Geneology

My siblings and I have begun work on a scrapbook about my mother's ancestors. Luckily for us, a lot of the geneology search has already been done by other people. On my mom's father's side, the family has been traced by to France in the late 1600's. On her mother's side, it's been traced by to Canada and Ireland in the late 1700's.

We have a few illustrious ancestors. One is George Drouillard, who was a hunter and interpreter with the Lewis & Clark expedition. Another was Elias Baker, Mom's maternal grandfather, who was a high-profile detective with the Detroit Police force at the turn of the century.

Mostly, though, what amazes me is the size of the families. Ten children, twelve. Yikes.

That is so cool and is something that can continue to be a gift to generations to come. Good for you!

We've traced ours as well. On Daddy's side it goes all the way back to Ireland, 1700 (but coming from Germany to Ireland)

On Mom's we only go back as far as an Indian Chief, 1800's.

Must be why I'm such a little savage, eh?

JJ

Dejavu, working on my familytree was/is one of my hobbies too. I have worked on it off and on through the years. I started on it when I was about 23. It was fascinating to learn about one's ancestors....good and bad. The internet has made it so much easier to research these days. The early years I did it the old fashion way, writing letters, digging through court records, church records, library sources, etc. I remember writing letters and making phone calls to people, and would try to explain what I was doing. People would get very suspicious when you ask them about their family line, LOL! It was and is a long process that never ends. I finally made a book for myself, and then made one for each of my family members. Some of the things that I put in the book were pictures that I accumulated over the years.....putting a face to some of the names.I also added short stories about some of the ancestors that my grandparents or great uncles/aunts told me about, or different things I read about them. I took a copy of the book to the local historical society too. I would like to send a book to historical society to the country where my ancestors came from also, but haven't done that yet.

And yes, the families were huge...10-13 kids! Can you image! What was more confusing to me was the names. In my family, everybody seemed to be named Henrich, Fredrick,or Dorthea.

Oh, the names! The repetition of names may have been a great way to honor someone but it sure makes it difficult to keep track. Plus, I guess a lot of my relatives lived in very small towns, because you keep seeing the same surnames on people they wed.

JJ, we have quite a bit of Indian blood as well, both sides of the family, particularly among the French-Canadians.

My son has bugged me for a couple of years to do our family, but it seems so time-consuming. Plus I wonder why HE doesn't do it. LOL! Maybe one day I will have time. I hope so. I love to find out where people came from. I do know my mom's grandparents were Shawnee.

Ladies, can you share any Web sites that are helpful with your searches? I'm sure there are some good ones.

A distant relative was recently in town doing some family research. My brother was helping them and somehow found the article from when my grandfather was murdered as a Baltimore City policeman.

Ancestry.com is very helpful, although to get full use of it, there's a membership fee. However, a good starting place is simply to type your relative's name into a search engine like Google. Sometimes you'll find that someone has already begun a geneology search on that family name. That's what I found with Drouillard, my mother's maiden name.

The Social Security Index was another great tool I used. Go here: http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/

Then there is this site called Cindy's that is soooo chocked full of info it's unreal: http://www.cyndislist.com/

I would start there. She has a Geneology 101 type page you can read, and she even offers a kit you can buy to begin, if you want. I didn't buy it but used her site extensively. Don't forget census records. After 10 years they become available to the public. (I think it was 10 years???).

I found my grandfather, my Daddy's Dad, who my Daddy never knew. It was back when the Internet was first introduced to the world. Trouble was I found him in November of that year, and he had died just before that. Sad, huh? Two months before I found him was when my Daddy was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. He didn't really know what I was telling him when I said, "Daddy, we've found your Father." It was on Thanksgiving of that year. So sad! Come to find out, his Daddy had died of the same disease.

Sigh....it was still worth the years I spent looking.

JJ

If you have a Mormon church in your area, you can call and make an appt. and they have extensive records.

Nobody in my family knew my great grandmother's last name so I had to guess when she married my g grandfather from the year my grandfather was born. I found her! She was a full-blooded Cherokee and the family "failed" to list her in the family Bible. Nice.

JJ, a sad story but still beautiful in some ways too.

JJ, I like your reference of back wen the Internet was introduces to the world. It hasn't been that long, has it? What year was that? And what did we ever do without it?

I'm going to have to tell a couple friends those site addresses.

JJ, is cindislists.com now familytreeresaerch.com?

Here are a few sites to check out on geneology that I have used. Like JJ said, Cyndislist.com has a lot of different web sites that are very useful.

http://www.usgenweb.com/
http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/
http://www.familysearch.org/
http://www.genealogy.com/

No Dots, Cindy's is Cindy's. How she maintains that list I'll never know. As far as the year, I started my geneology back in 1990. Good gosh, where have the years gone?

JJ

that's really interesting. Your ancestor probably met some of mine. One of my ancestors was the chief of the tribe of Indians at the mouth of the Columbia river where Lewis and Clark spent the winter.

My cousin is big on the family tree and sent me some pictures, taken many years ago, of some of our relatives. I kid you not, the women looked like men in drag! I had some seriously ugly ancestors!

Dianne, I think we all did! Actually, most of these women were hard working women with no time or money to spend on themselves. They lived some hard lives, and the photos really show that.

I'm sure when we're really old and wrinkly, we'll be just beautiful!!!

Not mine...they were all purdy....uh huh...sure nuff. No, make that snuff. I think they all had a wad in their mouths...including the women. Ewww..

My greatgrandmother dipped snuff. Gross. Kathy, they weren't just rough looking, they had huge heads and big, ugly faces. Am I looking at myself in years to come? Gads, I sure hope not. Honestly, they DID look like men wearing dresses.

Before my aunt passed away, she gave me some old pictures and I finally got to see what my greatgrandmother looked like. She was full-blooded Cherokee and quite pretty. It took me years to find her for the family tree as nobody remembered her name. I researched LA marriage certificates and there she was!

As an adult, I found out by accident that my father was adopted.

It really floored me. I used to wonder why he didn't look at all like his parents, but I never thought of adoption. My father died, so I never could talk to him about this. He used to call me his gypsy girl. Meanwhile I fond out that his mother was Hungarian.

Who knows. It could explain my love for tassels, rings on the fingers, dangling earrings, and long swooshy skirts. Oh and all those embroided blouses I have?…..I wonder.

I have to try some of these sites. Do you have to pay for all that stuff?