The Official Genealogy Thread.

[AlternateSteve90]

As my first contribution to this website, I'd like to start this thread.

I've become a genealogy nerd over this past year and a half, and you guys wouldn't believe just what I've found in my family tree. I am apparently related to Revolutionary War heroes, a famous Western trailblazer(J.M. Bozeman, the namesake of Bozeman, Mont.), several old Southern families, a couple of singers, and even a couple of Presidents, amongst others.

To get this started, I'll offer up a few surnames in my tree, and some history along with them:

Land-First arrived in New Castle, Del. in the 17th century. Most notable direct ancestor that I know of from this line was one Col. Joseph A. Land, Revolutionary War hero.
Spitznogle-Funny German name.....possibly Amish? One of my 19th century great-great-something-uncles married a cousin of Herbert Hoover.....yes, that Herbert Hoover.
Eddy-Possibly one of the most well-known of the old Yankee families that ain't the Kennedys, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, or the Roosevelts.
Holderby-Mostly ordinary, but one branch founded the little town of Carmi. Ill.
Williamson-Old Virginia family; not that famous, but they married into a few that were, and one of them was the.....
Carters-Yeah, you mighta guessed it: the same Carter family that brought us Prez Number 39, and
Dezotell-Quebecois Canadians. Can't really trace them much farther back than 1800 or so, but the one who first immigrated to the U.S., lived to be almost 100.....also may be related to "Red" Dezotell, the early baseball player. May have originally been Desautels. 
Cherry-Anglo-type Canadians. Couldn't trace them back beyond 1800. The lady who brought the line to the U.S.
might have been only about 16 or so when she came here from Welland, Ont. Married into my branch of the Eddy family.
Taylor-No direct descent from them, but they're well known for being amongst the first Mormon pioneers in the 1830s.
Harrison-Yep, I had the Harrisons, too, the ones who gave us 2 Presidents.
DuBois-Louis DuBois, one of the founders of New Paltz, N.Y. There is some research that strongly indicates he may be an ancestor of the famous African-American activist, W.E.B. DuBois.
Bozeman-Dutch, probably. Lots of them apparently in Ala. and Miss.
Rodgers-Jimmie Rodgers, the early country star, is also in my tree.

Okay, there we are. Can't wait to hear your discoveries as well.....

[AlternateSteve90]

Holderby-Mostly ordinary, but one branch founded the little town of Carmi. Ill.

I see nothing "ordinary" about a family that helped build a town that my great-great-great grandparents settled in in the 1860s   (Okay, well, they mostly lived in Enfield and Norris City, but a few relatives moved to Carmi.)

I think I'm the only forumnite who's aware of another forumnite writing a thesis about a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa.  (Which I still need to read the intro chapter of!)

Very interesting. In addition to New Paltz, N.Y., and Carmi., Ill.,  I may also have some connections to the founding of Maquoketa, Iowa, Scituate, Mass., and even perhaps.....wait for it......New York City(Wolphert Gerritse).

[AlternateSteve90]

My maternal family all came over about a hundred years ago and has been mostly based in the Springfield, Massachusetts area (and, lately, Cape Cod) ever since. We're from both Northern and Southern Italy and a few different parts of the Russian Empire, with both Litvak Jews and Gentiles (Great Russian, Polish, possibly Turkic if you go back far enough) in our ancestry. We do know through tracing the etymology of a surname that the Litvak Jews came from a place called Turau, on the Pripyat in what is now southern Belarus about as far west of Homiel as it is south of Minsk. Some of the Mezzogiorno blood might or might not have been noble (there's a bit of French and Corsican in that strain too) but the Northern Italian is unambiguously not.

My father's side I know less about, save that it includes both Protestants and Catholics from both Ireland and Scotland. (Currently the family on that side is Catholic.) A great-grandfather was a Knight of the Order of St Gregory the Great and knew Nancy Pelosi's father somehow.

I've got a fair amount of Irish in me, so there's a good possibility of some Catholics in there, though most are/were Protestant, as far as I know.

[AlternateSteve90]

We have a book on this that a great Uncle wrote about ten years ago, but it only focuses on my mom’s side. I do know that I am descended from the Compton family, and one of my ancestor’s brothers was the second Prime Minister of the UK.

Were they, by any chance, the namesake of Compton, Calif.? Or was that another, unrelated Compton?

Also, I also descend from another great Virginia family, the Estes'.....who may have originally been of Italian descent originally, if some sources are correct(and it would seem so from my reading).....though whether or not they are related to the d'Este noble family remains hotly contested(though I lean towards no).

[AlternateSteve90]

@badgate: Think I had a couple of Yankee deacons in my tree as well.....

Well, if you thought the DuBois connection was interesting.....I think this may also be the same DuBois family from which W.E.B. DuBois, the great African-American Civil Rights leader was born into. If my research is indeed correct, then this would be the most interesting milestone yet, in my book.

[AlternateSteve90]

I'll have more on the others if anyone's interested in reading it. I know there's a small market for it, most likely, but I also have pictures if anyone would like to see them. I've been at work on this since 2011.

Definitely. Might the Voglers have been German, originally, btw? My Estes family came to England as merchants originally, and from what I know, there were at least a few merchants & people in similar trades who regularly lived in or around the port cities, like Norwich in East Anglia, Portsmouth, Plymouth, etc.

[AlternateSteve90]

Good stuff. I think I might have a few pictures received on my Ancestry.com account.....I'll see if I can access any of them.

[AlternateSteve90]

I don't know much about my genealogy (where they came from & settled, etc.), but I do know a little about my ancestors.  They primarily were Scottish and orange Irish, with a little Pennsylvania Dutch thrown in.  A number of my Irish ancestors migrated to Canada during the Potato Famine, and my great-grandfather (who was descended from them) came to America alone with his brother at the age of seven (with sheltering along the way.)  My great-great grandmother and her family were from Orkney (in Scotland), and her father was a sea captain there (we still have his chair in our house.)  I believe they came through Ellis Island, because her name is included among the various immigrants listed at the base of the Statue of Liberty.  Her family settled in Omer, Michigan, which is near one of the prisons where the federal government considered deporting some of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  I am also distantly related to Neil Armstrong through my great-grandmother.  (I believe one of her ancestors was also a Mennonite deacon.)  Her family primarily settled in and around Lima, Ohio, but she also spent a few years of her childhood in Iowa.  Much of her family later located to Florida, and a lot of them still live there.

My pop says there's some Amish in his family, too.

[AlternateSteve90]

I don't know much about my genealogy (where they came from & settled, etc.), but I do know a little about my ancestors.  They primarily were Scottish and orange Irish, with a little Pennsylvania Dutch thrown in.  A number of my Irish ancestors migrated to Canada during the Potato Famine, and my great-grandfather (who was descended from them) came to America alone with his brother at the age of seven (with sheltering along the way.)  My great-great grandmother and her family were from Orkney (in Scotland), and her father was a sea captain there (we still have his chair in our house.)  I believe they came through Ellis Island, because her name is included among the various immigrants listed at the base of the Statue of Liberty.  Her family settled in Omer, Michigan, which is near one of the prisons where the federal government considered deporting some of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  I am also distantly related to Neil Armstrong through my great-grandmother.  (I believe one of her ancestors was also a Mennonite deacon.)  Her family primarily settled in and around Lima, Ohio, but she also spent a few years of her childhood in Iowa.  Much of her family later located to Florida, and a lot of them still live there.

My pop says there's some Amish in his family, too.

I don't know that they were Amish, but they were Mennonite.  There are a wide variety of Mennonite sects, and Amish are just one of them.

True, true. I might possibly have a few Mennonites on my mother's side as well, as there are a fair number of Germans in there, and I know of at least one direct ancestor who lived in close proximity to what is often considered the heart of Amish Country(referring to Lancaster Co., Pa.).

[AlternateSteve90]

to John Nance Garner, Vice-President of the U.S., through another family line that was, until recently, hard to track down. I don't know if it'll pan out, but I'll let you fellas know ASAP.

[AlternateSteve90]

     There are three main branches in my family:

Martin - from London, England. Likely Anglo-Irish, being practicing Catholics. Little else known.

Drexler - Swiss German from Luzern. Curiously, the name is far rarer in Switzerland today than it is in Germany or Austria. Heinrich is also a surname present in that side of the family.

Quintas - Galego Spanish from Santiago de Compostela. Bello and Carballo are also names in that branch. Some research suggests that Quintas and Carballo might be connections to nobility.

     It is extremely difficult to trace any of these branches further than three generations back. I'll probably have to write priests to find anything out.

At least one of my lines was from London as well; the Land family first immigrated to America from the Westminster area, I believe, or so my research tells me.....

[AlternateSteve90]

*bumping* for great justice.....

Also, for those interested, I'm also related to Alfred Mossman Landon, the Kansas governor who ran for President in '36.....cool stuff.

[AlternateSteve90]

Cool, then. I myself have a colonial governor of North Carolina in my own tree, somewhere; not sure which side of the family he's on, though.

[AlternateSteve90]

I also recently discovered a few Italian-Americans relatively close to my particular line: the lady who joined was named Angelina Petta, and born in Ft. Worth, TX; she married Alfred Kubitz, another Ft. Worth native, who was partly descended from old Southern stock, part of whose heritage went straight back to one of my 3rd-great-great-uncles(a guy named Lemuel Land, from S.C.). I dunno if Mrs. Petta or Mr. Kubitz were anything but ordinary citizens, but I have a genealogy paper from the '80s that went into Mr. Kubitz's mother's family(the Dockerys, for anyone interested), and they sure were interesting people from the sounds of it. And some of their descendants may still live in Texas.

[AlternateSteve90]

Also, I have been in contact with a cousin in Alabama who might be able to help me expand, and I mean REALLY expand, a particular branch of my family tree. This is awesome.....=)

[AlternateSteve90]

Also, I have been in contact with a cousin in Alabama who might be able to help me expand, and I mean REALLY expand, a particular branch of my family tree. This is awesome.....=)

Update: we exchanged our tree info on Ancestry earlier this week. Tree's smaller than I thought it was but it's still got some *really* interesting tidbits to it: I recently just found that I have apparently some distant cousins in Louisiana that are of Spanish(Canarian?) heritage.....one of the families is the Perezes; though this one, unfortunately, might have been the same one that gave the world none other than Leander H., perhaps the nastiest of the Pelican State Dixiecrats(haven't quite been able to confirm that just yet, though. I'll let you know sometime, though.).

[AlternateSteve90]

Surprised how quiet it's been here lately.....

[AlternateSteve90]

Update on something I've just found out. This fella here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_the_Dane

He's my 33rd great-grandfather according to ancestry, we're connected through the Beaumont line. Roger de Beaumont (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_de_Beaumont), an adviser to William the Conqueror is my 29th great-grandfather. Frankly, the number of families to go through in order to get there has been a pain in the ass, but a very worthwhile one.

I myself had thought I might possibly be a descendant of a few obscure Breton dukes at one point; however, though, as it turns out, that particular family line may not actually have been one of my direct lines(they were the Fitches from New England, btw, if anyone was curious).

@Rep Small: I might possibly be related to Senator Boozman in Arkansas myself; though how, exactly, I'm not at all sure. He certainly does share a family name with me though, just with a different spelling.