ancestry.com

[Sheldonrs]

I can trace my family history back three thousand years. We were in Egypt, in the construction business.

[42_42_42]

My grandfather was born in 1898 in California...but HIS father was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England. So now I know where in in England my family came from. Except I don't know much about England in general, like where that is or what it's like. I know a lot of you, Raps included, are in the UK so does anyone live near there? What's it like, is it rural or urban or what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwickshire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_(county)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham

[Sarlon]

I'm gonna feel silly asking this....but can anyone give me a gentle shove in the right direction as to where to start finding info about my family tree?

I know my maternal great grandmother's maiden name...and I'm told shes a first generation american, her parents moving here from germany.

but its my father's side of the family I know next to nothing about besides knowing that my middle name is my paternal grandmother's maiden name.

[Linda]

I have full UK access to Ancestry and I'm happy to do lookups for anyone who wants UK census records etc.

I've always been told that my family are Welsh. I live in Wales, speak (some) Welsh and have always been Welsh Welsh Welsh.
Er, nope. Some Irish (unfortunately - not many records available as most of them were destroyed), mostly Somerset / Devon, a splash of Welsh and a bit of Jersey. No-one hugely exciting, although my GGGrandfather was a Naval veteran and I've managed to get his service records which are very interesting. His family was a seafaring merchant family.

Just be careful with familysearch / IGI as some of it is user-added and can be inaccurate. Freereg is great for parish records, and FreeBMD for official registers from 1837 onwards.

[Monica]

My dad is into genealogy ad has done a lot of research on that side of my family. My cousin, (on my mom's side) is into it, so we have that information. I know that I am part German, Swedish, Croatian, and Lithuanian. My cousin found a famous person on her mom's side (sadly not my side) this person is her 5th cousin, and is a huge pop/country star with the initial T.S. My cousin has always wondered where her curly hair came from and now she knows, lol.

[Rine]

Be careful about ancestry.com's indexing. Sometimes when you look at the original image (and always look at the original image!) what is on the "paper" is completely wrong in the index. Be careful about going by what they have listed in their indexes and always check the original image.

Another tip: buy a notebook or keep a word doc to track your sources. Sourcing is important. Write down everything and secure copies of the source when you can. Often ancestry.com and familysearch.org will list where they got their information so if you had questions and they didn't have the originals posted, you could order the microfilm.

I have traced my paternal side to 1810 definite (meaning fully sourced and accurate as much as can be) and to 1690 with taking a guess or two with some sources to back it up. The family has been in this country since at least 1723.

My maternal side was far more difficult but I've traced it to 1852 and am working on making a solid connection overseas. My g-g-g-grandmother had 19 children and only two survived to adulthood. No one in the family knew this until I uncovered it in the census records and then used death records to locate most of the children. I also learned that the family was probably involved in the Bloody Monday Louisville riots - the worst anti-immigrant violence ever to occur in the US.

One more tip I'd like to share is to look for genweb stuff...if you know the county you want to search in (for USA), then type in "xxx county genweb" and a lot of the times you can find websites with great records.

I've done extensive research out of Berks Co. PA and they have an awesome website with transciptions of wills - stuff I wouldn't find on ancestry.com.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Just found out yesterday at my Dad's family reunion, one of my cousin's wives dig some digging back on the family tree and went back 12 generations on my grandmother's family and instead of it being traced back to Native American origins (like I'd believed for years) it turns out instead her ancestors can be traced back to England.

All the way to the Mayflower to Peregrine White (who was the first child of English settlers born in the Colonies back in 1620.)

Wonder if I can get away with crashing the next Mayflower descendants' gathering?

[Rapscallion]

I've never been to Birmingham, but a good friend of mine hails from those parts from before he hit university. He confided in me once that all the best people come from Birmingham, and all the worst stay there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzb7BanTuXw if you want to hear the accent, though that's a pretty broad one and probably more from Dudley.

Rapscallion

[protege]

I'm gonna feel silly asking this....but can anyone give me a gentle shove in the right direction as to where to start finding info about my family tree?

I got lucky with mine. Very lucky, since my grandfather's mom...was a bit of a bitch. She married into the family, but didn't get along with them. As such, she wanted nothing to do with them. Back in 1980, that side of the family had the history put onto paper. My immediate family, my grandparents, and my aunt...aren't even mentioned until the very last page of the book Even now, I know very few of my dad's relatives--they never really got together.

When I started looking into my past, I started with that, and found a few other things on the web. The first thing I found, that someone had put together a page about some of the families that had come over from Norway in 1850. Looking through their data, some of the names looked familiar. These were compared with my data, and I started putting things in order. I used that data, plus other info lifted from various Norwegian immigration sites.

[telecom_goddess]

Thanks raps for the accent piece....interesting I also found out that besides Birmingham, my English relatives came from these two places as well:

Gib Menth Warwickshire

Handsworth, Staffordshire

So more places to learn about if I ever get the time to research them properly.

[Megg]

Ah, genealogy. My fascination, and frustration! I have traced my mother's father's family all the way to the 1700s, and my father's paternal line to about the same time. My mother's name comes from Germany. I discovered amongst my searching that the ancestor who came to America's name was supposedly "Bechtolsheimer" - but after digging a bit more, I realized that is not even a name! In German, the literal translation is "one who is from Bechtolsheim". This is indeed a town in Germany, and as far as I can tell, he did not change his name until he got here. I am 90% sure my ancestor came from this town, as he was a well known Mennonite, and this town was full of them. He must have used his real name on the ship, because I cannot find him anywhere on those lists either. I guess I have to go to Germany ... unless anyone here lives there!

For those of you who have Native American ancestry ... in some cases, you CAN trace your family, at least a little. The Dawes Rolls have a listing of every person officially recognized by the Federal government as being a member of one of the Five Tribes. If you can find your ancestors here, and prove your relationship to the person on the list, you can also sign up for benefits yourself, providing you meet the 1/16th requirement.