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<p>Pizza girl, if this is true then DH’s family story has been deemed untrue. The story is FIL’s ancestor left Russia and entered the US via Ellis Island. The family name was supposedly changed from a dictator’s name by adding another letter. Hmm, should I be the bearer of such news? As an in law, that’s a little dangerous! :)</p>
<p>My mother’s brother spent a good deal of the decade between his retirement and his death doing a genealogy of their family, including several rounds of Salt Lake City trips and tramping-through-graveyards-in-Belarus trips. He was not focused on how far back he could go so much as (a) how many celebrities he could find in some sort of cousin relationship, and (b) proving that his father’s somewhat plebeian family was just as distinguished as his mother’s well-to-do, snobby family. So I can’t say it was all that enlightening, but thanks to him I know exactly how I am related to Stephen Spielberg, Katharine Graham, and Ruth Prawer Jabhvala.</p>
<p>My mother’s mother’s family has been super into itself for generations – my kids have third cousins in that line that they see all the time and have real family relationships with. On my father’s side, I know practically nothing, although a few of his first cousins came to my bar mitzvah and my wedding. (I do know that parts of his paternal and maternal families were fairly mobbed-up, and that neither my mother nor his erstwhile employer, the local U.S. Attorney, were enamored of that. Which somewhat explains the general lack of contact.) My wife knows even less about her family . . . and cares even less about knowing more.</p>
<p>I am the family genealogist and love the adventures it takes me on. For both our 50th birthdays H and I took our families (sibs, parents) to the country of our father & mother’s “common heritage” (Denmark for H and Sweden for me) In both trips I was able to prearrange with our ancestors small village church to hold the service that Sunday in english for our visit. We were treated like royalty! H’s family lived and worked on the estate of the Count of Holstein (From Germany’s Schieswig-Holstein) in Denmark. I wanted approval to drive onto the estate (Ledreborg Slot/Castle) and take a photo of the farm house where family had lived/worked for generations. I telephoned and the Count himself answered the phone! He said yes and and sadly he would be out of town, otherwise he would have had the 23 of us over for coffee! </p>
<p>I connected over the internet with another long lost relative and we were able to see the small cabin my grandmother was born in. (way up in the land of the midnight sun)</p>
<p>Once in the Czech Republic we hired a driver to take us to a small village so we could photograph the church and the cemetery. There was a small meeting being held at the church and the driver came back to the car and told us the the town historian just happened to be at the meeting knew of our family and after a phone call, we followed him through town (he was on a bike) and had wine and streudel in the old house of my H’s great great grandparents.</p>
<p>In Scandinavia, it was common to take on the name of the farm where you were living (and most likely working). This can make following the family tree difficult. We were on a country road near where I thought the farm was located. A man stopped to see what we were up to and we ended up following him to the “main house” of the farm. Where again we were invited in to have coffee and to look at the “bygdebok” which is a bound book containing the records of all who have lived on the property. Who they married, occupation, where they moved to, etc. Many of these books have been copied and are in the Norwegian library at St. Olaf college.</p>
<p>I have enjoyed looking at the original census documents from the late 1800’s. It is fun to see what info was collected. Such as eye color, occupation, parents birth country, immigration year. </p>
<p>We always wondered why my Swedish grandfather has such a non-Swedish sounding last name. Turns out his father was in the military and every other person had the same last name so they were all instructed to just pick a new last name and that became their legal name. it was about that same time that the Swedish government also decided this was too confusing and said “your family name will remain what it is right at this moment in time” Most of you probably know this, but for those who do not - The naming process when like this - Paul Johnson was the son of John, Paul’s son would then become Lars Paulson, etc)</p>
<p>All of my grandparents immigrated from Sweden. It has been very frustrating to know that all of their documents were either tossed out when they passed or taken as some prize possession by a certain aunt - and not to be shared. Grrrrrr</p>
<p>My mother who is only 75 and is the 8th of 10 kids did not speak English until she started school. This was the case of most of the farm kids and there was a huge class distinction between the townies and the farm kids. </p>
<p>I have many reasons to be thankful for the work the Mormans have done, but also I have been upset by some of their actions. My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that as part of their 2 year journey, the young men are required to document the genealogy of a family or region and then save those souls by baptizing them into the Morman Church…leave my Grandma’s soul alone! I am trying to look past this and focus on my gratitude toward all the wonderful documents they have made accessible. I have noticed that the more recently documented records have more errors. Best guess…todays kids want everything done fast versus the laborious processes of past decades.</p>
<p>There are many generous people in the Ancestry world and sadly I have noticed even over the past 10 years that there are many people who simply take the family tree info of others and don’t take the time to verify the data.</p>
<p>As a mother of twins, it was interesting to me to find out I had both a great-grandmother and a great-great-grandmother who also had twins. (My great-grandmother’s twins both died shortly after birth; my great-great-grandmother’s twins did live – one staying in Poland all his life, the other leaving for the US by himself at age 15 and establishing himself as a relatively successful local businessman who subsequently sponsored his twin brother’s four children to come over).</p>
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<p>My perspective on this is – if I don’t believe it, then it’s just a bunch of nonsense anyway, so why do I care if someone wants to say ooga-booga-wooga over my ancestor’s soul?</p>
<p>We have been trying to figure out when my Swedish ancestor changed his name from Anderson (hardly a target for a Xenophobe) to something that is frankly off the norm. The story had been that it was changed when he landed. We recently discovered that the new name was used on the ship manifest while his brother on the same ship kept Anderson. My dad thinks that the law was after him. Another strange thing: the brother did not get off the ship, but changed his mind and took the same boat back home. We know the later from family lore and it does check out. Did Sven freak out or just come with his 15 year old brother for support?</p>
<p>oh…and it WAS pizzagirl who brought the “canard” to my attention here on CC!</p>
<p>Because of Hurricane Katrina, a friend’s wedding was moved to Baton Rouge, and I was able to do some research in the excellent East Baton Rouge public library. They have a large genealogical research room, with a lot of source materials. I managed to connect some dots that I couldn’t find on ancestry.com which has records mostly from English speaking sources. </p>
<p>Later, I was able to get a copy of “First Families of Louisiana” by Conrad and it’s quite entertaining. Do you know how many early colonists were likely unwilling? There are lists and lists of passengers and many of them are there “by special order of the king” or because they were “illegal salt dealers”, “illegal tobacco smugglers”, or under “lettre de cachet”. Vagabonds, deserters, and libertines! Women and girls exiled for fraud. I wonder how much of it is true and how much is trumped up to get people on those boats. Especially to get young females on those boats. </p>
<p>There are also records about the military. God love the French, they are great bureaucrats - and that is where we got the word from, no? Here are some excerpts:</p>
<p>Capt. Richebourg, 5/30/1713 - Good officer. It is unfortunate for him that rumors of his death abound in France and have caused a delay in his advancement.</p>
<p>Capt. de Nancre, 2/11/1719 - He is at Biloxi. He has not been assigned a company because he is not capable. Therefore, he is useless.</p>
<p>Sub-lieutenant Bouchard, 2/11/1719 - The Company had named him major for the Illinois post, but because he is not qualified for that command, and had no knowledge of his intended promotion, the Company has decided to let him remain at Natchez.</p>
<p>Saw the obituary for DH’s grandfather (whom S1 is named after) and there were three children listed, not the two we all know about. Will have to find out if the third is the S of of his second wife from her first marriage or if this guy is a blood relation!</p>
<p>I have started trying to get the elders to talk about their childhoods and various stories. Even just getting the names of some of these folks is helpful in going back and tracing branches, and sometimes I can put the pieces together from different people and make some headway.</p>
<p>One of my cousins has been doing geneology for 30+ years, since long before the internet. She has an entire room filled with binders on various relatives. Turns out that we weren’t entirely shanty Irish! Related to Martha Washington, Pocahontas and one of the members of the Lewis & Clark expedition, all via my paternal grandmother’s side of the family. </p>
<p>Is hard to find info on shtetls that were razed in the early 1900s in places that continually changed hands. I have one name of a town in Ukraine and it’s not listed anywhere.</p>
<p>Unfortunatrly, many Ukrainian towns had multiple names incl Jewish and Russian versions or Hungarian or Polish. Ran into same problem.</p>
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<p>I’ve had very good luck in the past identifying obscure shtetls in Ukraine (the parents of my son’s grandfather on my ex’s side came from two shtetls in the Ukraine between Vinnitsa and Zhitomir, and part of the family of a good friend of mine also came from various places in Ukraine); the answer usually lies in finding the correct spelling (or correct variant spelling, or the name in another language) in one of the reference books I own, or on the Internet. If you give me the name you have, I’ll see what I can do.</p>
<p>All parts of my family have been in the US for hundreds of years. I think this is true. I have seen tombstones. According to the great aunts all parts of the family are descended from royalty. I’ve decided the fairy tale family histories have just as much potential value to my descendents (in telling them something interesting about their forebears) as the more realistically documented ones. Maybe my great aunts histories will be even more valuable than the “real” ones to some future historian who wants to research attitudes of a certain time and place?</p>
<p>When I read Somerset Homecoming, Dorothy Redford’s account of her own personal roots search, where she writes about library and archive records, that all the local whites inevitably are descended from royalty, it was my favorite part of her book.</p>
<p>Heard the recent news about discovering Richard III’s body- and a descendant they found in, I think, Canada? His mother supposedly told him the family had connections.</p>
<p>Some family stories have to be true.</p>
<p>I am rethinking the tombstones. In family graveyards, in continuous use & with land records/title deeds that also substantiate family presence & with family bibles that seem to record births/deaths at the time - I can only be sure of the family being in USA just prior to 1800. After that the cemeteries are in a different state. The great aunts could have just found the name and made a leap. It is interesting to think about. Maybe I’ll pull those books out and see how much can be “proved” </p>
<p>I pretty sure I don’t have any claim to a castle in Ireland. But who knows?</p>
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<p>It is true. The names were all written down on ship passenger arrival manifests prepared before a ship crossed the ocean, and it’s those lists which the immigration officials used. You can also, for some ports – specifically Hamburg and the ports in the UK – find the separate outgoing passenger lists prepared for emigration purposes; the names almost always match. </p>
<p>Obviously, a lot of people changed their names at some point after they arrived. I suspect that many of them made the “my name was changed at Ellis Island” claim because they felt embarrassment or shame for changing their names, and didn’t want to take responsibility for it.</p>
<p>Sometimes, of course, the names on the passenger lists were simply misspelled, and people just went back to the correct spelling afterwards. For example, my father’s maternal grandparents’ name was Prinstein (usually spelled Prinsztein) back in Poland, but for some reason it was misspelled as “Grinstein” on the passenger lists when the family came over in 1883. They immediately began using the name Prinstein again. The discrepancy didn’t matter much for anyone who arrived prior to 1906. For people who arrived thereafter, proof of arrival was a necessary part of one’s citizenship application papers, and any discrepancy with the name on the passenger list had to be explained.</p>
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<p>I don’t personally believe you can posthumously convert a dead person to the LDS Church by “baptizing” them either. (Technically, the dead person has the right to say no; the posthumous baptism serves as kind of a telegram to their soul – I guess it gets automatically translated into Yiddish or whatever – asking them to convert. I think the people who do it proceed on the assumption that everyone says yes, since they don’t wait for an answer before they start counting them all as Mormons.) But even though I don’t believe in it, I still find it horribly offensive and presumptuous – especially given the very long and sad history of often-forced proselytization of Jews – for people in the Mormon church to take long lists of Jewish people who were murdered in the Holocaust, and “baptize” each and every one of them. It’s pretty repulsive. After all, the people who do it believe it.</p>
<p>So far as I’m concerned, my murdered family, and so many other people’s murdered families, were Jews who were killed because they were Jews, and they should be left alone, symbolically and otherwise, to rest in peace. It’s indecent to do otherwise, as well as very hurtful to their family members. (Like me: I once found my mother’s beloved grandparents on such a list of posthumous “converts” who were all Holocaust victims.) </p>
<p>After many protests, the LDS Church agreed some years ago, with Jewish organizations that had protested, to forbid this practice. Then it turned out that it was still going on. So another promise was made more recently. I don’t know what’s been happening since then.</p>
<p>So, you may not care. I do.</p>
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<p>I’ve noticed exactly the same thing. Who knew that people in my family were so vain back then, aging only 5 or 6 years out of every 10? I usually assume that the earliest records in which someone gave their age or year of birth are likely to be more accurate than the later records. In addition to the birth year changing from record to record, I often find that the birthdays people gave were inconsistent as well. (If I recall, 1900 was the only federal census year after my relatives came over that asked for birth month, but birthdays also show up in things like marriage records, death records, and naturalization papers.) I really think it’s true that a lot of Eastern European Jews in the 19th century didn’t know their exact birthdays (at least in the secular calendar as opposed to the Jewish calendar), and didn’t care. (My German-Jewish ancestors, of course, were always extremely precise and correct about such things!) And it’s always interesting to me just how many immigrants used to put down July 4 as their birthdays!</p>
<p>My paternal grandmother spend many painstaking hours researching our ancestry many years ago at the National Archives in Washington DC. They lived in Arlington at the time so my grandfather would drive her there and just wait. My mother has these records, and some that my grandmother did on her side of the family as well, but every time I’ve asked to make copies she’s been reluctant. It’s odd as rightly they belong to me. My parents divorced almost 30yrs ago. It’s not her history, it’s mine. I doubt there’s anything too exciting, but I would like to build on it.</p>
<p>DH’s father, my FIL, is really into tracing the family genealogy. He’s had the DNA test and been linked to people. He put everything on CD’s and book format for everyone, but we all note he’s exceptionally liberal when telling his memoirs so I have no idea how much to trust the rest of the data. He claims his lineage goes from WV back to the Vikings, which is interesting because MIL is Danish.</p>
<p>On a somewhat related, but fun side note, we do know that DH’s family had been in this area and owned land prior to the civil war. S2 goes to school about 90mi from here and called me about midnight his first year “Mom, Mom, I’m in the confederate cemetery!” I knew there was one right behind his dorm so not totally surprised “Son, I don’t want to know what you’re doing there at midnight, what’s up?” “Look at this!!” my text dings saying I have a picture. There is a headstone with S2’s first name second initial and last name. That was a little bit disconcerting. “Sooo Cool, right mom?” “Very cool, goodnight”. 
I have yet to do any research on it but there’s a shot DH’s family is related somehow.</p>
<p>For those of you researching Eastern Europe (esp Jewish), google Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex. It’s a code that can be used that helps account for the variety of spellings that you’ll inevitably encounter.</p>
<p>blueiguana-- that is so cool! That’s the part I like best about doing the research-- it brings history alive. To think S’s ancestor with the same name fought so many years ago – pretty neat.</p>
<p>PizzaGirl – I don’t have twins, but I saw a few posts back you found twins in your family. When I started, I looked at the birthdays for my ancestor’s 8 kids – he had 2 sets of twins – one set born on MY birthday, and another set born on D’s birthday! I got chills.</p>
<p>I am more interested in knowing actual traits of ancestors. We are all bundles of traits passed down through the years. Before my mother lost her mind, I finally got her to talk about some traits. For some reason - embarassment? - she refused to talk much about people. So she told me who in the family was oddly young looking to advanced age, who walked slowly, who was fidgety, etc. These interest me in part because they compile into the actual people I’m related to, including me, but also because they map out our good and bad issues. Why does my mother have this weird neuropathy? Well, we can’t answer that by examination - same is true for way too many people - so we need to look at how it has expressed in people over time. Why do I look so young? My guess is we’ll be able to find the genes for that in the future but I’m interested in what that associates with or whether it is independent of other traits. How do the bundles that make me relate? (So to explain, my mother looked relatively young but walked slowly while I fidget constantly and look even younger. What is related to what?)</p>
<p>Otherwise, I find it interesting to think about how people actually lived but I don’t relate to it more if it was a relative I never knew. I remember very well my grandmother’s stories about sleeping in a room with boards that let in snow, about the horse my great-grandfather used to pick scrap and how the girls clung to its neck to prevent the men from repossessing it. But the people who came before? They’re mysteries no familiar to me than the characters on Downton Abbey.</p>
<p>The Economist’s prospero blog has a post up about Roman Vishniac. His book A Forgotten World came out in the 1980’s, before the internet meant you could look at pictures of just about anything. My exposure to the old world was a few pictures of my relatives, mostly as kids, dressed up for a photograph before they got on the boat to the USA. I never saw pictures of the towns and houses where they lived. I still haven’t seen more than a glimpse of a few, like the “main street” of Lehovici. Vishniac’s pictures of ordinary life made that more real than a family tree.</p>