in 1992. love it and it's free now. that first wasn't free.

good job,

LindaC

findagrave.com is a good place to check and/or add your info so others can see.

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findagrave.com is a good place to check and/or add your info so others can see.

I photographed several gravesites in local cemeteries to fill requests on Find-a-Grave. It was rewarding, and sometimes challenging to find the family cemeteries out in the county.

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I've been using the ancestry.com 14 day trial and i actually found some relatives.

A couple of months ago I found my great uncle who convinced my parents to come to Philadelphia instead of Australia. His surname wasn't spelled anything like the spellings I know my family members have used. i found him totally by accident, there was even a passport photo. For over 20 years he lived on more or less the same block, he just moved around it on 3 different streets, which I thought was funny. he also traveled back and forth to Lithuania several times.

I may have found my grandfather, but I'm not sure. He and his brother had the same first name for some reason. I had been told a story once, but it doesn't sound right anymore, because great uncle Joseph is much closer in age to grandpa Joseph than I was led to believe.

Some cousins went to places like Chicago and Mahanoy City, PA. I could tell because the name of the little village they came from was the same. I found a recording of a Lithuanian band recorded in Mahanoy City in the 1920's, maybe I'm hearing a distant cousin playing on it.

Merry, my relatives can be found listed as Lithuanian, Russian or Polish, even if they all came from the same village. I've also learned that people hunting for family members with that name are all Polish, so now I don't know if the family name was originally Polish or Lithuanian. There are people of Lithuanian heritage all the way down into the Ukraine. Lithuanians had spread down through there hundreds of years ago, or maybe a Polish family moved northward. I did see that my great uncle had cousins in Grodno.

Some people with our last name are listed as Austrian, (likely distant relatives), others as Italian, French, Swiss (I don't think they're ours) and Roumanian (well, maybe possible).

BTW, Merry, a year before she died my mother told me her father had an illegitimate child from an affair. That was the last straw and grandma divorced him.

On the other hand, i don't think my husband's grandmother ever married any of the men who fathered her kids, tsk tsk. She's credited with having been married about 3-4 times, but I don't think so. No one's ever been able to find any record of it. One of his uncles on the other side of his family had a common law wife. Well, if it was good enough for Ben Franklin......From what I've seen over the years, many people never bothered to actually divorce or marry people officially. A "grass widow" was the 19th century term for a "divorced" woman. I wonder if that comes from the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side?

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Merry, my relatives can be found listed as Lithuanian, Russian or Polish, even if they all came from the same village. I've also learned that people hunting for family members with that name are all Polish, so now I don't know if the family name was originally Polish or Lithuanian. There are people of Lithuanian heritage all the way down into the Ukraine. Lithuanians had spread down through there hundreds of years ago, or maybe a Polish family moved northward. I did see that my great uncle had cousins in Grodno.

Some people with our last name are listed as Austrian, (likely distant relatives), others as Italian, French, Swiss (I don't think they're ours) and Roumanian (well, maybe possible).

BTW, Merry, a year before she died my mother told me her father had an illegitimate child from an affair. That was the last straw and grandma divorced him.

On the other hand, i don't think my husband's grandmother ever married any of the men who fathered her kids, tsk tsk. She's credited with having been married about 3-4 times, but I don't think so. No one's ever been able to find any record of it. One of his uncles on the other side of his family had a common law wife. Well, if it was good enough for Ben Franklin......From what I've seen over the years, many people never bothered to actually divorce or marry people officially. A "grass widow" was the 19th century term for a "divorced" woman. I wonder if that comes from the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side?

I googled "grass widow," and found this:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gra1.htm

I was lucky when I began searching my mom's side of the family. I had been in contact with a group of people who were searching the same surname. One day a person from that group put two and two together and realized that another person and myself were searching for the same family. The other person ended up being a distant cousin of mine. Her mother was my grandmother's sister.

She had been involved in genealogy for ten years at that time, and had mega information on my family in Russia. She had pictures that I had never seen.

The group that was researching my relatives in Russia had documentation of the actual trip and hardships my relatives experienced while moving from Germany to Russia.

Family secrets are fascinating. The big family secret was that Grandmother had never been divorced! Oh my gosh! And, to even mention that fact (years after her death) was being disrespectful to her. (shaking my head in disbelief!)

The family secrets that are current would make my ancestors look like angels! HaHa!!! :thumb:

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Doing Genealogy research is a blast. I've always known that my father's paternal side of the family came from England. William, (1st generation) came to America, settled in Chelmsford, Massachusetts and built a tavern. It still stands today and is called "The Manning Manse". One side is a tiny family museum, the other side is a restaurant. Our family has reunions there every June. One interesting fact I didn't know was that William came from a small town called Colchester, in England. My daughter and I were doing some research for a genealogy report she had to do for school and we found that interesting little tidbit. What makes it even better is.... we live in Colchester, Vermont. Our family has a book that was published when my paternal grandfather was a baby. It is a family genealogy that starts with William and goes to my grandfathers generation, which is the 12th. The family Association is in the process of gathering all the information it needs to publish a second book. It will start with my fathers generation and continue to the present.

On my mother's side I have a genealogy for both her maternal grandfather and grandmother's sides of the family. My maternal great-grandmother came to the United States from Canada with 2 of her sisters. They went to Lowell, Massachusetts to work in the shirt factories. They were the oldest children and needed to help with the family. They sent money back to the family farm to help support the other 6 children.

I myself have been researching my mother's paternal side of the family. Only finding bits and pieces, but it's Interesting and I'm not giving up yet.

lyn

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I photographed several gravesites in local cemeteries to fill requests on Find-a-Grave. It was rewarding, and sometimes challenging to find the family cemeteries out in the county.

Hi Kathie, Just fullfilled some requests yesterday for fag. The cemetery in the country isn't plotted so it's a search and maybe find situation. There are too many I can't find since I am limited in walking.

One of my brick walls I just know is buried in Cass county, MO. The Keeney family burial ground no longer exists. some years ago when it was walked it was reported some headstones were laying in a pile in a corner so I guess the rest followed. Martha 'Keeney' married John Roylance. Funny in a way some say 'oh they went to Utah'... I say 'thanks, but my JR didn't' go there'.. less than juvenille with so many saying 'YES, he did'. This is after I've given proof of property and marriage in MO. oh well !!

Good searching to all those that do.

Linda

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and built a tavern.

LOL mine too! though from Ireland to boalsburg Pa LOL funny

Too funny ... my grandfather was the Krejsa half of the Krejsa and Martinek Saloon and Restaurant in Niles, Illinois. My grandmother was a Martinek. The Martinek half of the restaurant operation was her brother.

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Too funny ... my grandfather was the Krejsa half of the Krejsa and Martinek Saloon and Restaurant in Niles, Illinois. My grandmother was a Martinek. The Martinek half of the restaurant operation was her brother.

LOL we all come from pub owners....ok drinkers? LOL

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Wow,that's great !!!! I know that's exciting :)

I worked on hubby's and my own genealogies for 11 years .It totally occupies your time.When I had nothing but dead ends left,I started thinking of dollhouses and here I am !!

I had an ancestor charged with witchcraft and found innocent...eventually.Hubby had one that was a judge at a witchcraft trial. :clap:

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