I was thinking of making this thread for a while now, but couldnt decide how much or what content to add to it, but…
Over the past year I have become very involved and very talented at genealogical research. I went from not even knowing for sure the ethnicity of my last name to having a ton of interesting details (DOB/DODs, location down to street/house, jobs, etc) about almost all of my ancestors back as far as the 1700s.
So, if you have any question about how to start it or anything on this interesting topic feel free to ask.
I have done it for FREE so far.
-the site familysearch.org has free signup which you can just use a pseudonym for and is about 60% as good as the paid sites. check this place number one.
-the paid sites are often available for free at local libraries or places like that.
-google your country’s “national archives” or census archives and there may be a dedicated site just for that. Canada’s archives are really good.
-consider mispellings in names or errors in transcription and think of ways to work around this (ie. first names + age + location if surname not working)
I am really happy that I spent the work doing it, though I’m sorta sad that I’m done with it largely now as there is a practical limit in terms of documents existing before about the year 1700 unless your ancestors were famous.
I geeked out on ancestry (well literally, Ancestry.com!) a couple years ago and traced back most of my family 10+ generations, INCLUDING both of my adopted grandparents. Pretty awesome.
I always need something to geek out about. Lately, it’s been the damned virus. But once that gets old, I’ll either A) get back into brewing or B) ancestry/geneology.
And as a sidebar that comes back every spring & summer, I’ve been paying way too much attention to my backyard orchard again lately… it’s going to be another bumper crop this year, finally, after 2 off-years in a row. Yay me. Should get 2 bushels Honeycrisp, plus some peaches, yeah, in Wisconsin, not to mention many other fruits.
But yeah. Geneology including DNA stuff is pretty fascinating to me. I’m still very much a noob but I do enjoy it.
My cousin has traced our family (on my mom’s side) back to England. I contacted the Sir name organization to check her work. It was confirmed as accurate. Who knew there was even an organization for Sir names?!?!
My mom is really into genealogy as a hobby. You can never really be done with it unless you decide to stop pursuing it because your family’s background goes back to before written history and there is always more you can do to go backwards and expand that family tree. If you feel like you want to keep digging check into the genealogy forums and see what they do beyond the big websites to learn more about how to find more resources and, importantly, first hand sources. Like brewing you can get a lot of good info from the bigger sites and homebrewing magazines but there is a lot of minuscule but extremely valuable bits of information out there that can make a lot of difference in your beers if you hunt it out.
I’ve done Ancestry.com in the past, and was able to trace my paternal lineage back about 400 years. I’m French-Canadian, and I was able to go all the way back to the village in France that my father’s, father’s, father’s, …father came from before he moved to the French colonies in Canada in the 1600’s. Then I went on Google maps and took a virtual stroll down the 2 or 3 roads they have mapped in that village. I thought it was pretty damn cool.
I’ve also done the Ancestry DNA thing. It’s kind of wierd how it changes over time, but it is cool to see things get more refined as they get more results. Still, it was bizarre when I went from 21% Irish/7% Scandinavian initially (even though every single name in my family tree that I’ve found is French), to 4% Scottish/Irish and <1% Scandinavian a year later.
Exactly, I really enjoy having google earth open at the same time as I check the trees. Not just for enjoyment, but to see if a location variable is likely or unlikely.
IMHO, the existing ancestry.com family tree things are NOT always correct for all kinds of reasons. So you have to do the research and if the trees that someone else has put up corroborate what you’ve found, even better.
Re: “irish” DNA in france. Regions in countries all over europe have “celtic” DNA, the lines on maps with labels are an illusion in many ways. The interplay between native brittonic “celt” populations, scandinavian, anglo-saxons, some romans, etc just in the united kingdom is extremely interesting and regionalized.