Family History?

[sciongirl]

Anyone ever try to find their family history and ancestry? I've heard of a couple sites but I didnt want to really pay until I heard someone actually using it.

 

So anyone have success doing this or of another method?

[cinergi]

My girlfriend has done this successfully and would probably be a great resource to talk to concerning that.

[Buck531]

My cousin did our family tree on Ancestry.com. She did my dads side and she has it going back to the late 1800's when they jumped on a boat and came over here from Austria I think.

[CRed05]

I got a facebook friend request from someone with the same last name randomly one day. Turns out he is friends with like everyone thats on facebook with that last name and he also has the family history and keeps it update. Interesting stuff, turns out I have royalty in my family and some relative was in jail for not paying taxes. I also dislike taxes.

[LJ]

My grandma and I (ok mainly my grandma) did it back in the mid 90's by actually going to all the record keeping places, the courthouses, ohio historical society,etc. It was pretty neat. Took us about a week once we got the leads, we drove to Toldeo Ohio, Coshocton Ohio (where my family ended up settling in the early 1800's) and all the way out to some small town outside of Harrisburg PA (where my family, Hessians, settled after the revolution)

 

I personally recommend doing it this way as it's a lot of fun.

[Snowflake]

My six time great grandfather is Daniel Boone.

[unfunnyryan]

My mom had good luck with one site, can't tell you which. It was a bigger name one I think.

 

We found we were partly related to some famous moonshine smuggler who died in a shootout.

[99ta]

checking in, I am interested in this as well.

[sciongirl]

thanks for all your input, i'll see what i can find.

[blue98ls1]

I was able to trace my family history back quite a ways. (1500's on my mothers fathers side, 1700's on my father's side) One thing that really helped me was buying some family history software and starting with what I knew. I was able to find a lot from reading obituaries, searching news paper archives, and going to some of the area's my family had lived in. What started for me as a weekend project because I was bored, ended up being months of research on each part of my family. Found some really cool stuff though. I have a lot of famous people in my family history (Lon Chaney, Georgia O'Keeffe, Bill Clinton to name a few). Ended up having a whole trunk full of information on my family. Sometimes you can even find forums for certain last names and find other people you are related to that are doing the same thing and fill in some of the gaps.

[Smokey]

If you know of any of your family going thru Ellis Island between 1905 and 1924 then you can search their archives to find some information on them.

 

I actually just got back from NYC and I went over and did this, it's kinda cool. I could see which boats my great grandfather and great grandmother (not married at the time) came over to America on and read the manifest from when they were processed into the country. Pretty neat. Both of their names were on the wall as well.

[BloodRed]

My wife was lucky and found a website of a distant relative that has been tracking it on there own website for quite a few years. They have it back to the 1600's, and there is a lot of native american's in her family history. It was great to be able to send the person some more up to date information for her living family.

[boosted98gst]

On my dads side, we found info on what dates the "smiths" settled into this area, which was early 1900's from there, we found out they migrated from indiana, after we found the town we did some more searcing and found out my dads side of the family came over during the potato famish in ireland but also was mixed with scotish. At this time my greatgrandma ( god bless her) was still alive and we ended up finding realitives still living in ireland. In 2004 our family took a vacation to ireland and went to the old smith homestead which is only a rubble foundation which dated back to late 1500's

 

In japan for my mother's side everything is documented in handwritten documentation going back on our family for 800-50 years, They look like fucking ninja scrolls weapped up in ricepaper. Usually the older ones have been copyed or treated by the family to keep them from rotting away. My family was well known samauri family that fought off mainland japan from invasion. Until up early 1900's when western culture influenced japan, then in 1942 they decided swords are no more and started flying airplanes into ships. I have 3 samarui swords that have been in the family for 600+ years, the story goes the one sword has killed over 400 men , and has shed my own familys blood. Either way my uncles pass down a lot of knowledge.

[flyinbrian]

You can do some searching for free on this government site.

 

http://archives.gov/

 

Or make it a stop while you are visiting Washington DC, (which I recommend to everyone who has not yet been there three or four times by now.)

[sprayin77]

My dad is Indian and I found out that I am part of the slapahoe tribe!!!

[boosted98gst]

and yes I was joking about the samauri lol someone pm'ed me about it, yes they do have the papers that go back that long, I think most of my family were farmers lol I was trying to sound like a sweet ninja but someone took me serious, either way do any of you guys have any sweet old old pictures of family ect? If so id like to see them.

[Tractor]

Its kinda neat how a google search can put you in the right direction. No joke I've done it to get lots of family tree info.