I have been recently enamored with my family's history, since neither of my parents know exactly where their ancestry lies.
I was wondering, where can I find a good (preferably free) place to research my family history? Is there any way we can trace is back farther than the mid 1800s?
And of course, if not, we could talk about what little we know. I, according to my father, am mostly Polish on his side, with some East German ethnicity in there. It makes sense, because his family has been in the Midwest region for a long time, so I suspect they may have been homesteaders who immigrated here.
My Mom seems to know a little bit more about her side. Her maiden name is Whitefield, and they are primarily British with a substantial amount of Native American in them (we even have old photos of some family members who used to live on the reservations. Unfortunately, they are currently with a relative in Montana). I suspect that they have been here since some of the first settlers, as there are even areas of the American south (Chiefly a small square in Savannah, Georgia bearing the Whitefield name)with the Whitefield name, and they were likely plantation owners. My Grandfather grew up in a poor farming family in the deep South, so I deduce that maybe the family fell on hard times and lost their livelihood after the American Civil War.
Obviously I have yet to verify this, which is why I asked for a way to trace my heritage. Almost all of it is speculation so far, so take it with a grain of salt.
My brother is a big history buff, he had a lot of people do research into my ancestors;
On my mother's side, we're a military family, had members in the Coldstream Guards, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 27th Inniskiling Fusilliers. On my father's we're fugitive German nobles that fled to France in the late 1700's, even owned land near Toulouse and even further back, one of them was a Templar in the crusades, supposedly we wrote a journal entry in a cave somewhere which made it's way to England.
History is an awesome thing, I wish you well finding out your history, there is always something interesting to find.
Mine's in my backyard. Did you check there OP?
ancestry.com
A friend of the family who was an historian or something did our family tree and turns out we have a ancestors in the spanish nobility
I'm like 1/87th illegitimate royal or some shit
Fuck you guys, being royal and shit. All I know is that my moms ancestors are a bunch of gypsies. :v:
I look in the back yard.
No seriously, a couple people rated the guy above that said ancestry.com funny, but it's true. My mom and I got really big into looking for our family history, so we turned to Ancestry.com and (of course to go far back at all, we had to purchase the membership, but it was totally worth it) we found a lot of amazing things about our family that go WAY back. Like my 37th great grandfather was King Charlemagne, and I'm related to Pretty Boy Floyd (great outlaw of the early West). It's a fantastic thing, and that website is amazing. I highly recommend it.
Here in Iceland we have a website that lists every one in your ancestry up to the original settles from the year 1000s.
Also you can check how you are related to someone and shit.
Pretty neat.
Enough searching around and asking great-grandparents. Don't know if I liked finding it out or not.
[QUOTE=Zovox;37641508]Fuck you guys, being royal and shit. All I know is that my moms ancestors are a bunch of gypsies. :v:[/QUOTE]
I have irish gypsies and suspected scottish royalty :v:
I got the possibly worst sort, finnish. :v:
Looking through old photos and connecting the dots, although I've never tried ancestry.com before, is there a catch?
I'm related to Mark Twain on my father's side somehow.
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