Discovering Your Past

Discovering Your Past (Full Version)

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Aileen1968 -> Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 6:25:57 AM)
SummerWind and I went into NYC this past weekend (thus the Paddles thread). He enjoys exploring his family history and took me on a personal adventure. He took me to the apartment building in Soho where my dad lived as a little boy in the 1930's. He watched me take pictures of the building facade and I even let him touch my camera and take pictures of me sitting on the front steps. We sat there side by side and enjoyed a cigar. Then he got me inside the building where we explored all six floors right up to the rooftop. We took pictures inside and took great pics of the NY skyline from the rooftop. All the architecture in the building was original right down to the worn marble steps. It was emotional for me since my dad died back in May and just being there brought back a flood of memories of his stories of growing up in NY. He then took me to McSorley's Ale House which was a few blocks away since it was an old stomping ground for my grandfathers. It was probably the best gift I've ever gotten from someone. So the question....yes there is a question here...have you explored your past? On paper? Searched out buildings? Recorded life stories? If so, what resources have you used? I have found the original ship manifests from my grandmother coming through Ellis Island back in 1908. This past weekend has made me want to research further.

LaTigresse -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 7:12:37 AM)
Most of my past I've been exploring through old family photos and documents. Until this last year, I never knew my paternal grandfather played in a circus band. It was in the 30's, in California. The photos are just fabulous. Until just before she died, I never knew my paternal grandmother was a published writer and communicated with several presidents quite frequently. Among some other cool facts. Apparently she never felt it important, and I didn't know, until she was trying to show me her old scrapbooks and photo albums. I am so happy that my father gave me all of that. I had vague memories of stories, from my mother's family. Some photos and so forth. When I went out there last month I took my scanner and scanned everything she had. One of the photos is of my great grandmother and her family when she was a child, in front of their sod house in Kansas. Just too cool. Both of my parents are irresponsible and unreliable so I wanted to make sure that family history was saved in some form or another.

Aileen1968 -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 7:23:14 AM)
Now that info is just priceless. How wonderful that you've been able to begin to preserve it all.

LaTigresse -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 7:24:26 AM)
OMG you should see some of the photos, especially the old circus ones. They are just so damned cool.

Arpig -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 7:59:28 AM)
On the one side the family history is quite well preserved, as we were at the Plymouth colony, on the other side the history is pretty much lost as we were Acadians,who were kicked out & went to Louisiana...eventually cameback. On that side,the only bit of memorabilia I found was an old officer's commission dating to the early 1700s. As to more recent history, well both families have resided in the St John area of New Brunswick for the last two hundred years so there is a lot of spots there that have a connection, on my father's side my parents still live on the original land from the Loyalist grant, and on my mother's side, unfortunatly we know very little, her family was relatively poor working class in Rothsay, a small town just outside of St.John (now effectively a suburb). I have asked my mother for more details of her family, but she (and her one surviving sister) knows little, so its likely lost now, though one day, if I ever have the money to travel I hope to try track them down, as the family apparently came over way, way back in the 1600s. Soon both sides,my family came over roughly 400 years ago (back when they were called colonists rather than immigrants[:D]) and it seems to me that since one was English and the other was French, there is a good story for Canada in it somewhere.

PyrotheClown -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 9:20:30 AM)
Meh, I loveingly say that I come from a long line of roaches(We survive EVERY THING), so lots of my relatives are still alive(they just wont die...I'm sorry, it's just that they are really ornery,which I guess it excusable at their age, but still).. So I've been endoctrined on the family history from a young age(mostly against my will), which is good I guess, cause I'm not sure if I'd ever be able to find much of it on paper (finnish rom, we don't like legal documents, nor writting and reading much for that matter).

GreedyTop -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 9:32:35 AM)
My maternal side is very well documented, thanks to my Grandfather. Sadly, much of the paperwork and such was destroyed when my uncles wife set a bucket of hot ashes on in the mudroom of their house, causing the house to burn to the ground. My fathers side, not so much. Norwegians. I can only get back about 3-4 generations, then cant find anything else.

Lockit -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 10:42:09 AM)
My family researched a great deal and had a set of hard cover books made that recorded a lot of it. Since I don't have much to do with my family I did some research on my own when I was asked to do something to support a national organization in helping the disabled. I used online resources, what I remembered and went from there. I found a lot of our information in history books and online sites, but the most helpful to me was a Mayflower site. It helped me connect dots I had never known about as that set of books was at least ten books and too much for me to read while visiting my grandparents. Then the history channel helped a lot with a series on Presidents and gave me new companies and such to look into to connect or disprove a few more dots. Now the younger generation of the family are researching and are asking me to help. Most of my research and such was stolen, but I can at least head them in the direction that I went in. They are now filling facebook and myspace with their amazement of their finds. I've found that the one's in history are far more interesting than those who are known today and I think those that were known before would turn in their graves over the actions of the one's today. I think I would rather think of what will happen in the future, although that seems like the only course it could take is some Hollywood futuristic movie. What is really weird is finding people from the past that have the illness you have and reading about it! The founder of the organization I was working with blamed my family for bringing it to the new world. I laughed big time when he said that, but damn... I hope they didn't do that! hehe

allthatjaz -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 10:47:51 AM)
Both Stephen and me have researched and visited our past. I have been to the old Lancashire town where my grandad worked down the mines and my grandmother worked in the cotton mills from the age of 12. The mine is long gone and the cotton mill is now luxury apartments but the house and street that she lived on still stands. My other granddad was French and I would love to go and explore his past but unfortunately have very few leads. Both Stephen and me have relatives that lived in Krackoff and were Polish Jews. We will both go on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz at some point but Stephen isn't ready yet.

DomKen -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 11:11:37 AM)
My family history is pretty well documented. my direct paternal line can be traced back quite a long ways in Scotland. My mothers direct ancestors can be traced back to their arrival in America in 1804. Some of the non direct lines are also well documented, for instance much of my paternal grandmothers relatives still live on land that my ancestor and his 3 brothers homesteaded on Sand Mountain immediately after the Cherokee were removed. Other lines have proven impossible to trace back much at all.

popeye1250 -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 11:15:41 AM)
Aileen, yes, I've done the geneology for both sides of my family and was able to get Irish citizenship on my paternal side. It was indeed very interesting hunting down the paperwork! I had to go to Letterkenny, Donegal Ireland to get a copy of my grandmother's birth certificate, a beautiful document written in both English and Irish. She came over alone at the age of 16 in 1912 the same year that the Titanic sunk! On the maternal side my great grandfather Pat Mc Donough came over from Sligo, Ireland in 1878. I have his certificate of U.S. Citizenship framed. I can still remember him, he was real old and wouldn't die it seemed, finally, we had to kill him! He was 93. His certiicate of citizenship reads; "Circuit Court, U.S. Mass District SS." "To all People to whom these Presents shall come, Greeting." "KNOW YE, That at at Circuit Court of the United States, begun and holden at Boston, within and for the Massachusetts District, on the fifteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty sisc To wit: on the 18th day of February A.D. 1887 Patrick Mc Donough (written by hand) of Woburn in said district, Laborer born at Clooneen Geevagh, Sligo, Ireland, having produced the evidence and taken the oath required by law was admitted to become a citizen of the said United States according to the Acts of Congress in such case made and provided." "In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the seal of said Court at Boston aforesaid the day and year last above written, and in the one hundred and eleventh year of the Independance of the United States of America." "Alo. H. Troubridge, Deputy" GREAT handwriting they had in those days! I really like looking at old legal documents like that! And, he went back to Ireland in 1920 to visit and then, as an American Citizen had to register as an "alien"in Ireland and I have that document too. The English still occupied Ireland until 1922 I believe. Yeah it's a lot of fun tracing your ancesters and finding out all kinds of info about them.

lizi -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 1:42:55 PM)
This is an interesting thread... [:)] I started becoming more interested in my father's side of the family recently. He always claimed that the ancestors on his side were Gypsy, it turns out that he was perhaps not full of BS like I thought he was. Lol. I've been interested enough to do some preliminary searching and I've found some interesting things to show that he may have been telling me the truth all these years. I"d like to continue with it when I have time. My ums think it's great. They are great fans of Gogol Bordello and the like, they don't quite understand how Gypsies have been prosecuted over time like many other ethnic groups so for now it's quite exciting for them.

DesFIP -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 5:39:40 PM)
Like lots of Ashkenazi Jews, we were kicked out of Spain in 1492, then went to Amsterdam. In the 1600's a general was given a large section of what is now eastern Poland by the czar. He imported Jewish artisans from Amsterdam to help build his new city. At his death, most of the artisans went back to Amsterdam. Some, including my family, has already married into shtetl Jewish families and remained. Much of my family left Warsaw prior to WWI. My grandfather came here, his older brother went to Canada. Two brothers and the sister went to what is now Israel. Basic typical diaspora stuff. But I wish we still had the boarding house my great grandmother ran in Baltimore. At the time it was a slum, today it's worth a fortune being in the Inner Harbor.

littlewonder -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 5:45:25 PM)
I'm the genealogist in my family. I've been able to trace my father's family back to one of the first settlers in Western PA, having arrived in 1749 from Wurttemburg, Germany. My family has owned the same piece of land since that day and hopefully always will. The traditions and family ties on his side have always remained strong. I've been able to trace my mother's family back to a small town in Slovakia in what was once called Milik, Galicia. My mother's side are new immigrants and it was actually harder to trace her family because they arrived on Ellis Island in 1900, never kept any records, never spoke any English and changed the spelling of their name at least 5 times since then. Through a lot of digging in archival records at immigration offices I was finally able to put the pieces together. Even though I'm not really close to my family these days I still find tracing the family history to be fascinating and gives me some insightful glimpses into why my family are the way they are.

Aileen1968 -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 6:17:39 PM)
I am loving all of these answers. Thanks.

TheHeretic -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/1/2009 8:16:50 PM)
Mom's side is pretty well researched and documented back to before the Revolutionary War (I think I'm two funerals from getting my own copy of the book), and Dad's is a work in progress. I'm still deciding if my favorite story is of having ancestors representing both North and South at Appomattox Courthouse, or the 4 draft-dodging brothers who left the old country in women's clothes.

pahunkboy -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/2/2009 3:43:14 AM)
...A great uncle was notorious. He robbed the bank that grampas money was in. BEFORE FDIC insurance was there!!! lol.

Lucylastic -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/2/2009 5:12:24 AM)
When we moved here I started keeping a track of family on my side, for the kids mainly, we had papers going back to 1647(birth & wedding certificates, a tankard engraved for a soldier, apprenticeship papers for carpenter(no not that far back) and land ownership papers around london,, but lots of it is incomplete, we did have a bunch of pictures which my sister is scanning going back to my great great great grandmother and father. Just recently I started setting up a website of my home town, with pics I have found online of the main street, all the churches and pubs plus pictures of where various family membrs lived over the last 75 years. Its for the kids as they have only been back to the UK a couple of times. A while back, I did some searching into "the Old Bailey" criminal court in london, to find out about some of our nefarious relatives, only to find that my great great great great grandaddy was once robbed by a great great great relative of my hubbies. (we are both from the same town).

pahunkboy -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/2/2009 6:15:21 AM)
Gosh- the way I moved around and changed jobs- it would be impossible to get a accurate blurb on just me. I have not searched- but I am pretty sure the courthouse with the records ALWAYS is lost in a fire. We dont know the true age of my grandmother.... we think we are sure with in a year. A cousin had did my dads side but never got back to me on it- moms side goes back further with more people and a better bet. My fathers parents emegrated from Poland- so- that would be in the way too. I do peer at places I once lived and ponder. --one time I crashed someone elses family re-union. It was 2 hours before it came up that I actually came in to enjoy the air conditioning and was not in that family. lol. They were very nice people tho. They said I could be in that family as I blended right in.

kdsub -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/2/2009 8:25:28 AM)
My family has a long history in America as well…but they were not always good people or Americans. I love the more tawdry parts. One Grandfather was murdered by a group of his slaves because of his sadistic treatment …Luckily he had eight sons. Another Grandfather murdered a tax collector and fled to Missouri, which was part of Spain at the time, thus my families move from S. Carolina. On arriving in Spanish territory he obtained a Spanish land grant that covered two of today’s counties is southeastern Missouri. He convinced twelve families to move from SC and settle on his land in Missouri and had 4 sons and 8 daughters… With the Louisiana purchased they lost all but 400 acres of land because the new US authorities required that all owned land be under cultivation or it would be lost to the new government. This of course did not endear America to my family. They moved west taking land from the Osage Indians by force. The Indians promptly raided my third removed grandfathers farm and left his head on a stick in front of his burned home…lucky for me three of his sons had grown and were already on their own....Oh the irony my great grandmother was Osage Oh I love family history. Butch

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