Your Family History

[Esotera]

How far back can you trace it? Is there anything particularly noteworthy that your ancestors (however recent) did, or that you feel proud of? Was your great-great-grandfather an Italian assassin with a penchant for graciously endowed bookstore owners?

A generalish discussion I guess, on how important family is to you, what you do know, and what you'd like to know. Also any advice on tracing family trees would be much appreciated, as I'm about to attempt to do this for my family, hopefully as far back as a few hundred years.

Spoiler: Semper Fidelis

(Always faithful)

I don't know that much about my family, other than my surname has gained a bit of notoriety as a word (to form a lynch mob) and I have many extended German and Irish relations. We have a lot of naturally brilliant swimmers & athletes in general, and also a few policemen/armed forces personnel. Nothing that interesting that I know of yet unfortunately.

Also if you know your family motto, post it along with its meaning (spoilered out), that way it can be a bit of a game, and we can also see how many families share the same motto. Mine should be relatively easy...

 

[Esotera]

One of my ancestors saved the King of Sweden mid-battle long, long ago and was made a knight for his heroic actions.

That's awesome, how do you know the history back that far? You may have to elaborate on that since it sounds like a really interesting tale.

Other ancestors include Greta Garbo,
The King of Sweden (cant remeber if it was the ones before or after they switched bloodline, I.e. not shure if I have any bonds with the current king...)

Your bloodline is also royalty? Wow, I wish mine was that epic.

 

[JoJo]

Mostly farmers from Southern England and a few immigrants from other nearby nations, the only point of interest in my family history is that my great-great-grandfather and his wife were "interred" by the British government during WW1 because they were German immigrants who had arrived only a few years before.

In fact I suppose there sort of is an interesting upwards trends over the last hundred years at-least where each generation has had better education and jobs, go back to Victorian times and most of my known ancestors were servants or farm labourers, around the early 20th century they generally owned small shops, my grandparents worked in low-level office or technical jobs but couldn't afford university, my parents were the first in both family's to go to university and have proper professional jobs. My generation's still too early to tell whether the trend will continue yet but I suppose it's a classic tale of the "rise of the middle class" in Western society.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Don't know much about my family's history... both sides of my family are from Guangdong, China and that's pretty much it...

However, I know that my maternal grandfather was a merchant sailor. And, I know that my paternal ancestors were wealthy landowners in Hong Kong, only my old man's paternal uncles gambled the family fortune away, and apparently his paternal grandmother was a domineering *****. He's understandably rather reticent about his childhood and background... :/

 

[Esotera]

One of my relatives made a SHIT-TON of family reaserach...

Did he pass on any tips? I'm planning to do the same over a relatively long time frame.

In fact I suppose there sort of is an interesting upwards trends over the last hundred years at-least where each generation has had better education and jobs, go back to Victorian times and most of my known ancestors were servants or farm labourers, around the early 20th century they generally owned small shops, my grandparents worked in low-level office or technical jobs but couldn't afford university, my parents were the first in both family's to go to university and have proper professional jobs. My generation's still too early to tell whether the trend will continue yet but I suppose it's a classic tale of the "rise of the middle class" in Western society.

I suppose there's a much greater emphasis on education which we almost take for granted these days. There's a similar story as yours with my grandparents/parents.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

My dad has an old service revolver one of my ancestors used in the Boer war, it's a .455, an absolute beast of a thing, just a big-ass barbaric lump of metal, really crude and brutal, but that gives it it's own perverse beauty.
You can see that it is an instrument made to kill men, and it's design doesn't try to hide it under flowery engravings. It's just 100% functional death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webley_Revolver

We also had an ancestor who flew bombing runs in the second world war, I saw his flight records, and he seemed to spend most of his time above Dortmund, there were also a lot of 'classified' locations, with the dates beside them. I should really try and get a hold of that book again and cross reference all the classified dates with historical records of bombings on that night, see if he was in anything awesome.

 

[Foxpack1]

2 family members 'of note'

1) My Grandmother's cousin I think founded Dixons.
2) One of my great grandfather's was the youngest ever doctor or surgeon in the British Army. Not sure if the record's been broken.

 

[Sealpower]

Lumberjacks, farmers and the occasional poacher...

Nothing to see here, move along.

And that's my family history, atleast since 1830. Before that, who knows?

 

[konor77]

One side of my family is insanely old. I can go back about 400 or so years. That side of the family was vaugly associated with William of orange(an english/dutch king) but I'm unsure if there's an actual blood link there. The family's motto translated as be not over-wise. My grandad has a signet ring from the 1700's. One of my great,great.......great uncles was chancellor exchecker for Ireland in the early 1800's. I'm from one of the less favoured branches of the family so the only cool thing I'll inherit is a 100(or there abouts) year old leather jacket.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Not very far, I don't even know who my paternal grandfather was. I have a cousin on my mom's side who has traced the family history back a few hundred years, but I haven't seen that info. All I know is my family is Pennsylvania Dutch and they came from somewhere in the Rhineland.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

My grandfather participated in the Hungarian revolution, escaped to the US with some of his family and wife after learning that he and many of his friends were going to be killed, then wound up working on space shuttles and earning top secret airforce clearance despite never being part of the military and still having family living in a communist country. I love my papa, he truly lived an extraordinary and inspiring life. Some day I'm going to do some kind of historical fiction on the Hungarian revolution, possibly a fantastic or sci-fi parallel.

 

[Gaiseric]

My knowledge of my family history ends with my grandparents and I don't have much detail on them other than my fraternal grandfather was in the Army in WW2 and my maternal grandfather was in the USMC in Korea. I'd love to know more, but for whatever reason none of my family is very close(at least the family members I know of anyway) and as a result I don't have much to go on.

 

[PimpHandofGod]

My great grandfather was friends with Elie Wiesel and my great-great-great-great grandfather was an indian chief. Also my sisters uncle was a writer, Ambrose Bierce.

 

[SirDeadly]

The only interesting thing about my family hasn't even been confirmed, it's just been a tale passed down through generations. Apparently Captain Cook is a distant grandfather of mine. Many of the guys in my family have the middle name James, including myself, so it could be possible. I really want to track my family history and find out though.

 

[mrhappy1489]

I'm not sure which great gradfather(by that I mean I have no idea how far back it goes) was a lieutenant Governor of Launceston in Tasmania, not sure if that means he was a big shot or some small guy. The rest of my family are fairly uninteresting, historically I mean, one was a medic in WWII for Australia, completely German and suffered severe trauma. Another are Jewish emigrants from lord knows were and the family she married into (my Great Grandmother was from this family) were successful land owners in central Queensland, they make ten's of millions or so I'm told. The final one I can think of were a working class family from Blackpool who emigrated to Australia sometime after the first world war or between 20's 30's, they're not very specific on the details.

 

[crazyfoxdemon]

My great grandfather on my father's side came to the USA as an illegal immigrant. He got to the USA (From Poland) by stowing away on a banana boat.

My grandfather on my father's side was a test pilot for the Navy.

My grandfather on my mother's side worked as a code breaker in WW2.