YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS

Thanks for the link melody and gardendragon! I looked my grandparents up and found them and other relatives. Wow grandma Pope was a lot older than grandpa Pope! Never knew that. Didn't know grandma had been married before either! Even found my great grandparents, I never knew their first names til now. My grandmother never spoke of her family so I have never known anything at all about the Brown family side. Some sort of family battle from what I remember my Dad saying. Now I wonder if I can get the scoop on the Honeycutte and Banther relatives. This could get very interesting.
I think ya got me hooked on this family thing. Now I am curious. That could be very dangerous. I may never leave the puter again!

Whhaaaaa......! (again.) I tried Melody's link above. Not only do I not have any relatives but now even I don't exist! (I typed in my own name to find me.)

If I find me I'll let ya'll know...I'm gonna keep searching.

Thanks GRC, I have done every search that I could find but because of his name and it being so common that it is hard to find his family. I don't have a lot of information about him because it was never discussed. I didn't find out that my step father wasn't my father until I was 40, and by that time most of the people that knew my family are either dead or to old and sick to be bothered. I know that he is dead but I still would love to see a picture of him, because I don't look like my mother or my brother's and sister's. I still keep looking and praying that maybe one day I'll run accross his family.

Its OK Horseshoe, we know where you are, and you can be my cousin if you are brave enough! LOL!

Yeah Shoe that will work. You can be kin to us all. That means that pretty daughter of yours will be related also. We just keep adding more cousins.
Hi cousin Wind. Now I have some Reeds from Alabama. Married to one of my nieces.

wow this is exciting!

I have tried to research my maiden name for years and no geneology have ever recorded it... is that weird jim???
my father was a frenchman. he died a number of years ago at 52 (to young I think).
he was sent over here during the war so that he wouldnt get hurt. I have never been able to trace our name.
Its ARTUFEL. I so would love to have family links.. it gives you a grounding doesnt it? his father died in the war.. he was a doctor on a battleship or hopital ship. his moms maiden name was zwikt.. may not be spelt right. She was german. she then married a mr wells....and they all came over here. They are all gone now.

my husbands adopted father was scottish... his surname was TOSH, havnt been able to trace that either.... they reckon that it may have been mackintosh but I doubt it.
his mother was abandoned at 6 weeks old and left on a farm so she never knew her real name but she was adopted by wilfired reid may a famous airman of canada.

so you see its hard to find some connection.
My husband REAL father was part american indian I believe and ended up in the chain gang over there for,..... is it bigamy? married too many times at once?

all very confusing dont you think?

hahah what a history!

Laura, put the hyperlink on here to the May's site...very interesting...and they can all see you and your family too. Jo

How about a few tips?

First thing, is to start with YOURSELF and work back! Nice to know you are descended from (famous person), but build those links from yourself back one generation at a time.

Second, if you do a search on the web, it is often useful to find living relatives working on the same lines as yourself. This is great fun, and avoids duplication of effort. But, you might want to trade your own line anyway, using the other person's work as CLUES; often mistakes are made (weak links).

If you have a more popular surname, try doing the search for that name, plus another related name to cut down the 'hits'.

Third, your local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) will have a Family History Center, where incredible records on microfilm maybe ordered for a nominal sum. Genealogy is a major part of their religious beliefs, which is why they collect and make available these records. No one in your family needs to have been a member of that Church, records are filmed from all Churches Christenings, Marriages, Burials, Civil records, and so on. No one will make any effort to 'convert' you, they will be most helpful with your research. It is almost impossible to do genealogy without using these records. [I am not a member, but have been using these resources for a number of years.]

Last, write down every source for every piece of information found. You will be glad later on. And find a method of filing that works for you, by surname, location, whatever...

If anyone has any questions, I am happy to help.

John

http://www.wopmay.com/PEOPLE/index.html


good idea jo...
there you go and if you scroll down yoou will see us all..


cheers
Laura X

Thanks for the hyperlink Laura. Nice picture and extra nice family.
Thanks John for all the tips. You do a very good job of explaining the how to's.

Here's another great place to find records about someone's entry into the US. http://ellisislandrecords.org/default.asp?MID=13543876960072826304&

I found records for 2 of my Grandmothers brothers there!

Thanks, Jim.

Shuttlebunny, you bring up a good point (and an excellent link!). If you come to a brick wall researching a grandparent, a way around it is to trace a brother or sister; another way to find that person's parents! I almost did not bother with the Ellis Island records you mention, as I 'knew' no one came through there, and found about a dozen relatives who came over later! Note: Ellis Island records start about 1892, rather late. Before then, many came through Castle Garden, NYC.

I found the ship my FIL came over on, but could never pull up the passenger list. I have a document he filled out that had the name of the ship, and verified that it landed at Ellis Island around that date...not the exact date he had written...thought maybe the ship docking date, and the date he got through "customs" may have varied that many days. I plan to go up to the local Latter Day Saint's Church near me and start my search there when I get time. They are connected to the main records in Salt Lake.

I think this thread has turned into "Are you my family"...like the childrens book about the little bird that asks everyone he sees "Are you my Mother?" It's getting to be very informative! Thanks! Jo

Just my luck to have the relatives I have. First, no one is interested in keeping up with the family. When I ask, they don't get through two generations before they are off on a tangent. Then throw in facts like, GreatGrandma was a Smith who married a Whitney, whose daughter, my grandmother, married a Smith. No one is sure what Whitney's name was, where or when he was born, and he died long before Social Security, so isn't in the SS records. So many of my family was just never registered anywhere. They were often born on a farm in the south, labored there and died there, with little or no formal schooling that is traceable. Even the ones I know served in various wars don't show up, probably because, for instance, Albert was only known to me as Uncle Buck, and Grandpa's name was Charlie something or something Charlie, and he was a farmer. Although I know the names of several people who have died, even the parish or county of some, they don't show up. My mother has a birth certificate from Texas, but the records don't show her at all. And, Shoe, I can't find me either! But I haven't given up. Sooner or later, I will hit the mother lode of lost hillbillies.

LOL Aimee and Shoe same here.

I have no access to my fathers sources on information and I cannot find anything beyond his father and I don't even know where he (grandfather) was born. My paternal grandmother has a dubious maiden name and she came over from Cork early last century but it would be almost impossible to trace her without the correct name.

On my mothers side there appears to be no family tree of that name on the web at all, the surnames are uncommon for both her parents.

So I'm stuck too :)

Here is a site with over 4000 ships and the passengers listed.http://istg.rootsweb.com/ I found my ancestors on one of them.

I found out that I have a cousin researching the "other" side of her family, she sent this link, said it helped her
quite a lot. BTW only found out she was my cousin a few years ago! By the time we all find our lost family it looks like everyone will be related anyway so
Have fun cousins!
http://www.ancestralfindings.com/
Darlene

Aimee, your motherlode could be the census records... the indexes are getting better, and some are searchable on CD. Your Whitney could well be found on the 1880 Census, you would have to look for the name of his wife, and/or daughter and other children, to see if the family matches up what you do know. That would give you HIS first name. There is a CD which indexes every name on the 1880 Census by country and by state, then takes you to a CD with the actual census page. Of course I am guessing as to the time frame. But, you might be able to estimate that pretty closely. The 1850 census is the first to name ALL members of the family, then 1860, 1870, 1880, (no 1890, burned) 1900, 1910, 1920 (1930 coming soon). Earlier census records only name the head of the house, other family members are indicated by a range of ages. All this information would be available at the Family History Center near you. Good luck! John

Ok,I lied,can't keep quiet here as I'm a history buff' The link GRC is wonderful,been going through the manifests this morning' Decided to find my family/dh's too and record for our children' Gonna leave them something,nothing from my folks or anyone else so this is a first for our family' I remember many names and stories growing up and know this is only the "tip of the iceberg" Good luck ya'll,love this adventure'' Sis'

Glad you liked the site Sis. Here's another link to genealogy. http://www.cyndislist.com/searchit.htm It says there is a link to 119,000 sites. I didn't check it out so I'll take their word on that.Lol
I do have some of the cd's that John mentioned if any one wants to email me I'll try to search for them. Would need to know what localities. Also the counties sometimes have the census on their web sites.
Some of the cd's I have. Land records 1790-1907 for al.ar.fl.la.mi.mn.oh.wi.
world family tree - European origin
Military records -U.S. soldiers 1784-1811
birth records U.S./ Europe 900-1880
Social Security death index 1937-1998

Here's a site for the castle hunters.http://www.castlewales.com/listings.html#Click%20on

This is so neat! I love seeing families find each other. GAredclay - maybe you need to start a "Dave's Garden Family Tree"!

I've been researching my mother-in-law's family for a couple of years now and it's always exciting when I make a breakthrough.

Because I've done most of my genealogy work on the internet I've learned to use much of the info posted online as a guideline, or starting point. I'm sure that some of you here have been victim to the fact that many people will enthusiastically post undocumented data, only to have other searchers copy the "bad" data onto still more sites and present it as fact. Obviously, nobody does this with the intention of being misleading, but the results can certainly cause a mess!

So be careful with what you find on line - even the LDS' FamilySearch site is rife with misinformation.

Amaryllisgal, you bring up another good point, the information on FamilySearch is 'as submitted' by the contributors. While I have found many facts that were well-researched others were totally inaccurate... you still need to go back to the original sources, and double check everything. Another good reason to document every item you record, you will eventually be called upon by someone to 'prove' why you are right and they are wrong.

Another Internet benefit is the use of volunteer look-ups; people from the counties of interest who have resources which they will check for you, free.

I'm so lame I can't even find my birth father. Know where he grew up and full name but that's all. I've searched all those sites and don't find anything. Hard to go on with nothing.

Hmm...Im Scot-Irish mostly...have a bit of Cherokee Indian, German, a small amount of English, and French. Wonder what my chances are of being related to someone here are...:-)
Kelly

well, you sound just like me, want to claim it? LOL!!!! I do have quite a bit of Cherokee though, more than just a bit. Swap those first two and we'll be family:)

HAHA TiG.....ok, we are family.....Remember the song We are Family>? my my my sisters and me.....Sister Sledge......hehehe.
Kelly

tiG and Kelly there is a web site that I ran across once that helps you find ancesors from Indians. I had it saved to my favorites and lost my harddrive before I used it and I haven't been able to find the site since. I also have Indian in me on my mothers side of the family. My mothers grandmother was full blood cherokee. My sister shows more of the traits than I do. She has (had) jet black hair.

oh Kelly, now that will be in my head all day!!! At least it's better than which ever kiddie song I was singing all day yesterday:)

hume castle-part of my tree!
http://websearch.cs.com/cs/results/cssearch-frameset.adp?type=I&first=1&dfirst=1&sTerm=hume%20castle&type=I&brand=CSI&tabs=Y&serviceType=CServe&uType=CS2K&dateRange=0&channel=&gfirst=0&hit_url=http%3a%2f%2fhomepages%2erootsweb%2ecom%2f%7ehume&rUrl=http%3a%2f%2fhomepages%2erootsweb%2ecom%2f%7ehume&title=Hume%20Family%20Home%20Page%20%2d%20Hume%2c%20Home%2c%20de%20Hume%2c%20de%20Home%2c%20Humes

Awesome site.

tiG, it is different looking for a living person... (assuming he is?) I guess you've tried the 'white pages' searches on the computer? Did you want to find 'him', or were you more interested in tracing back to his parents, and farther back?

tiG, another good point you raise is which lines might adopted (?) childen trace. Usually one does his bloodline, however, I feel that the adoptive parent is the one who raised and molded the child, acting from his own background. So, the person an adoptive child becomes might have much more to do with the personalities and ideals of the person who actually raised him. These influences exerted on the child by the adoptive parent, came from the generation before, and so on. Just a thought... Love, John

don't know if he's living or not. I've searched white pages for several years. Don't want to find him, but would love to trace my heritage, very strong Cherokee Indian roots. I met my grandmother years ago, but don't have her name or anything to go on but his name and where he lived years ago.

Hey, isn't it just like John to take credit for this?

My grandparents, on both sides, came from eastern Europe. Their names were changed by immigration officials. They didn't share much about themselves and barely spoke English. Not even sure what year they arrived here. It's been so hard finding out anything. It's nice that so many of you are able to trace your lineage.

zeb??? Anyway, Genealogy was my big obsession before getting back into gardening. Started to feel overwhelmed by all the information coming in that needed filing and writing up, drowning in paperwork...There is a wealth of information out there for all of you. When I started, I felt like, well, if Grandmother didn't write it down, it is lost forever...but there are records you won't believe.

zeb, your grandparents were probably living in the US in 1900 or 1920? There are SOUNDEX (indexed by sound) records to those Census records by state. So, even if spellings changed, this will help you locate them on the Census. Which will tell you their age, where born, when they came to US, if naturalized, and so on, depending on year.

One item about Indian ancestry: it was fashionable around the turn of the century (1900, not 2000) to claim Indian ancestry, among other reasons for the land grants given at that time. My father was so pround of his Indian ancestors, but research proved his grandmother to have been of PA Dutch (German) ancestry. Going back to HER grandmother, however, finds one obscure reference to being an Indian. There is usually a kernal of truth in the family traditions... John

thanks John, but my great-grandmother was full blooded Cherokee. My mother used to have it all written down, but in a fit of anger destroyed it years ago. I've met my grandmother, brother and father. Not too much doubt.

tiG and Kelly, I have the same bloodlines, according to family lore. Hi, cuz. But about those Indians, my great-grandmother was half Indian, and it showed in her facial structure and her hair. No one wrote anything down, no birth records, no school records, and we have no clue as to where she was born or married. Her husband might have been born in Michigan, but might not. So her entire history is lost because she was a Smith whose father's name seems to have vanished. There are absolutely no records of her except where she received a pension, based on information (not easily or freely available) given by her daughter, my gm, without any proof, and her death, which is just a repeat of the other info. If I had the money to go in person to various state, county and parish offices, I could probably find something, because she had five children, all now deceased. But most of this information hasn't been put on the web. I tried sending letters asking for information, at considerable expense when some office required notarized proof of "need to know". Mostly, that was fruitless, either yielding no response or a "sorry, nothing on file" reply. There is some question as to her husband's given name, as he seemed to be called Jack, John, Johnathan, Jonathan, Jefferson, James and Jay in various records or letters. No combination of those is on record with SS, as he was dead before that was around. I finally located some folks in Alabama, quite by accident, who might have been distant kin through him, who knew nothing of his life, but lost all info when that dinosaur computer crashed. The info I gleaned from a personal web site, which included photos, indicated Grandpa's last name might have been dropped by an ancestor who had three given names, upon arriving in New Orleans or Mobile, and the third given name became the surname. Under that name he owned property in several Ala. cities, for a number of years, then dropped out of sight. He was from a family engaged in building and selling ships in the Cayman Islands, but I have never been able to pursue that thread because of the name discrepancy. And I don't know if it's even the right thread to pursue. Meanwhile, Grandma was like so many women of her generation, she didn't exist except as Mrs., somebody's wife, with no voting records, no property, no schooling beyond a simple one room country school long ago lost in the mists of time. I am rather certain she never held a job outside home. It's Grandma I want to trace, she being my all time favorite relative, but I have gone down many other paths in the past 5+ years to find any route to her history. Sending for records, when the offices now charge upwards of $20 for each document, isn't possible, especially when I might request hundreds before I got the right one. I have certainly gone to hundreds of web sites in the search. I believe my family is just not interested enough to have built the data bases for research. I would like to do it for my children, but insist that it be accurate. Trying all possibilities I can think of, I have queried far and wide. Without records on file, it boils down to mission: impossible. I might be able to go to cemeteries and take rubbings, if I knew where to go, or read old newspapers, if I knew which ones to read. This needle is tiny and the haystack is huge.

tiG, are you possibly on the Indian rolls? I'm not even close to an expert, but living in Oklahoma for 15 years did aquaint me with a few things, namely that (as John pointed out), at one time it was in fashion to trace your Native American ancestry.

Now I have a question for some of ya'll - living in Oklahoma, I met a lot of people who were very proud of their heritage, even though they were maybe 1/64th Native American. My MIL and the maternal side of her family are obviously Cherokee (the eye and hair color has changed, but you can't miss the beautiful cheekbones and noses.) But it's something that NOBODY in her family talks about. I wondered if the taboo goes back to the Trail of Tears? Anybody else know why it might be such an off-limits subject? (Or is it just something peculiar to my family?)

And, here's a real dumb question (I obviously dozed during some of my history classes) since the Cherokees were driven out of Tennessee and the surrounding areas, how did they get re-established in this area (if you go up around Cherokee NC, there are a lot of Native Americans who have lived there a looong time.) Did they somehow escape the forced march, or did they migrate back later on? (Sorry to shift the thread temporarily, but since there are some experts on here I thought I'd take advantage of having ya'll gathered together...)

Vols, I have often pondered these questions. Very little was taught about this history when I was in school, and it was not heroic to claim Indian or Creole or French blood in my area. Everyone wanted to be English, Irish, or Scotch. Some members of my family actually ignored the other lines and pursued only the Scottish and English. Let's see a thread about this?

Aimee, I'm claiming you as a cuz!!!!!!! how do I find the Indian rolls??