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Is it normal to become quite obsessed with your ancestors?

(64 Posts)
WhyDidIEatThat Wed 24-Oct-18 10:55:22

Asking for a friend. But it is quite normal isn’t it?

WhyDidIEatThat Sun 28-Oct-18 18:24:58

😂 wow, super helpful!

It’s extraordinary what our ancestors could be bothered to do, I try to invoke some of their enterprise and general spirit in daily life 😀 I have to think of them as a group though because the individuals don’t always seem real or relatable from my point in time and I’m not all that fair on them. Definitely definitely a middle aged (although I’m way beyond that) thing, I feel quite keen to check out some of their places.

acivilcontract Sun 28-Oct-18 16:57:02

I moved to the US and started research, only to discover that in the 1840's ancestors moved to the same state from Scotland and then moved to Nebreska, founding a small town there. We have just come back from a trip to see it, it was very moving thinking about how long it took us to do the trip in a car knowing where we were going. Maybe it's a middle aged thing?

SwedishEdith Sun 28-Oct-18 15:59:19

Thanks. Not doing DNA but do find some people helpful at answering queries - usually along "I can confirm I can't help you" lines. grin

WhyDidIEatThat Sat 27-Oct-18 21:33:37

Lots of people on ancestry volunteer their help, if you approach your dna matches or even just randoms via ‘community’ or member support or something. People generally very keen to help. Also wiki tree seems to have a ton of stuff?

I found the whole census so it’s not exactly hidden and I found my 5x gt grandpa and his 20 slaves, that’s quite high for the district, and it made me cry. Even though I know what things were like in that place at that time. Don’t know what I was hoping for? Abraham Lincoln owned slaves his whole life.

SwedishEdith Sat 27-Oct-18 18:14:54

I'm only looking at what I find on Ancestry. Luckily, I've hit a rich seam of photos and documents from one part of my family - although not directly related ie down the cousin side. I wish someone had done all the donkeywork for me and I could find some info on my actual family.

WhyDidIEatThat Sat 27-Oct-18 17:10:56

Do they have addresses? I was looking at the first ever census of the US and it was only an index of heads of families, I found 5x gt grandfather but just his name and no info. How do you get into the actual documents?

SwedishEdith Sat 27-Oct-18 11:57:27

I'm in this phase now because I have no living relatives now who know very much. I get sidetracked by the Hoboken census records of 2nd cousins and then looking at the address on Google Earth.

WhyDidIEatThat Thu 25-Oct-18 22:07:56

Ugh, the world is definitely a better place without him in it!

Land records are my enthusiasm of the day, lots of ancestors were given land by the government in return for military service (one only got fifty acres of swamp though). I never knew that was a thing.

mateysmum Thu 25-Oct-18 21:25:01

I have a fabulous will from 1840 where the guy demanded his wife be chucked out of his house immediately on his death and the house secured, with his body in a lead lined coffin to be left in his bedroom. It was to be sneaked out in the night without anyone knowing and taken to Scotland for burial.
The executors managed to avoid most of the provisions of the will - including the one about the burial.
The "will" had to be recognised specially in court as it was never formally drawn up. The solicitor had refused to formalise it because the testator was behaving so badly towards his wife and family!
The wording of the "will" shows he was a pretty bitter and twisted old man who believed his wife had been unfaithful,but the children stood by their mother.

WhyDidIEatThat Thu 25-Oct-18 21:16:02

😀 must take a closer look at the wills ! In competitive ghoulishness I do love the death certificates (hypochondriac) although so many children dying of ear infections put me off after a while.

Worldweary Thu 25-Oct-18 12:54:53

Doing my family tree has been like watching a film but with the reels all mixed up. That is, some family stories were sort of correct but not in the time order that was passed down. I've been amazed at how some stories don't get passed on from generation to generation. I did a Masters degree many years ago which required sitting in records offices and archives for hours and days on end, sifting through dusty documents the hard way. I was happily surprised when I started my own tree to find how much was online and how much continues to be added. Scotland's People has improved its offering a great deal in the last four years with different options for sifting. It is a money pit though. If you go off in the wrong direction it's a huge amount wasted on credits. Because of the different laws in Scotland about the information that was recorded on death certificates, when you do turn one up, it's really useful. However, they didn't start recording information as early as England did, which is frustrating. Irish records are very frustrating and sparse. With around 3m deaths and an ant heap of migration within Ireland and out of it it's impossible to look further back than the 1850's unless the family was rich and well-known. Wills have been very interesting. They tell you you are on the right track and have identified the right set of people. Some of them are (goulishly) hilarious. I laughed out loud in Lancashire Records Office office as my several times great grandad demanded in his will that someone's body be dug up as he hadn't paid back a loan of £100.

WhyDidIEatThat Thu 25-Oct-18 12:22:06

Bit morbid but anyone else ever find themselves thinking about how they’ll be an ancestor one day and wondering what their descendants will infer from whatever info survives?

WhyDidIEatThat Thu 25-Oct-18 00:50:55

Butterfly 💐

The only ancestral thing that’s really properly broken my heart so far came via one of the dna circles that just popped up one day. 3rd gt grandma, Cherokee, photographed with 3rd gt grandpa in ? 1830 something. Really exciting because as far as I know it’s rarely possible to pinpoint Native American dna, it just gives massive regions. Mine says ‘north, central and south’ and colours in the whole entire continent. So it was fantastic to have a face and a name, her tribe, a list of descendants on the census roll thing etc etc but the more I read about it the worse it became. Not particularly for her, as far as I know, but other men in the family also married Cherokee women - after being so careful to keep marrying within the same families for like 200 years? I knew Cherokees were matrilineal but I didn’t know that meant women owned the houses and, crucially, the land. So those greedy fuckers, these specific individuals, who already had so much land married these women to secure more. And the women married them to escape the trail of tears, which obviously in a way that’s a better outcome. And it’s not that there’s any evidence these marriages were any worse or better than the ones before, it’s these women coming from a society of gender equality going into this system which ultimately excluded them from all power. I don’t think it sounds so bad written down like this but it feels horrible.

This is a better description:

butterfly56 Thu 25-Oct-18 00:38:55

I started my family tree not thinking for one minute there would be stories about the difficult lives they had only going back one and two generations.
People being widowed in their early 20's(the husband dying from a broken leg). Remarrying a widower whose wife had died in childbirth at 20.
My great-grandmother being age 9 when both parents died within weeks of one another and she was looked after by 2 older sisters 18 and 20 who worked as paper bag makers.

Some of the stories were really sad, and some were funny. No scandals but a few surprises.

The only thing I cannot find is my great-grandfather's birth certificate...born in 1873(death certificate give his d.o.b.). He was jewish so he could have come from anywhere and the only problem is he has a really common surname so that's a dead end.

I have found it really interesting and I feel that in a way researching their ancestry has in some way made sure they are not forgotten.

I did go to Belgium to visit the Menin Gate(2names) and Tyne CoteCemetery(1 name) where 3 great uncles aged 18, 19, 21 their names appear on the walls...there are no graves for them as their bodies were never found.

That trip had a profound effect of me and will stay with me forever flowers

WhyDidIEatThat Wed 24-Oct-18 23:47:27

Oh god I have the phone app! It’s amazing, in minutes (maybe an hour) can build massive hypothetical trees (mostly using info from trees of dna matches) placing various candidates in role of my maternal grandpa then assess the likely strength of my relationship to the match - not very scientific but one day something will fit? People are so helpful and share their private trees and photos and anecdotes. Photos are great, I’m no face ninja but even I can see a resemblance between my mum and some of those people.

That’s heartbreaking about the workhouse, whatever the moral standards of the day it’s very hard to understand that.

Loving ScotlandsPeople! Must not buy all the things I find there.

Rubberduckies Wed 24-Oct-18 23:14:27

Yep it's normal...! I first started around age 10 I reckon and every year or so I get super into it and delve into particular lines of the family. I lose hours and hours.

Don't get the ancestry phone app if you have an obsessive personality.....speaking from personal experience.

I don't tend to stay on my main family line. I like looking at whole families and what sort of families their spouses came from and who left who what in their Will. I got quite cross with a family once who had servants and loving in expensive areas London while their sister was dying in a workhouse with 2 small children. Why didn't they just help her out lol!?

I found that one of my ancestors had a baby with his wives sister. The sister died and his wife ended up bringing up this child with all her other children!!! His name was on the birth certificate as if he were her husband!

WhyDidIEatThat Wed 24-Oct-18 21:46:43

I haven’t heard of ScotlandsPeople, will check it out. Have got almost nowhere looking for my Scottish ancestors and would really like some specific places or regions to visit!

WhyDidIEatThat Wed 24-Oct-18 21:42:38

💐 marmite I’m sorry to hear your mum doesn’t want contact 💔 how long have you been deliberating over whether or not to approach your siblings?

LittleBittyKitty Wed 24-Oct-18 21:03:07

I might have found my people! ￼
I started using Ancestry and ScotlandsPeople a few years ago and became completely hooked really quickly. I found it absolutely fascinating and traced one branch of my tree back to the 16th century. For various reasons I stopped having the time to do it and left it for a couple of years and only recently have gone back to it and am completely hooked once again, but not in a 'sitting up till 2am' kinda way any more.

Loving all your stories.

MarmiteTermite Wed 24-Oct-18 21:01:01

Thank you. Unfortunately my birth mother does not appear to want contact sad. I’ve found two siblings (possibly half, possibly full) on social media and just debating what to do...

WhyDidIEatThat Wed 24-Oct-18 20:46:24

That’s so amazing Marmite! I’m really happy for you.

I thought I didn’t care much about my biological origins and was so unprepared for the rollercoaster of it all, now there’s just a kind of deep peace, having that confirmation and the connection. (Except am still on a quest to identify my mum’s dad.)

MarmiteTermite Wed 24-Oct-18 20:26:16

I’m obsessed at the moment but because I was adopted as a baby and I have managed to use Ancestry DNA to identify members of my birth family!

HuguenotJo Wed 24-Oct-18 20:23:16

Yes. Perfectly normal. grin

IsTheRainEverComingBack Wed 24-Oct-18 20:12:41

I’ve got ‘marriage records online’ at the top!

I definitely want to delve a bit further into the details of some of this stuff. I’ve discovered a family member wasn’t born in Ireland as everyone else thought - pretty conclusive, I’ve got the birth certificate and everything - but it’s made me want to find some more good detail to make up for everyone else feeling let down!

WhyDidIEatThat Wed 24-Oct-18 20:10:03

I’d kind of like to know the story behind the wooden leg myself now 🤔 some mysteries should remain unresolved though. I was So Excited when I uploaded my raw dna thing to some of the research sites and matched with various Lost Colony dna projects but 1. of all the lines of enquiry dna seems the least useful and 2. It’s so much more romantic not knowing.

Except I walk through woodland a lot which I still love but now I feel creeped out and wonder wtf might happen 🙄

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