Hello
Guest

Sponsored Links


Topic: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?  (Read 2345 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

  • *
  • Posts: 261

  • Lover of Target and M&S
  • Liked: 43
  • Joined: Nov 2016
  • Location: Philly area to Bicester
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #15 on: April 30, 2018, 08:25:34 PM »
I did DNA. I found a sister that my mom gave up for adoption. Pretty cool


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Type of Application: Priority Settlement Spouse Visa
Online Application: 9 March, 2019  Philadelphia,US
Biometrics: 14 March 2019, Philadelphia
Application Mailed: 14 March 2019
Application Received in NY: 15 March 2019
Application Received in Sheffield: 19 March 2019
Decision email received: 16 April 2019
Passport received: 17 April 2019


  • *
  • Posts: 1134

  • Liked: 170
  • Joined: Oct 2012
  • Location: York
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #16 on: April 30, 2018, 10:19:17 PM »
I did DNA. I found a sister that my mom gave up for adoption. Pretty cool


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wow!! Now that is amazing!!

I also recommend familysearch.org. It's run by the church of latter day saints (who keep ALL the records) and has free access to census, birth, marriage and death records. (I can't be arsed paying for an ancestry subscription as I've always done the research in fits in starts...).
2004-2008: Student Visa
2008-2010: Tier 1 PSW
2010-2011: Tier 4
2011-2014: Tier 2
2013-2016: New Tier 2 (changed jobs)
16/12/15: SET (LR) successful! - It's been a long road...
12/05/16: Citizenship ceremony!


  • *
  • Posts: 5643

  • Liked: 672
  • Joined: Sep 2015
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2018, 08:11:37 AM »
Wow!! Now that is amazing!!

I also recommend familysearch.org. It's run by the church of latter day saints (who keep ALL the records) and has free access to census, birth, marriage and death records. (I can't be arsed paying for an ancestry subscription as I've always done the research in fits in starts...).


Yeah, the Mormons have got research libraries all over the place. You can visit as a guest and use them. The have full access to the institutional versions of Ancestry and some other databases.  They can also order the microfilm/fiche records for you of materials that are not on the internet, but that they have stockpiled in Salt Lake City.  I had a film sent of the graveyard records for one ancestor and found, by scrolling down through it, several other suspected relatives planted nearby. Also, there were hand-written notes on the actual record that listed cause of death, the type of grave, who owned the grave, who paid for it, how much, etc.  You don't often get that kind of detail, but it's not unheard-of.  Going through parish records on microfiche/film cal also be really informative.  Back "in the day", people didn't tend to move around a lot, as a general rule.

The Mayflower for me? I am thinking not. Thank goodness. ;)  Really, it was a batch of religious-cult nutters.  ;D ;)  My New England roots appear primarily to have come from another of that variety, who had at least two wives (sequentially) and a multitude of children by each. I do enjoy reading their names, though. You don't see names like that anymore.

The fun part of my New England line is that they were protestant. (Ooooo) And English in origin (double-oooooo). In an otherwise staunchly Irish Catholic family. (Skeleton in the closet.)  And, a number of my more recent (last 150 years) ancestors were pregnant several months before their marriages. (Triple ooooo). My immediate family was soooo stuffy about "proper" behavior - well, well, well. Hah! It obviously wasn't a genetic trait! ;)


  • *
  • Posts: 5643

  • Liked: 672
  • Joined: Sep 2015
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #18 on: May 01, 2018, 08:14:12 AM »
I did DNA. I found a sister that my mom gave up for adoption. Pretty cool


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not meaning to pry, but how did your mom feel about that? I can see where that might have been really awkward if she'd put that all behind her and didn't want to revisit it. Or not, if she'd been looking for the child.


  • *
  • Posts: 261

  • Lover of Target and M&S
  • Liked: 43
  • Joined: Nov 2016
  • Location: Philly area to Bicester
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #19 on: May 01, 2018, 01:25:25 PM »
Not meaning to pry, but how did your mom feel about that? I can see where that might have been really awkward if she'd put that all behind her and didn't want to revisit it. Or not, if she'd been looking for the child.
It's a long story.. but she knows mostly because my other sister threatened to "out" her to my dad and such. My adopted sister is awesome and when another family member told her that my mom was traumatized by it all, she was cool with it and would never make contact. My crazy sister is venomous and is a very jealous person.

My family is full of lies and deceptions. I told her to get the truth out there. I'm great friends with my new sis.. don't speak to venom sister.. and keep a low profile with drama mama
Type of Application: Priority Settlement Spouse Visa
Online Application: 9 March, 2019  Philadelphia,US
Biometrics: 14 March 2019, Philadelphia
Application Mailed: 14 March 2019
Application Received in NY: 15 March 2019
Application Received in Sheffield: 19 March 2019
Decision email received: 16 April 2019
Passport received: 17 April 2019


  • *
  • Posts: 261

  • Lover of Target and M&S
  • Liked: 43
  • Joined: Nov 2016
  • Location: Philly area to Bicester
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #20 on: May 01, 2018, 01:26:34 PM »
Oh yeah, there's an adopted brother out there too... haven't found him. When I get to the UK I want Davina to find him. LOL
Type of Application: Priority Settlement Spouse Visa
Online Application: 9 March, 2019  Philadelphia,US
Biometrics: 14 March 2019, Philadelphia
Application Mailed: 14 March 2019
Application Received in NY: 15 March 2019
Application Received in Sheffield: 19 March 2019
Decision email received: 16 April 2019
Passport received: 17 April 2019


  • *
  • Posts: 5643

  • Liked: 672
  • Joined: Sep 2015
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #21 on: May 01, 2018, 01:51:58 PM »
Oh yeah, I've got a venomous one that I avoid, too.


  • *
  • Posts: 879

  • Liked: 134
  • Joined: Feb 2014
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #22 on: May 01, 2018, 02:07:26 PM »
The Mayflower for me? I am thinking not. Thank goodness. ;)  Really, it was a batch of religious-cult nutters.  ;D ;)  My New England roots appear primarily to have come from another of that variety, who had at least two wives (sequentially) and a multitude of children by each. I do enjoy reading their names, though. You don't see names like that anymore.

The fun part of my New England line is that they were protestant. (Ooooo) And English in origin (double-oooooo). In an otherwise staunchly Irish Catholic family. (Skeleton in the closet.)  And, a number of my more recent (last 150 years) ancestors were pregnant several months before their marriages. (Triple ooooo). My immediate family was soooo stuffy about "proper" behavior - well, well, well. Hah! It obviously wasn't a genetic trait! ;)

Can't choose your family, eh?  I come from a long line of ardent Protestants, all of whom crossed the globe trying to find a quiet place to be slightly overbearing about their religion (one ancestor died of 'swamp fever' in French Guyana in the late 1500s)- Mayflower Puritans, Huguenots, etc.  They're probably rolling in their graves right now that they have Irish Catholic descendants.   ;D  I also come from a long line of staunch Quakers who contributed quite a few interesting stories to the family lore.  My Ohio Quakers worked on the underground railroad in the 1840s and 1850s so that's nice to know.

Probably the most dramatic discovery I have made is determining that my great-great-grandfather died two years before my great-grandmother was born, not while his wife was pregnant as we had all been told.  Even my grandmother didn't know!  Of course, this was after I traced his family back to 1500s Germany.

Irish genealogy is hit and miss because so many of the typical records are missing or have been destroyed.  The census was hit-and-miss in Ireland before the Civil War as it was overseen by the Protestant clergy on behalf of the English government and they often either purposely skipped the Catholic residents, or the Catholic residents declined to give over their information.  Add to that that many of the official records were destroyed in the 1920s and you already are at a loss.  I have found a few Irish baptisms for ancestors, but it's very difficult to trace back, especially pre-famine.

Oh man, I adore genealogy! 
Met Mr. Beatlemania: 20 Jan 2010
Tier 4 Visa Approved: 17 Sep 2012
Spousal Visa Received:  22 Sep 2014
Ohio to Essex: 26 October 2014
FLR(M): 10 May 2017
ILR: 23 October 2019
Citizenship: 6 September 2022


  • *
  • Posts: 261

  • Lover of Target and M&S
  • Liked: 43
  • Joined: Nov 2016
  • Location: Philly area to Bicester
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #23 on: May 01, 2018, 02:14:43 PM »
That's awesome! We're trying hard to trace my husband's roots. Problem is, we were all told his grandfather was born in Wales, but has family in Cork. I have all his information, and the only person by his name we could find in either was in Cork, but with the wrong father and mother name.
I love this stuff, but it can be frustrating at times. I'm getting him a DNA kit. Might help.
Type of Application: Priority Settlement Spouse Visa
Online Application: 9 March, 2019  Philadelphia,US
Biometrics: 14 March 2019, Philadelphia
Application Mailed: 14 March 2019
Application Received in NY: 15 March 2019
Application Received in Sheffield: 19 March 2019
Decision email received: 16 April 2019
Passport received: 17 April 2019


  • *
  • Posts: 6584

  • Liked: 1891
  • Joined: Sep 2015
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #24 on: May 01, 2018, 03:40:03 PM »

Hearing what Nan said about how easy it was to change your identity reminded me that my Grandfather did exactly that.  He walked into the Superstition Mountains in Arizona with one name and cam walking out again later with a completely made up Irish name and family history.  He continued telling this bogus family history until he died. 

On my recent trip to Ireland, I was amused that all the tourists were Americans telling everyone about their supposed Irish roots and desperately seeking someone to listen to their family history.  I feel sorry for any Irish people working in the Tourist Industry, I can't think of anything more boring than someone else telling you a long boring family history. 

Present posters excluded of course.


  • *
  • Posts: 879

  • Liked: 134
  • Joined: Feb 2014
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #25 on: May 01, 2018, 05:13:39 PM »
Hearing what Nan said about how easy it was to change your identity reminded me that my Grandfather did exactly that.  He walked into the Superstition Mountains in Arizona with one name and cam walking out again later with a completely made up Irish name and family history.  He continued telling this bogus family history until he died. 

On my recent trip to Ireland, I was amused that all the tourists were Americans telling everyone about their supposed Irish roots and desperately seeking someone to listen to their family history.  I feel sorry for any Irish people working in the Tourist Industry, I can't think of anything more boring than someone else telling you a long boring family history. 

Present posters excluded of course.

My great-grandmother was born and baptised as Regina and, boom, 1920 rolls around and she's suddenly Virginia.

Send them my way! I love a bit of family history gossip.
Met Mr. Beatlemania: 20 Jan 2010
Tier 4 Visa Approved: 17 Sep 2012
Spousal Visa Received:  22 Sep 2014
Ohio to Essex: 26 October 2014
FLR(M): 10 May 2017
ILR: 23 October 2019
Citizenship: 6 September 2022


  • *
  • Posts: 862

  • Liked: 248
  • Joined: May 2017
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #26 on: May 01, 2018, 09:40:45 PM »
On my Irish grandparents marriage (1906) certificate it states that my great grandfather was from Glasgow.  There is a strong link between Ireland and Glasgow and so I spent the next five years trawling through as many records as I could to find him with no luck.

Last year I wondered to myself about him being at my grandparents wedding - if he were in Glasgow, Scotland, would he have made the trip?

Sure enough I found him - round the corner from my grandparents in Glasgow Terrace!  They hadn't had room on the certificate to add the Terrace bit.

And today is a good day for me to think of these things as it would have been my Mum's 108th birthday (she died in 1988).

Fascinating, isn't it!


  • *
  • Posts: 5643

  • Liked: 672
  • Joined: Sep 2015
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #27 on: May 02, 2018, 10:25:17 AM »

  I have found a few Irish baptisms for ancestors, but it's very difficult to trace back, especially pre-famine.

 

That's an understatement.  ;)

Yeah, well, with people dropping dead from starvation and disease on the streets, and civil structure pretty much imploding, keeping records understandably wasn't a high priority. 

And then later, when the new government was getting established, some of the parishes sent copies of their records to Dublin (before the 1922 fire), but a lot more of them sent the original records. Which are now lost for all time. Such a disaster that was.

And then, there are parts of Ireland where records were scarce in the first place. My Donegal tracks fade away pre-1850s. There's an individual with the correct name in the correct area to take it back one further generation, but no proof he's "mine" - or just someone with the same name in the same place. They were too poor (as far as I can tell) to pay for a headstone in a churchyard, so even that trace is gone.  The one thing that definitely ties me there (aside from the one great-grandmother's records) is my DNA. By some fluke of genetics I come out as being an extremely high match for that area. With all the other geographical areas mixed into my bloodline, I'm somewhat surprised to find that I share so much with that one great-grandmother.

I searched for her burial place in the USA for decades, and found her via another really freakish coincidence.  I had been tracing her first husband, no blood relative of mine, and although I knew where and when he died, and had her application for a Civil War Widow's pension based on his service, there was no trace of a grave. The record books at the local RC burial ground didn't list him. I was doing a Google-search for him and got a hit on a transcription of the cemetery's older records that someone had put online a couple of years back. When I put the grave info into another Google search, my GGrandmother's info popped up as being in that grave. That like NEVER happens!  The grave was unmarked, and when the cemetery went back into their daybook for the date in the 1870s they did find info on her husband as being there, with some other info that was useful to me.  As he was a Civil War veteran, I was able to get the VA to put a marker on the grave for him. No marker for my ggrandmother, but at least now we know where the grave is - in the middle of a sea of unmarked graves in a very large cemetery. Where you pretty much need a police escort to go into as it's so crime-ridden.

With Irish records you have to take the birth registrations with a grain of salt. They had to pay a fine if they didn't register the births within a certain amount of time. (At least, I was told this a few years back.) So it's not uncommon for there to be a record of a baptism for someone that pre-dates the civil record by a large time period. (Potentially years - when they got the money together to pay the fine.) Or not recorded in the civil records at all.  Now, I don't know how true that it, but I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility.

Of course, with the Irish, if they had a child and named it, for instance, James, after the father, and it died, the next boy that happened along (probably within a year  ;)  ) would also be named James.  I've got one case where the poor mother lost four in a row, so there are four James born to her, spaced, yeah, about a year apart.  Only the first one appears in the civil records for births. He does pop up in marriage records, but the date of birth is 4 years later. Took a little bit of sleuthing, to sort that one out.

If you like puzzles, genealogy is definitely addictive!


  • *
  • Posts: 879

  • Liked: 134
  • Joined: Feb 2014
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #28 on: May 03, 2018, 10:07:00 AM »
And I do love the sleuthing, Nan!  I am fortunate that I inherited the Irish family bible so I have a good line on the one side, just few civil or parish records to accompany it before they moved to New York.  Now my Miller ancestors from Northern Ireland via Canada is another story....
Met Mr. Beatlemania: 20 Jan 2010
Tier 4 Visa Approved: 17 Sep 2012
Spousal Visa Received:  22 Sep 2014
Ohio to Essex: 26 October 2014
FLR(M): 10 May 2017
ILR: 23 October 2019
Citizenship: 6 September 2022


  • *
  • Posts: 261

  • Lover of Target and M&S
  • Liked: 43
  • Joined: Nov 2016
  • Location: Philly area to Bicester
Re: anyone else do Ancestry.com stuff?
« Reply #29 on: May 03, 2018, 04:30:15 PM »
I’m on the search for my Italian Great Grandfather. My grandfather never told either of his sons much about him, except he was out picking in the fields somewhere around Philadelphia when a storm came up. He took shelter under a tree and was struck by lightning.no pictures of him or my great grandmother!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Type of Application: Priority Settlement Spouse Visa
Online Application: 9 March, 2019  Philadelphia,US
Biometrics: 14 March 2019, Philadelphia
Application Mailed: 14 March 2019
Application Received in NY: 15 March 2019
Application Received in Sheffield: 19 March 2019
Decision email received: 16 April 2019
Passport received: 17 April 2019


Sponsored Links