"What would you most like to see in a genealogy?" Topic

Highwayman back in Ireland.
Or a Pirate.

Both get great songs!

Me? A grandaughter.

Good one Robert! 😂

Spy

Something exotic – especially seeing the vast majority of post-Neolithic ancestors would have been Farm Labourer.

Molecatcher?

Gargoyle-carver (on some Gothic cathedral)?

Mountebank?

No, I think A Gentleman of Leisure.

I went to college with a guy whose ancestor had been a horse thief back in the Old West. The authorities caught him and hanged him. Then, they found out he hadn't stolen the horse he was charged with stealing. Still a horse thief, just convicted of stealing a horse he didn't really steal.

Grelber

An unclaimed legacy to which I had a good claim.

Dal Gavan – beat me to it! One of those "Uncle I never knew about left me the keys to the vault" type things.

begat

I already have Adam and Eve in my genealogy (place of residence: Paradise), I'm not sure what could top that.

Amen

After doing years of Genealogical research, I have found direct line ancestors:
1: Two Lord Mayors of London.

2: A grandmother who was a Welsh princess that started a small civil war in England.

3: A family of upper, upper, UPPER class English, (one step away from royalty), that were doing good and fine and dandy, UNTIL..(and in every family there is that "one guy", and sure enough we had him), decided to become a Quaker, and ended up screwing it all for us. Lands, homes, castles, nobility, titles, money, position, power, ALL GONE. his wife's last name struck from records, and recorded as "Mary Bible". He coming over to the new world as an indentured servant to his brother in law.

4: Members of our family forming close friendships and association with Thomas Jefferson.

5: One relative that "may" have fought in the AWI, but we aren't positive.

6: Two of my direct descendants, (G-grandfather, and G-G-Grandfather) fighting in the Confederate Army and present at the battle of High Bridge, Cumberland Church, and Farmville Station in April 1865.

7: One possible relative who was a bootlegger in W. VA, and is reported to have murdered a police officer.

8: One distant cousin (deceased for the last almost 50 years), who was the 2nd High Grand Dragon of the Virginia Chapter of the Knights of The Ku Klux Klan, and had been under investigation in the 60's and early 70's for a series of unsolved murders of blacks around a certain area of Virginia. They couldn't pin anything on him so he got away with it, if he did it. But he answered to a higher authority than the FBI.

9: Numerous bootleggers, hillbillies, back woods folks. "If you are familiar with "The Waltons", then you should know that those poor folks were richer than most of mine.

10: A grandmother that was essentially "a root woman/witch"…

11: An uncle that won a silver star, a bronze star, and 2 purple hearts in the italian campaign of WW2.

12: Another uncle that joined the Marines at 16 in WW2 to fight Japs in the Pacific rather than work in the coal mines of West Virginia.

13: My actual father who was one of the first occupation troops in Japan and whose job was to help destroy all of the remaining war equipment.

There's probably more history in my family from the New World up until 1880, but the county courthouse with all of the paper files and records, (deeds, land deeds, marriage records, etc.), burned to the ground in 1879, and 98% of it was lost, so all of that information is gone forever.

Homo Neanderthalensis

A very elderly relative for whom I am the heir who is sitting on a mountain of gold

On my Dad's side, German Americans who came over about the time of the Revolution, great-grandpa who served in the 4th Minnesota during the ACW, then uncles who served in the North Saskatchewan regiment as an infantry corporal, a bunch of his cousins including a US Army MP who served through the Italian campaign

On my Mom's side an uncle who was a WWII Spitfire pilot – and before that in the old country Cossacks, so probably best left un-explored

Alchemist

+1 etotheipi

But I'd settle for any definitive prehistoric identification. I'm a bit jealous of the people who can say that Ötzi was a direct ancestor.

My family is a monument to inertia as having gotten off the boat they settled down and said good enough. I grew up with the family house having been built in 1821 on land owned since 1796. As other family members lived nearby, I grew up knowing, in detail, where we'd been since 1757 and who came from where far earlier. We were pretty much plain vanilla folks just trying to get by according to the standards of that age.

" We were pretty much plain vanilla folks just trying to get by according to the standards of that age."

As were/are 99% of all people. I always smile when some adherent of a belief in past lives was once an Egyptian princess or a Napoleonic general but somehow never a medieval peasant with a toothache.

Ditto, our ancestors…..though a lot are related to Genghis Khan—specifically about 16 million men (roughly 0.5% of the global male population)—likely shares a direct paternal lineage with him.

If you go back far enough – 40-50 generations – its mathematically probable that you probably could find some sort of important ancestor.

My grandfather fought in resistance movements against he Nazis and then Soviets who invaded his chosen home country. Important enough for me.

My mother taught public school in Appalachia and pioneered several innovative education programs. Important enough for me.

My father personally took point leading a firefighting effort that kept a chemical plant fire from becoming a catastrophe. He spent his retirement volunteering at public schools. Important enough for me.

I could go on…

Passport legacies.

Twould be nice if my grandparents' timelines and histories had been changed a bit for passport opportunities.

Had my mother's side of the family arrived one generation later, I would be eligible for an Irish passport.

If my father's mother had gotten Canadian citizenship during the time she spent living with the Scotch side of the family in Nova Scotia, I would be eligible for a Canadian passport.

In my genealogy—

One very famous gunfighter (Doc Holliday— my third cousin on my Dad's side).

Had male ancestors on both sides of the ACW (including a Union cavalryman— the family still has his saber).

One grandfather was a Captain in the Army Corps of Engineers for the North African campaign and the invasion of Italy.
The other was an Army Flight Surgeon, stationed in China after humping up the Burma Road.

One grandmother was a pediatrician, one of the few women doctors in the US in the late ‘30s. She had to start her residency in Canada, because no US hospital would take her, despite being a graduate of Vanderbilt University Medical School. My great-grandfather, a doctor who had founded a hospital in Appalachian Kentucky, didn't want his daughter-in-law and son having to live separately insisted that the both come finish up their residencies with him. They did, and my mother was born in Kentucky, not Canada, as a result.
Later these grandparents would serve as volunteer missionary doctors to Gaza, Nigeria, and India. There are a lot of people who survived what could have been devastating medical situations because of them.

My other grandmother was originally slated to travel to Hollywood for a screen test when the Depression hit. Instead she became a teacher and oversaw drama productions with her students. She met my grandfather, a young graduate from Georgia with a degree in Forestry. He was the one who became the Engineer, and after the war returned to Georgia to eventually become the head of the Georgia State Forestry Commission, where he encouraged tree planting and the marketing of Georgia southern pine as building lumber. (If you have a house in the South built from around 1960 on, you can say "Thank you." ) He turned down an appointment in the Carter Administration to remain with his first love— the forests of Georgia.

My mother was a high school math teacher, who introduced computers into the classroom in 1980's, with Timex Sinclairs she paid for herself. She later obtained an MBA, and became CFO for my father's company. She's now retired from both roles, and is active in volunteer work in their town.

My father is a chemical engineer who invented the processes and equipment used to make modern fertilizer around the world. Thanks to his efforts, half the world's population no longer faces famine. (For the record, that's about 4 billion people.) He also developed methods used to make and safely ship and store solid rocket propellent, as well as methods to cast the propellant into the proper internal "star" shape more efficiently and with a much greater safety margin for launches. The SRBs on the Artemis II? My dad's work is in ‘em. There's also a bunch of other stuff he's done, and he's still active at it today— he's secured well over 50 patents in the US and internationally. If his latest work pans out as we expect, crop yields will be improved by upwards of 70%, while using entirely organic processes— a game changer.

So, yeah, kinda hard to top all that.

Once I found John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, then King Edward I, and from him a whole range of Kings of England, Scotland, Wales, Castile, Leon, France, Portugal, a Crusader king of Jerusalem, two or three saints, etc, I lost interest in the whole thing. After all, anyone who has an English King more recent than Ed I in their genealogy (and lots of British people do, if not most people, even if they just don't know it) has the identical set of ancestors before him.

A relative who lived in interesting times.

My 7xGF on my mother's side Was born in the Black Forest area of Germany. He shows up in Canadian records as a British soldier, possibly during the F&IW period. Married a Canadian girl and moved to Louisiana before the AWI and served in a Louisiana militia under Bernardo Galvez. May have participated in the taking of British forts under Galvez. He moved to Louisiana whn it was French, then sold to Spain, then returned to the French, and was alive when the US purchased Louisiana from France.

Found a GGG Uncle listed on a Confederate ACW roster listed as AWOL from Vicksburg on May 31, 1863.

And the grandmother of the Canadian girl he married was kidnapped by Indians and held for ransom as a child.

Apparently my surname in Old Saxon means owner of a shitcart. I stopped looking….

GGGF at 16 yo teenager joined an Illinois Infantry Regiment fought in the Red River Campaign discharged at 18.

GGGF was an immigrant from Switzerland joined the Union army as a teamster.

Fathers uncle flying a fighter (poss P-38) in China, MIA.

Great aunt was a nurse in France during WW1 after returning home she died of influenza in 1919.

Distant aunt had 16 children only 1 survived to adulthood.

A long line of super-agers would be a very nice find!

Apparently my surname in Old Saxon means owner of a shitcart. I stopped looking…

But that was a very prestigious profession!

I always smile when some adherent of a belief in past lives was once an Egyptian princess or a Napoleonic general but somehow never a medieval peasant with a toothache.

If reincarnation is real, every one of us has been a dead child thousands of times. Infant mortality was a persistent horror stalking all of humanity until the 20th C. About half of all humans ever born died before puberty was over, and the majority of the dead children were gone before they even learned to run.

Apparently my surname in Old Saxon means owner of a shitcart. I stopped looking….

I love this.

My last name indicates a heritage in coal mining. I never even saw coal until my fifties, when I asked for a lump of coal for Christmas. (I still put it out as part of the Christmas display every year. I love my lump of coal. It's even anthracite!)

An entry of 'Father unknown Mother Coreen Fenwick occupation common prostitute' in parish records kind of brings a halt to that branch.

x42

"She had a little militia boy and didn't know his name!"

YouTube link

I forgot one. Unlike the fictional Jed Bartlett of the TV Show The West Wing, I actually *am* a descendant of Josiah Bartlett, New Hampshire delegate of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. He's most famously presented in the musical 1776 as being primarily concerned with fishing rights— to which depiction my mother took great offense.