Reply to How many generations or years can you trace your ancestors?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "How many generations or years can you trace your ancestors?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Back to about 1860, give or take on different lines.  I was a history major and am a history buff so I find it just an interesting entry point into different historical periods or questions.  I’m less interested in historical battles and rulers than in things like what jobs oeople had, who did they marry, what did they eat/wear, how many kids did they have and how were they raised, etc.

I will say there is a LOT of lazy research in the genealogy world.  People assume that just because someone had a particular name or lives in a particular place that it’s a relative.  But names were really different then.  I had a relative with a really odd Italian name—never met anyone else with it except my cousins.  Turns out that it was super common in one particular little village—it means something in the dialect that was spoken at that time, although it’s unclear what.  I think it was akin to something like Gardener, so basically all the poor people from that little village who grew stuff had that last name.  
There’s a lot of examples of that.  My mom proudly found what she thought was an Irish relative in 1860–I was able to point out to ber that there were at least 5 Irish immigrants with the same name and of the same age living in the same state—and it’s not even a common irish last name.  I need to have several confirming data points before I add it to my confirmed list.  
I get irritated when people are like “oh my ancestor was a horse breeder and I’ve always like horse racing!”  That seems weird to me.   But it is something to think about aj ancestor who has 9 kids and only 3 of them lived to be adults, and to learned what they died of….really makes you appreciate modern medicine and vaccinations![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics