Ancestry

[Gonzo]

What do you know about your family ancestry?

Family Crest

My blood is French Canadian on both sides.

There were a lot of farmers in my family...

One grandfather worked at Mead Papermill and smoked until he had a cancerous lung removed. Then he smoked some more. He died when I was like one year old. I don't know much about him.


One great grandfather sold moonshine in association with Al Capone...


The following is a picture of my great great grandparents... who I assume were demigods...

[godfry n. glad]

My patronymic ancestors left the West Country of England to immigrate to Massachusetts Bay Colony as part of the 'puritans' aboard the Winthrop Fleet of 1630. I suspect 'dissenters' would be more apt, at least in the case of my family. It wasn't long before they moved west, into western Massachusetts and upper New York, then, over the generations, it was on to Ohio, then Illinois. Along the way, they married into the largely Scots and German heritage farm families who would become part of their communities. My grandfather was born in Illinois, my father in South Dakota. They both came west via Montana to the Pacific Northwest, where my grandfather died before I was born here. Westward drifters, mostly busted farmers, it sounds. Nobody particularly famous.

[erimir]

My father's side immigrated from Italy in the late 1800s. They apparently were not all from one place in Italy, as we have relatives in the north, south and middle of Italy. One of his grandmothers was French (and we think she had some Belgian ancestry).

My mom is from Sweden, and her grandfather was German, and he owned a department store (one like Harrod's, as in a single, multistory store with many departments) in downtown Stockholm. The profits from which were used to buy a 14th century castle outside Stockholm... which is now a country club unaffiliated with my family, although occasionally family events are done there, such as my uncle's 50th birthday party (50th birthdays are a big deal in Sweden). The rest of her family is Swedish.

I have Swedish citizenship through my mother, in addition to my American citizenship.

So mostly Swedish and Italian, with a little bit of German and French.

[JoeP]

Belgian? Oh dear.

My ancestry is English ... English ... English ... Shetland ... and lowland Scots.

[Miisa]

Servants and sharecroppers, mostly.

[JoeP]

I've found two of my ancestors on Wikipedia.

[erimir]

Your ancestors edit Wikipedia?

[JoeP]

Not any more they don't

[Kael]

One side of the family is primarily Irish, and I retain an Irish surname. The other side is primarily Scottish, and branches of the family still retain a Scottish surnam. There's plenty of healthy mixing with other groups, mostly English and other Europeans, on both sides.

My grandfather actually did some extensive research on the Irish side of the family. If I ever find time I would love to dig through his records and visit all the places he found over in Ireland.

From my own perusal of wikipedia, I share both first and last names with an interesting mix of people, including a British politician, a New Zealand politician, a priest, and a repeat-offender Scottish convict.

[Gonzo]

I'm related to Triple H in some distant way, sharing a surname:


and a Canadian Politician.

[Demimonde]

I found that there is an Austrailian popstar with my name give or take a letter. Too funny!

[rigorist]

My patronymic starts out the same as godfrey's, except we stalled out in New Jersey for a couple of centuries.

We are a heavily researched family and I am engaged in a very long term project to enter information from several volumes of history into a genealogy program. I just passed the 10,000 people line and I am perhaps a quarter of the way done.