The Official Genealogy Thread.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

[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.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I am a direct descendant of Samuel L Smith, city attorney of Chicago in the mid-1800s and a prominent Whig Party orator. He was close friends with Henry Clay.

[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.....

[Dr. Cynic]

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.

[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.

[All Along The Watchtower]

BUMP:

My surname goes back to the region that straddles France and Germany (Lorraine, Alsace, Luxembourg). My immigrant ancestor from that line came to the United States in the mid-1800s. He arrived in NYC and made it out to the South Dakota/Iowa region before his death.

Two sons of his married two daughters from another family, and both of those men had the same first name (but different middle names! ) They had several children, including my great-grandfather (born in 1901 in South Dakota, IIRC). My great-grandfather made it out to Portland, Oregon, and married a woman from a German-Swiss family. My paternal grandfather was born there in 1934, and the rest is, as they say, (recent) history!

[ilikeverin]

So for some reason I can't quite understand, I had a couple of great-grandparents move from southwest Ohio to Medicine Hat, Alberta for about 4 years before moving to Detroit.  As it so happens, those 4 years were approximately 1914 to 1918, and the Medicine Hat Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre is showcasing a exhibit centering around Medicine Hat's contributions to World War One.  I decided, hey, if I was going to get any information about why they moved like that, the time was now.  I sent the museum an email asking them why they think my great-grandparents decided to move to Medicine Hat, given the 3000-or-so km journey (and that's today, using highways!): was there some sort of concerted effort to recruit Americans to the war effort in Medicine Hat in particular?  And, lo and behold, I actually got a reply!  It was just a "I'll look into this and get back to you in a few days", but it looks like my email was passed between a few people, and got a few lines of info as well as a "very interesting inquiry" along the way.

Gotta love Canadians and their generosity

[kcguy]

The names have been changed to protect the innocent.  (And by "innocent", I mean me.  I still use "mother's maiden name" as an identifier, and I don't feel like publishing it all over the internet.)

My Z ancestors came from the Rhine Valley, somewhere near Wittlich or Daun.  In the mid 1760's, the family answered Maria Theresa's call to settle the Turkish frontier, depopulated following a century of war.  The family initially settled in the town of Hatzfeld, which is now called Jimbolia and lies in Romania, along the border with Serbia.  The family moved westward around 1790, across the future border, and back eastward around 1880.  In 1910, when my grandmother was 16, her parents sent her to America in the company of a sister and brother-in-law.  My grandparents returned to Europe only once, for a visit in 1929.  Circa 1980, my grandmother's surviving sister and brothers emigrated from Romania to West Germany.

My K ancestors came from what is now the northern edge of the Czech Republic, just northwest of the city of Opava.  This family also emigrated south in the mid 1760's, with this family staying in the same village for more than a century.  Like my grandmother, my grandfather emigrated to the US in 1910.  It was in Philadelphia that he met my grandmother.  At the end of WWII, my grandfather's half-brother was one of the German-speaking Romanians conscripted and "deported" by the Red Army; he died en route to a Soviet labor camp.

My B ancestors are reportedly originally from Scotland, but they first appear in the 1650's in Barbados.  Around 1660, they settled in Virginia, gradually working their way west.  In the 1790's, they crossed into Tennessee.  In the 1830's, after a short stint in Illinois, this family settled in Missouri.

My H ancestors were Quakers from Cheshire, in the northwest of England.  In 1683, my immigrant ancestor was part of the first wave to settle Pennsylvania.  Around 1777, the family moved to Virginia, where my ancestor was expelled from the Friends' church.  (In addition to marrying out of the faith, he also participated in a lottery, and he served as a soldier in the Continental line.)  In 1807, the family moved to Ohio, and in 1839 to Missouri.  In 1929, my grandparents moved to Nebraska.  Around 1958, my dad moved to KC.