Have you ever thought of drawing a genealogy table?

[Pamela]

Hello to everybody

Have you ever thought of drawing a genealogy table(family tree) ? I know it’s tough to gather all the required material but, nevertheless, quite interesting. Let me tell you the story that to some extent illustrates how important is sometimes to know our ancestors.

This is the story, told by X , a historian, who spent 7 years in India studying the life of the tribe, settled down among the mountains and jungle. Once during the conversation with the female representative of the tribe, Taisinpuf, X asked her to tell something about her kinsfolk . The woman told about all her relatives up to the seventh generation to the minutest detail. When it was up to X to tell about her relatives,she(X) was only able to tell few things about her aunt, uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers within the five minutes, without providing any further information about her distant relatives.Taisinpuf got shocked and could do nothing but stare blankly at her interlocutress. Then happened something inexplicable. The attitude towards her had suddenly changed. She was placed in a single room, had a strict day regimen: the whole tribe looked after her, she had a good feed, regularly was taken for a stroll and was under the constant guard. It was disseminated through hearsay that X turned out to be mentally retarded. It was totally incomprehensible to them how sober-minded person happened to know nothing about her relatives up to the seventh generation.

To cut a long story short, when X came back to her homeland, she took a great deal of trouble over her research afterwards, gathering all the information about her relatives and had been rewarded. As a result of her assiduous work, she published a two-volume book about all her relatives up to the 12 generation and presented one copy to Taisinpuf.

[NinaZara]

Great story, I enjoyed it.

Nina

BTW, who is X?

[Pamela]

Hi Nina

I forgot the forename of the woman and decided to give her a name X

[NinaZara]

... ... I take it this is a true story then?

[Pamela]

[Yankee]

Hi Pamela

A lot of people in the US are interested in genealogy. Part of my family is descended from German immigrants (my mother's father's grandparents). I was able to locate some distant relatives in Germany and Holland while I was living in Germany. My mother's mother was born in Surrey, England. On my father's side of the family, we've been able to follow the family tree back to a 19th century US President. Now, since there is usually plenty of information about US presidents available, we were then able to trace the family back to one of the original Pilgrims who arrived from England in 1620 on board the Mayflower -- and also know that he was born in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire in 1566.

Amy

[Aereal]

Good story

I thought about making a tree, but ended up only with a mental picture as far as it could go. But the great idea is to create a global website where everyone will build up his own tree. Then, many interesting things may happen on the intersections
do you know if such stuff already exists?
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[Aereal]

ugh... it's always like that - you just get an idea, and someone else has already realized it
http://www.eurekatree.com/
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my game is fair play

[Jan]

Hi,
As far as I have reached in the subject was a moment when I discover the fact of being German instead of Polish. And because many papers were missing and family name change at least once in some strange way( my grandfather was speaking quite good Yiddish also Russian German and I hope some Polish) I get suspicioned that maybe it means I may be a Jew.
I don't know really what is worse , for Polish nationalist a fact to be German was humiliating enough not to mention any Jews options.
I have found also a lot of Russians or Belorussians connections what upset me totally.
Well as You see some countries are very bad places to dig in the past.
We have here twin brothers in charge of running the state business and it seems to be funny joking about this but it is "a bit true" when people are saying that one of them for sure has to be Jew.
Tracing the past is amazing but why not to go instead of years back , hundred thousands years back there we see that we were all together very ,very ,close.

And for example, to reach a moment in the history when language was only one for everybody.
The old prehistoric pre,pre -Esperanto.

Jan

[Prezbucky]

Most of the "famous" ancestors of my sister and I are on my dad's side -- more exactly, the ancestors of my paternal grandmother... who has Wm the Conqueror, Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Rolf the Ganger, Hugh Capet, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Robert the Bruce (etc.) in her family tree.

There're also a bunch of guys named Guido and a woman named Dangereuse de l'Isle Bouchard or something like that.

Some other cool names are:
- Unuisticc of the Picts
- Llywyllyn the Great (lol, no vowels, unless you count the Ys)
- Wihtgils the Jute (those old norse/northern germanic names are awesome)
- Charles "The Hammer" Martel (could have had a great porn career)
- St. Margaret "the Exile" Atheling
- Robert I (or II) "The Devil"
- Ragnwald Ragnwaldsson (one of the early Normans right before they moved to France, or something like that. That name is awesome.)

Aside from them, we know the following:

Mom's side -- Good and Bauer (English and German -- or probably pretty much just Northern Germanic/Saxon, if you go back far enough)

Dad's dad -- Roughly 40% German, 40% English, 20% Welsh

The first person to land in America with my surname was Thomas Safford (which is my name) back in about 1630. They (or he) landed or settled at Ipswich, Mass (I don't know if he landed there since I don't know if it's on the Mass coast. hehe).
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Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Conchita]

[Yankee]

[Rosalisa]

Hi Pamela,

[Pamela]

Hi Rosalisa,
I am in the process of writing a genealogy. I know it will take me at least two or three years as there is much information to be gathered. I was glad to learn that there are at least two of my distant relatives who became the heroes during the Second World War!

P.S. Happy Easter!!!

[Rosalisa]

Hi Pamela,

That sounds great. You are going to discover the exciting things about your family.
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