Genealogy frustration

[Okla-homey]

So. I've been working on the old family tree. It's amusing.

Here's the thing. I'm way on back to the flippin' 16th century on my Mom's side (the Okie connection.) Kinda intersting in that I can trace from the first d00d who landed in Baltimore from Scotland around 1670, thence to Virginia, about a hunnert years later, they boogied west to Kentucky, then in about another hunnert years, onward to Indiana, and after the Silly War, sneaked down into the I.T. and parked it in Carter Co. in the heart of the Chickasaw Nation and made a living farming cotton.

On Pop's side, I'm stumped and can't get earlier than my great grandfather's immigration from Germany (Prussia, specifically Niederschlesien) in 1881. You would think those Prussian bastages, being Uber-Krauts and all, would have kept better public records. After landing in NYC, meine uhrgrossvater went straight to Winona, Minnesota where he married some Wisconsin chick, hung out for about ten years, then for some unknown reason, hauled 'em all to a suburb of Philadelphia for good where he worked as a bookkeeper in a chemical plant.

[OUinFLA]

My sister is all into that stuff. She even used a working trip to Germany and France to spend time digging around in the archives over there. Most records were kept by the church in the time periods you are refering to.

Personally, I think you both are nutz.

[Okla-homey]

My sister is all into that stuff. She even used a working trip to Germany and France to spend time digging around in the archives over there. Most records were kept by the church in the time periods you are refering to.

Personally, I think you both are nutz.

I'm not obsessed or anything. It's just fun. BTW, this Ancestry.com thingy makes it waaaay easier these days. You just plug in the names and dates you know, and the search engine bundled with the humongous data base gives you options you can choose to merge with your tree if they match up.

The cool thing is, they have PDF's of a lot of the source documents. That stuff I got on Pop's fam was derived from the 1910, 1920 and 1930 censuses. I was able to download the sheets with all the stuff hand-written in by the census taker.

Sometimes you find stuff that makes you go "hmmm". E.g., I have documented a case of first-cousin marriage around 1810 on Mom's side. Of course, they were in Kentucky then, so I guess that was pretty common. It prolly still is.

[SoonerInKCMO]

I got a bunch of information from my folks a while back about great- and great-great-grandparents and such thinking that I'd do some big search all the way back to Europe. Then I remembered that I was adopted and didn't care about ancestors all that much.

[VeeJay]

That first cousin stuff was common in rural areas. My dad said where he grew up in NE Mississippi that it wasn't uncommon for people to marry first cousins, because there just weren't a lot of available women around to marry. Fortunately for him, he moved to the big city (Jackson - whoa!) and married my mom, a city girl.

Whoever does the ancestry lookups on me in the distant future is going to be amused by the debris, legal and otherwise, I leave behind.

[Scott D]

they'll probably quit after they encounter the chapter of your life involving Lady Asshat.

[Okla-homey]

That first cousin stuff was common in rural areas. My dad said where he grew up in NE Mississippi that it wasn't uncommon for people to marry first cousins, because there just weren't a lot of available women around to marry. Fortunately for him, he moved to the big city (Jackson - whoa!) and married my mom, a city girl.

Whoever does the ancestry lookups on me in the distant future is going to be amused by the debris, legal and otherwise, I leave behind.

My daughter was born in Mississippi Co, AR but her birth certificate says Independence Co., AR -- because some gubmint moe-ron boofed it in Little Rock where it was prepared. Those counties are at opposite ends of the state. I reckon that may be a head-scratcher to some geneology researcher in a hundred years.

[Sooner Born Sooner Bred]

On my trip to SE Oklahoma over the weekend, we visited a few cemeteries. I ended up getting on Ancestry.com and traced my mom's family back to the 1600s. It's neat to look at those census documents. At the same time, it's confusing because they didn't always tell the census taker the given name of the people in the house. My great grandmother's name was Susan Emmaline, but on one census they have her listed as "Emmer."

[Scott D]

My aunt tried tracing my father's side of the family, and lo and behold...didn't get much past the generation before my grandparents....for some reason most slave owners didn't report slaves on the census or allow them to be.

[reevie]

My aunt tried tracing my father's side of the family, and lo and behold...didn't get much past the generation before my grandparents....for some reason most slave owners didn't report slaves on the census or allow them to be.

I think they just reported the number of slaves on the census.

[Okla-homey]

My aunt tried tracing my father's side of the family, and lo and behold...didn't get much past the generation before my grandparents....for some reason most slave owners didn't report slaves on the census or allow them to be.

It's unfortunate. Indeed, the pre-Silly War census dox all say, "List of Free Inhabitants of ____________County, etc."

The only reason censuses were taken was to allocate House seats.

Under the Constitution (Art 1, Sec. 2), Congressional representation was based on the free population. Each enslaved person counted at 3/5's for purposes of allocating House seats. That was a compromise during drafting. The South wanted to count all slaves which would have given them more power in Congress, but the North would'nt let that happen. They settled on the 3/5's dealio. Thus, I've encountered ante-bellum entries where the family is all named, ages given, relationship to the head of household is given, and down at the bottom of that family's entry, it will state 'three slaves' etc.

[reevie]

It's unfortunate. Indeed, the pre-Silly War census dox all say, "List of Free Inhabitants of ____________County, etc."

The only reason censuses were taken was to allocate House seats.

Under the Constitution (Art 1, Sec. 2), Congressional representation was based on the free population. Each enslaved person counted at 3/5's for purposes of allocating House seats. That was a compromise during drafting. The South wanted to count all slaves which would have given them more power in Congress, but the North would'nt let that happen. They settled on the 3/5's dealio. Thus, I've encountered ante-bellum entries where the family is all named, ages given, relationship to the head of household is given, and down at the bottom of that family's entry, it will state 'three slaves' etc.

I was going to say something like that, but forgot the exact fraction and was too lazy to look it up.

[jk the sooner fan]

homey - thats the same problem i'm having.....i only get to my gg-grandfather on the santee side of the family, but i can go wayyyyy back on the watts side

you know what would be really cool, is if the genealogy peeps created some sort of map program that read your tree, and did a little slide show to demonstrate where your families started and where they merged, etc etc

my watts line derives from captain james watts who was a tennessee volunteer that moved to missouri after the war of 1812.....they liked having babies....LOTS of them

missouri has a GREAT data base on death certificates......you can look at a majority of them as pdf files....some of the causes of death are rather interesting

[jk the sooner fan]

what i've also learned, reading those census forms, is that they didnt have a great sense of what their actual age was from one decade to the next.....

[OUinFLA]

My sis did the ancestry.com thing for several years, even went out to SLC and perused their documents in person. She had enough info that she could trace all the way back to immigration from Europe. That was when she used her trips to France and Germany to visit the townships she had uncovered and try to delve a bit further back by checking the church records. She's traced one line back into the 1300's I think.

She has visited quite a few people who are very distantly related, sharing her knowledge of connections with our families. You know, like 13th cousins or somethin.

Me..............I'd rather go fishing. Most interesting thing I feel she found was a long ago relative that was hung in North Carolina for stealing a horse, sometime in the early 1800's.

[SoonerStormchaser]

Your family tree merged on a few branches, didn't it Homey?

[critical_phil]

by some strange coincidence, i am exactly 3/5 as tall as scottD.



my SIL has done some work on my family. i guess i'm almost all irish/scotch irish; but with my deliciously dark skin tone, someone along the line didn't tell the truth to the gubmint.


as for the kissin cousin deal, i can't judge. i'd like some play with amanda beard.

[royalfan5]

Does any one on the Prussian side have the main family bible? It was very common for Prussian and German families to keep detailed sets of records in them. That's how we reconstructed most of the family history on my Mom's side.

[Flagstaffsooner]

She's traced one line back into the 1300's I think.

Just look in Olevet's high school yearbook for them.

[Shamrock]

On Pop's side, I'm stumped and can't get earlier than my great grandfather's immigration from Germany (Prussia, specifically Niederschlesien) in 1881. You would think those Prussian bastages, being Uber-Krauts and all, would have kept better public records.

My Mom has done the geneology stuff, and she said there are a lot of problems finding old records in Germany, mostly because of WWII. We bombed the crap out of 'em, and many records were lost. Maybe that's what happened in your case???