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My family has always been here. You'd have to go back to at least the Ice Age to find anyone who came from an "old country." They weren't very good at keeping records.
You mean you don't want to go back to Siberia or the Bering Strait to check out your roots?
I hear it's real nice up that way this time of year.
The story kind of reminds me of the woman who claimed for years that she was Princess Anastasia, the only surviving child of Nicholas and Alexandra. She presented a lot of compelling evidence but I believe her story was debunked using dna.
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Yes, it was debunked. She was actually an Austrian woman who had left her family.
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Unfortunatly there will always be people who claim ancestry that they think will make them "better" than others. One of the results of this is that some people mistakenly think that's what genealogy is about.
99% of genealogy is done on ordinary people. The average person has as interesting, and sometimes more interesting, a tale to tell through the records they left behind as someone supposedly royal or aristocratic.
I feel ya, my family didn't remember any "old countries" and I've been able to trace exactly two of my European ancestors back across the water. A guy from the south of France who was brought over as an indentured servant in the 1630s and a Scottish Quaker who also came over in the early 1600s. Both appear to have cut all ties with their families. It's interesting I guess but I don't feel any connection to Scotland or France and I don't see the point in looking around either trying to find my roots. They're such a tiny part of my ancestry and it was so long ago, not likely I'd turn up any cousins or anything like that.
Which DNA test? I'm often tempted to try that route and see if they can tell me anything new about my mutted up bloodlines but I worry that I'd just be tossing my money down a hole. I have quite a few ancestors who were racially ambiguous and I'd hate to drop a wad of cash just to get a certificate that said "all of the above" or something uninformative like that.
Likewise with mine but they sure weren't indentured. The English couldn't get Quakers on the boats quick enough. I guess they were hoping that the Indians would finish those pacifists off.
In my husband's family, everyone thought they were related to a famous Revolutionary War general. I don't know if someone just made it up originally, or how it got started, but it was not until the last 5 years, when I got on Ancestry and traced the family, did we find out that the two families do not intersect. To give them the benefit of the doubt, the family name is the same, and DH's family does go back to Massachusetts in the 1700's, so it could have been true. Tracing ancestry was very difficult before the computer age.
In my husband's family, everyone thought they were related to a famous Revolutionary War general. I don't know if someone just made it up originally, or how it got started, but it was not until the last 5 years, when I got on Ancestry and traced the family, did we find out that the two families do not intersect. To give them the benefit of the doubt, the family name is the same, and DH's family does go back to Massachusetts in the 1700's, so it could have been true. Tracing ancestry was very difficult before the computer age.
Some of these stories go way back. There's a letter written in 1882 from someone in my family claiming that we were descended from the famous John Hancock. He and I are descended from a John Hancock, but ours was born in Virginia, not Massachusetts. The writer was born in 1788 so it's difficult to understand how he could have confused the two since he was born before the two John Hancocks died. Could have been his old age.
I do intend to go back to Northern Ireland where my scots irish ancestors last lived before their trek here. I would love to see where they lived and understand why they came here. What kind of people they were. What was life like for them there?
Where they lived in Scotland is of less interest since England anglicized Scotland after my ancestors left. It would be more of a tour of the beautiful sites.
That is just my take on going back to my roots. Heard there is a heritage society in Belfast that can do geneolgy research and arrange personal tours if desired. Has anyone any experience with that?
Likewise with mine but they sure weren't indentured. The English couldn't get Quakers on the boats quick enough. I guess they were hoping that the Indians would finish those pacifists off.
Lol. By the early 1700s my Quaker line had relocated to the Cherokee nation as missionaries and married into the tribe so that didn't go quite as planned.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around what a Quaker missionary would be. As I understand it they don't proselytize or even have sermons so it's a bit different than the modern evangelical version.
Sometime ago I posted something about my great grandfather and his family on Ancestry or Rootsweb.A gentleman in Florida contacted me and the information he gave me agreed with what a greataunt had once said in a letter.That their grandfather had passed away, and that their grandmother,my great great grandmother remarried.Been invited to go to a family celebration in Conneticut for that side of the family.I may try to go if i can get enough money together.haven't tried my mom's side in Hungary yet, just doing my dad's side right now.I do know that his family keeps the family history book in Nuremberg,but just don't have the money to go to Gerrmany right now.His mother's family the Steldts lived in Latvia,in Riga and Libau,but I wonder if they were originally dutch, as there is a dutch company named van der Steldt, and have found the name in Holland.Could be they were colonist brought by Peter the ZGreat,because he invited the dutch to settle there.
I have always been interested in family history. Since I was the youngest child of two youngest children, my parents were not particularly young and certainly their siblings had been around for quite a while also. My Dad was born in 1900, knew his grandfather who passed in 1908 and this ancestor was born in 1814. My Dad passed along stories that he had heard in his family such as, we were related to the Boones of Kentucky (Daniel Boone)because someone had gone to Kentucky and got a wife and she was a Boone. It turned out that it was partially true. My Dads greatgrandpa was born in NC, went to Kentucky, married a Potts and they moved down into Central Georgia when the Indian lands opened up. Then, his Grandpa married a Boon whose family had originated in Virginia, NC, SC then over to Ga. There was a well documented Uncle Daniel Boon, as well. So, it was just that he got it mixed up when he told me about it as he was getting on in age. He told me a story about one of his Dad's brother jumping up on a Union cannon during a charge in the Civil War and being shot off of it. I subsequently found out that was true, the fellow died from his wounds and is buried in Newnan (sp), GA. He told me my gggrandmother Boon had a funny name, Satsia/Satcey/etc, or something like that. My Boon ancestor, a ggrandmother, was ascribed to the wrong Boon family. In the 1850 census was a Boon household with the wife being called "Sassy", apparantly she died before 1860. In finding other scattered family members, the name Satsy started showing up in subsequent generations, apparantly being named after the Boon ancestor. There were other stories on both sides of my family. My point being, I have found there is often a grain of truth in some of these stories, if you can just root it out.
It was a big old secret on my Dad's side that someone married an Indian lady. We have never been able to find out who it was. I always suspected it might have been the self same Satcy as one of the granddaughters named her daughter, Satsalea, which has an Indian ring to me....LOL. I love history.
Sorry this is so long but you know how it is when one starts talking about the relatives....<s> it is pretty convoluted.
It was a big old secret on my Dad's side that someone married an Indian lady. We have never been able to find out who it was. I always suspected it might have been the self same Satcy as one of the granddaughters named her daughter, Satsalea, which has an Indian ring to me....LOL. I love history.
That's a pretty common family yarn that is often either made up or involved some other less socially acceptable, or in my state illegal, (at the time) form of inter-racial marriage.
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One of the results of this is that some people mistakenly think that's what genealogy is about. 
