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My great great great grandmother was NA, and she looked it. She married an Irishman, and they had several children. Some of them blond, some darker, and some with red hair, like their dad.
My great great grandpa (her son) looked like a cross between Tom Selleck and Elvis Presley to me. He was a very handsome man, IMO.
My grandma used to have a photograph, where she's a toddler, and she's sitting on her auntie's lap with one of her cousins, who was somewhat younger in the picture. The photo was black and white, but I already knew that my grandma had red hair and was fair skinned. The cousin looked very typically NA. Black hair, big dark eyes, darker skinned.
Probably no surprise to anyone but they were shorter than recent generations. The men looked small, the women were smaller boned. My cousin looks exactly like our great grandmother - they look like twins! I recently returned home to the UK for a family reunion and realized that ALL my relatives except one has the same eye color (dark blue/grey). I'm talking sibs, cousins, uncles, 2nd cousins.
I have a lot of ethnic mixture in my family so I have cousins who are blonde and blue eyed and look Scandinavian lol. I am a brownskin black woman like the hue of Queen Latifah. My mother is VERY dark skinned like Wesley Snipes. My dad is VERY light skinned like the rapper Drake (even though my dad is not bi-racial, he is actually a bit lighter than Drake).
Many people said that one of my maternal great grandmothers (my mom's grandmother) looked like a NA. I don't think so but she did have very long straight black hair. She also had green eyes. She was brown, but lighter than myself. Her husband was very dark skinned and my mother looks like him.
On my dad's side, one of his great grandmothers was a "quadroon" - she was 1/4 black and 3/4 white. She looked like a brunette white woman and she was of Irish and English heritage. She married a "tri-racial" man who looked Portuguese. He was a very handsome man. I have quite a few pictures of him. Their children mostly looked like the grandmother - like white brunettes. One of their daughters - my great grandmother, was the one who looked the most like her father IMO as she was a bit darker and olive skin colored. She was a beautiful lady. A couple of my aunts resemble her. We also have an ancestor on that side who had some sandy red colored hair. A great aunt. Oddly enough every other generation there is someone in our family it seems who has this sandy/copper colored hair.
I was reading someplace that because of the xy thing and how it gets passed down that, women tended to look more like the great grandmothers. I look like my mom's maternal great grandmother. My daughter looks like my husband's paternal great grandmother. I have several brothers, but I could never figure out who the oldest looked like. Oddly, he looks more like a first cousin of ours than he does the rest of us siblings. I finally got a picture of my dad's maternal grandfather. I can see the resemblance. The genes had skipped a generation or two.
I know part of my mom's family was short. I mean really short, four foot something, especially the women. Dad's family was average on the short side. He was average for his time, 5'9 or so. His brothers all were the same height. They also all lost their hair young, with huge hair loss, and a ring of it around the neck. They tended to put on weight but weren't a lot overweight. His mother was short and not quite five feet. I vaguely remember her from when I was five and we visited. Most of my aunts were taller.
The odd thing was my grandmother who was 5'8. Her mother was 4'8 or so. But the father who raised her was short like the rest of his family. Mom told me that her actual father was an Englisman with the same last name, who was almost 6' tall. But he died before she was born. My grandmother told her but it wasn't generally known. My great grandmother and her second husband were both short to normal for the time, around 5 foot, but Grandma was taller than both by her teens. I remember my grandmother telling us how if there was something high up that needed reaching, they'd wait until she got home to get to it. I'm only 5'4, parents almost the same, but I knew my great aunts and was a head taller at 13. My cousins had a tall dad, but were also all three tall. My male cousins were over six foot. My female cousin wouldn't say but she was as tall as they were. If there was a tall great grandfather, maybe he contributed.
My mom told me as if it was a family secret that her second husband married her before Grandma was born, but not before, and claimed the child. He was her father from being raised by him, but by birth it was the Englishman. Unfortionaly, the family name they shared is Smith. I've looked for some record, but nothing. I also wonder if maybe she wasn't married when he died, which would have been unthinkable to Iowa.
I got the ancestry dna test and will be really curious if any unknown relatives show up from that part of Iowa.
Last edited by nightbird47; 04-29-2017 at 10:52 PM..
My maternal great grandmother was 5' 3" and about 110 lbs. She had wavy chestnut brown hair, dark brown eyes, and very fair skin. My paternal grandfather was nearly 6 feet tall with strawberry blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and glow-in-the-dark skin, lol.
My paternal great grandmother was a short stocky lady who was around 5 feet tall but weighed around 150 lbs. She was blonde with blue eyes and was said to be very feisty. My paternal great grandfather was tall with light brown wavy hair and blue eyes.
My mom looks very similar to her mother--same height/weight and coloring. They even look very similar in the facial features. My dad is 5'5" and 145 lbs with light brown wavy hair (blonde as a kid) and light greyish blue eyes. Both parents are very fair-skinned.
I'm 5'4" with green eyes and light reddish brown hair though it's been greying since I was in my late 20's, a trait I inherit from my dad's side of the family. My sister and brother both have the dark hair/eyes from my mom's side of the family. My sister has the curly hair that our maternal grandmother had and my brother and I have wavy hair.
Maternal side of the family is Irish/Italian
Paternal side of the family is Scottish/Swedish
I was reading someplace that because of the xy thing and how it gets passed down that, women tended to look more like the great grandmothers. I look like my mom's maternal great grandmother. My daughter looks like my husband's paternal great grandmother. I have several brothers, but I could never figure out who the oldest looked like. Oddly, he looks more like a first cousin of ours than he does the rest of us siblings. I finally got a picture of my dad's maternal grandfather. I can see the resemblance. The genes had skipped a generation or two.
That's very interesting. I was always told i look just like my mom, but relatives said I looked like her grandmother. She had red hair, and mom still had the long piece she'd had cut. Mom's was blond, but I didn't know how much red was in mine until it got that icky dark blond and lightened it and it went light red. Now I use henna on my own and the red fits my complexion. Grandma's was brownish, though. I wonder if it would have shown as red if she'd treated it.
Mine were not particularly short. We are of Dutch descent, and the Dutch are the tallest people on the planet. Both my grandmothers were 5'8"--born in 1892 and 1907.
My mother, born in 1928, was 5'11". She has shrunk to 5'9". Was amusing to watch the nurses who had to make her stand each day after her bypass two years ago acting as if they were helping a little old lady get out if bed and then seeing their amazed faces when she towered over them.
If I had any short ancestors, it was a long time ago.
One side of My Family (My Maternal Grandpa Maternal Relatives) have a very distinctive Jawline that comes from My Maternal Grandpa maternal grandfather Family. My Great-Grandmother and Several of her Nine Siblings Inherited exact same features as well as some of their Kids. That how we know they are all related lol.
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