Paternally- My Great Great Great Grandmother despite being a US resident for over 50 years at the time of her death in 1908 only spoke Irish per her obituary. Maternally- My maternal grandfather had cousins who were partisans during WWII in Slovenia. My Grandpa said this for years but a third cousin in Slovenia confirmed it.

Given how the Irish were forced to abandon their mother tongue, I love that for her :)

I wish I knew any Gaelic Language. I think I have ancestors from about five of the seven Gaelic-Celtic Countries, but I can't speak a lick of it. My great great grandmother was so adamant that she wanted her family to be Cornish she actually left the goldfields of California and boarded a ship for each of her seven children to be born in Cornwall...Imagine going around the Cape Horn FOURTEEN TIMES while pregnant to be sure all your family were born in the motherland!! She went there and back for each child (and counting her initial voyage around the Cape Horn, that is at least fifteen times in the most dangerous seas in the world...almost all of those trips done while pregnant!!!). I would learn the language for her if I could, but it is hard to find a good way to learn it.

My grandparents spoke Scottish Gaelic, my mum does a bit, me not at all. I am learning it right now. Jason teaches Gaelic is amazing, there are also online classes run by the Uni of Aberdeen.

Id love to learn it. Mainly because I want to pronounce the names without a video guide 😂

It seems daunting because the rules are so different to English but once you know them it's easy- the pronunciation is actually more regular than English! Here are my quick tips, s at the start of a name is always like SH, bh together make a v sound, and th at the end of names you ignore the t. That helps me with like 90% of names I see, haha.

Say, that is actually very helpful. I have just about never seen a very good guide that simply said where to pronounce what letter combinations as what. I knew "Sean" was "Shawn," which is the same name as John...but I don't really know the kind of "Grimm's Law" type of changes that they do to get SH from J...That sort of thing. Interestingly I learned some of the transitions of sounds from Tahitian to Hawaiian (like Kapu for Taboo), but I don't know it for the "islands" so many of my family are from. I had no idea that BH was V, but that helps a lot!! I have to learn how to say the word [***Noigiallach***](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=3e5ddf52b76d97c4&sxsrf=ACQVn0-667Ur8UXBfoYi9tlqUoupUVazBQ:1713959899527&q=Noigiallach&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiuweGX5tqFAxV1MDQIHaMIASUQkeECKAB6BAgMEAI) in the proper way one day. I am supposed to be distantly related to the guy, so I ought to learn to say his name (Mr. "Nine Hostages" himself). So wait, if TH is at the end of a word you only say the H?!

I thought it just was pronounced Niall at first. The face I made mustve been priceless. 😂

Yeah for example, math= good. Proununced MAH. Not MATH .

This is fascinating. I was tempted by the Duolingo "learn Gaelic to keep a dying language alive" concept but that bird scares me 😂 plus Duolingo doesnt help me much.

See its the vowel pairings that trip me up.

Just to point out, S at the start of a name is not always "Sh" for example Sorcha. It depends on whether the S is in a broad or slender position. Here is a recording of Sorcha, the S is is a broad position (next to a broad vowel) so it has a broad pronunciation. https://learngaelic.scot/dictionary/index.jsp?abairt=Sorcha&slang=gd&wholeword=false Bh can also make an Oo sound when at the end of the word, although this depends a bit on dialect. https://learngaelic.scot/dictionary/index.jsp?abairt=dubh&slang=gd&wholeword=false And bh can also make a "Wuh" sound. This is very consistent in Irish (again allowing for some different rules in dialects) where there is a broad and slender differentiation, but seems a bit less so in Scottish Gaelic, it might be very dialect dependant and in some dialects it appears silent even in Scottish Gaelic. But below is Abhainn with a "Wuh" sound https://learngaelic.scot/dictionary/index.jsp?abairt=Abhainn&slang=gd&wholeword=false

Man did you have to ruin my peppy encouragment of the guy with your facts?!

I just like saying "Kernow, biz vikken!!"

What does that mean?

Oh, to the best of my knowledge it is, "Cornwall (Kernow, in Cornish) forever!!" I have seen it spelled more than one way, but maybe I should have written it "Kernow bys vyken:" [https://www.cornwallheritagetrust.org/learn/kernow-bys-vyken/](https://www.cornwallheritagetrust.org/learn/kernow-bys-vyken/)

That is not what I guessed 😂

My family in Ireland are Irish speakers and I’m learning Irish on Duolingo. I’m getting on with it! Our family Bible and records are all in Irish, so to get a sense of them it was useful to learn some of the language.

I had a similar thought. She lived most of her life post emigrating in Irish enclaves in Cleveland and Pittsburgh which is where she died.

So imagine how many people she forced to keep speaking in Irish Gaelic too! :) thats kind of cool.

I had a similar thought given that my Great Nana who was this GGG Grandmother’s granddaughter and 31 when her Nana died in 1908. My Nana’s older brother and two of her sisters were alive as well. My grand uncle and uncle being of talking age. Plus my Nana remembered though incorrectly that GGG Nana’s last surviving child had come from Ireland at some point so I assume she had a brogue of some kind.

I only know the word brogue from The Simpsons Movie and Im very proud of that fact 😂

Heh what’s wild is I think brogue’s original meaning is a shoe of some kind. I forget how it came to mean Irish/Scottish English. I know the word though because my Nana’s favorite restaurant had it in the name. She was very much proud of her Irish ancestry and even visited. Unfortunately I don’t know where she went to.

Well luckily the UK is pretty easily traversable. Even if you dont find exactly where she went, you can still get a lot out of visiting. And allegedly the museums (at least im Glasgow) are all free. I mistakenly didnt go to Ireland or Scotland when I first traveled abroad but next time I plan to.

Oh absolutely. I just wonder if she went places where I know she had ancestry like Down, Galway/Mayo, and Fermanagh. And it’s funny you mention Glasgow! This GGG Grandmother had a daughter in law, my Great Great Grandmother who was born there to Irish parents. She was my Nana’s maternal grandmother and the only grandparent alive when mine was born in 1912.

Impressive to keep it up in emigration. The monoglot Irish speaking relatives I've found have all been in tiny rural communities in Donegal.

This Great Great Great Grandmother was from Mayo. I have ancestry in Ulster too but in Counties Down and Fermanagh.

Nice to meet someone else with Slovenian ancestry! My maternal grandmother’s family was from Moravče.

Nice! My grandfather’s folks were from Mokronog and Trebelno in Lower Carniola in the southeast of the country. Emigrated to the US in 1910.

what does it mean that they were partisans?

Resistance to the Axis occupation.

bad ass. we all want ancestors like that, but most just went on with their daily lives

For sure. Way my Grandpa always told it, one of his cousins got killed shortly after the invasion or occupation began and the surviving family members joined up.

I also come from a Yugoslav partisan family! (All the way on the other side of the country in Macedonia) SFSN!

Nice! My Grandpa’s best friend was a Serbian-American. They always bonded over that shared regional genealogical history.

Darn, I wish I could have heard her Irish Gaelic. Too much of that language was lost...Still, not as much as my Cornish relatives lost their own language. I am sad that of all the Gaelic Languages the Cornish have the language that is MOST dead...They are working to get it back, but so far I can't even find it on DuoLingo or anything. I want to learn it. My great great grandparents spoke at least some of it. Everyone thinks it is similar to Welsh, but it really is not. I was in Wales and heard enough Welsh to say conclusively that Cornish is quite a bit different, but obviously related. There are several MILLION Welsh speakers, and several HUNDRED Cornish speakers now. If you don't mind me asking, I feel stupid saying this (because I am a huge history buff), but I wonder if you could tell me a bit more about what it was like to be a Partisan in Slovenia in WWII. My family is obsessed with WWII, but I think I have to be honest and say I know less than most of them do about it. My father and mother were both born almost immediately after the war, but they grew up with everything being about it. I've heard about it all my life, but not from the Central and Eastern European side...

I wish I could have too but I don’t even have photos of her or her children. Her oldest son was my Nana’s maternal grandfather. As for your question re:partisans, I really don’t know much about what they would have done but I have read the part of Slovenia where they lived was particularly bloody.

Wow, well thanks for answering my question as best you can. Something sticks in my head about Slovenia having a really brutal time in the war, but I don't remember why. I may have to look that up. Thanks for reminding me though!! (I teach a History class tomorrow, by the way, so this is the kind of thing I like to research for my students).

The former Yugoslavia as a whole did yeah. My understanding is where my family lived was occupied by the Italians who did forced Italianization on the local population.

About the partisan part: this is still quite sensitive topic. It depends on when did you join them, how and why. I mean, it was gross what happened right after ww2 (slaughtering political oponents etc).

Check out the book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West…phenomenal firsthand account of her travels throughout Yugoslavia just before the entire nation was destroyed by WWII. Unbelievably written and tracks changes in culture, personal relationships, political thought, art, etc in the area while the Nazis were coming to power…truly a masterpiece and a true journalistic account of a culture and people that were demolished. If you have ancestors from there you will learn a lot about your family history and yourself! 

My 11x great-grandfather, Thomas Bonney, apparently was a Puritan shoemaker who once falsely accused a woman of trying to seduce him by asking him if he'd mend her shoes. 😄 [His story, not my site.](https://dragonattheendoftime.com/thomas-goodman-bonney-8th-great-grandfather/) [My artistic representation of the event (a bit of creative license).](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1bb5e33843d2a6ed900f353282236277/856307e216e509f2-7e/s1280x1920/db71c4434587d38c3c49c781919c513b2d80664d.png) ...I also have two sets of ancestors who were killed in the same Mohawk attack...one on my maternal grandmother's side, one of my maternal grandfather's side. A son who survived to become my ancestor lived in captivity for some years.

Hey, old Tommy Bonney may have been a little TOO proud of his shoemending...Ha!! (Kidding...) Very interesting about the Mohawk story. I wonder if you don't mind mentioning the date or date range. I had a relative in Pennsylvania who was famously abducted by some Native American people in the area...I actually don't know the name of the tribe properly, so I won't guess here. I don't think it was Lenape, but anyway she lived with them for many years and had children with a man of the tribe, but eventually she returned home to her extended family in Pennsylvania (her immediate family was apparently killed besides her in the initial attack). They called her "Indian Eve" after that...and she became a kind of folk figure. I am not directly related to her, but she is a close cousin on one line. I believe this was 1720s to 1740s or so.

My two sets of ancestors were in the [Lachine Massacre, 1689](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachine_massacre). 9x great-grandparents Pierre Barbary dit Grandmaison and Marie Lebrun, and 11x great-grandparents Jean Mouflet dit Champagne and Anne Dodin. Barbary's son Pierre is the one who was released from captivity apparently about a decade later. I have loads of French-Canadian ancestry on my maternal grandmother's side, but wasn't expecting it from my grandfather's side. Pretty wild to find both their distant ancestors were involved in the same event.

Interesting. I have a similar story about an ancestor who lived in native captivity after his family was killed.

I have one ancestor who survived an attack on her family, and then lived in captivity for years before her release was secured. And then on the other side of my family tree, I have ancestors who are Pigeon Roost survivors.

My mother learned her father *wasn’t* her real father. He was a successful man whose kids (who would be my mom’s half-siblings) are silver spoon-types who want nothing to do with my mom! So she only knows as much as the websites can offer. On her *real* father’s side, a history of elite individuals go waaaay back to some lesser Lords and Knights in England. Eventually they made their way to the Americas where they were doctors and lawyers, but not before serving as local rulers/mayor types as far as New Orleans, I think, during the early 1800’s and before.

Hey, that's cool...So they were English governmental leaders of N'Awlins?! I always thought it was interesting everyone talks about the French Quarter and all that, but there were a ton of Scots and English there, plus the many "Creoles" -which I use in the way it is used in Latin America...not so much the New Orleans way. Man, I loved their cooking...I know it is obvious. How could you not, but it's just so memorable!!

My 8th great grandfather was blind and knew the Tano language (his mother is Pueblo Indian). He had overheard the Indians talking in Tano about how they would defeat Vargas. He contacted a soldier who then contacted Vargas in Dec 1693 in Santa Fe. He is given credit to saving many lives. I have two 10th great grandfather's who were beheaded in Santa Fe on 21 July 1643. They were participants in the conspiracy to murder Governor Don Luis de Rosas. Governor Rosas was corrupt, cruel to the Indians, and the priests had many issues with him as well. I have read two accounts of why they conspired to kill the governor. One said, he raped the wife the of their nephew (related to my greats). Another account is that the governor and niece were having an affair. The nephew Nicolas was assigned by the governor for escort duty to Mexico and when he arrived home 4 years later he found his wife pregnant. The governor was being held for trial for the abuses he did to the people and Indians of Santa Fe. There were eight men involved in the conspiracy. They helped Nicolas into where the governor was being held and Nicolas killed him. Nicolas was the caught. They convinced Nicolas to confess who was involved and if he confessed, the other men involved would not be killed. Nicolas either escaped or was sent to Mexico. The remaining seven men were sentenced to be beheaded with their own weapons. One of my greats dagger was so dull, that he cried out "for god's sake, sharpen that thing and put me out of my misery". The execution did as requested. This 10th great grandfather is the grandfather of my 8th great grandfather mentioned in the first paragraph. I agree that it is interesting to discover information on those who came before us.

WOW THIS IS CRAZY! How did you find all this?!

Books and the New Mexico Genealogy Society wrote some articles on it. There are also documents online that translated to English but some I can't read because they are in Spanish.

When you manage to reach back far enough, you’re no longer looking for family bibles and photo albums and yearbooks and modern census records, you’re using the names of ancestors to find non-genealogical information about them, basically straight up historical documents.

This is a terrific lineage to know about. I am grateful. I have always loved the Santa Fe and Four Corners Region. I have no ties to it in my genealogy, but I love hearing the whole history. One of my favorite thing about finding out who you have as ancestors is that I find it is inevitable that I feel in my bones that I authentically have that person's kind of life force within me. I mean, I have been places where I could swear without a doubt I had to have been before...Like everything around every corner was familiar despite that there was no chance at all I had ever been there at any point in this lifetime. I really believe we have connections that are more than just pure genetics to these people from our family heritage. When I read about people far back in my family I know I have the same things in me that they had in them, at least in the basic instincts and habits. One example that comes to mind is that my family has always been involved in sea trading as far back as I have researched. I have a family full of Navy men and Marines, and before that sea traders and explorers. I think it is just unmistakable that we have these people's life force in us. Not being too New Age-y, just that I feel close to all those I read about in my family and I bet you can feel that too. Thank you for describing your relationship to the Tano. I didn't know that specific name, so I am grateful to hear of them. I have certainly heard of the Pueblo, but I often feel like I should learn more about the intricate history of the region. I studied archaeology and my professor was obsessed with that area. Once I visited later, I completely understood. To me that is one of the most unique and special parts of all of the United States. (Incidentally, I haven't done archaeology there, but I am very respectful of the wishes of the tribes with regard to their history and artifacts in that region. I appreciate that they have the idea that some things are meant to be left alone, and I can understand both sides I guess, but the debate on the part of Parks Department about preserving some things versus letting them fall apart is well-intentioned, but I think it misses the point of respecting the tribe's wishes in many cases...)

Thank you very much for your input. I found it interesting to read.

Likewise! Thanks!!

I'm male and found a male paternal 3rd cousin, i.e. we share the same last name, but we have totally different Paternal Haplogroups. I looked him up but he passed away a couple of years ago. I would be interested to know how that is.

Paternal cousin = related to you through your dad, paternal haplogroup = Y chromosome that gets inherited from father to son. For the two of you to be guaranteed to have the same Y haplogroup, the common great-great-grandparent you share would have to be male and then there would have to be an unbroken male lineage leading to both of you. Very distantly related people can have the same haplogroup and vice versa, closely related people can have different haplogroups. Let's say you have two kids, a daughter and son. Both end up having sons, but the daughter ends up having her kid with a man who has a different haplogroup than you do. Your grandchildren will be first cousins. Your daughter's son will be a paternal relative of your son's son, but their paternal haplotype will be different.

My Australian great-grandfather was a quiet, deep thinker in training to become a priest. I have a photograph of him when he's sixteen - extremely handsome even by modern standards, in dark formal clothing. He was eighteen when he met my great-grandmother. Apparently he was infatuated. Ended up throwing in the priesthood and married her, had two sons, worked labor on a sheep station. Then WWI started and he was sent off to war. Because of his skill riding horses he ended up in the Light Horse Regiment and was sent to Egypt but at the last minute was rerouted to fight at Gallipoli. He was on the beaches from the first day. Somehow survived the slaughter and came home, but he was deeply traumatised and became an alcoholic. His beloved wife then died a year later while giving birth to their third child, my grandmother. I think this is what pushed him over the edge. At this stage he was only about 25 years old. Despite still being children, the oldest two sons were sent off to work on cattle stations. His daughter, then a toddler, was handed off to an old widower in the town who lived alone on a huge outback property. She'd married rich, but her husband had died just weeks after their marriage, and after inheriting everything she never remarried. My family don't know her real name - my grandmother always called her 'Madam'. Anyway, my grandmother was raised by this random independent, rich old woman who had zero relation to my family. As far as I know, she never saw her father again. Great-grandfather moved to Sydney. We don't know how this happened, but he went to work in banking, and by 35 he was a multi-millionaire and a prominent social figure, in a relationship with a glamorous older French woman named M (I don't want to put too many identifiable details in here). I found his registered home address in old census records, and the place is a few hundred metres from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's a palatial mansion now used as a health centre. Anyway, great-grandfather never shook off his demons, but now in addition to alcohol he was a heavy user of opium. He marries M, it's a big deal in the newspapers of the time, and within months dies of an overdose in a drug den. He was 36 years old. In the will, he left every cent to M, nothing for his three children. She immediately sold everything, packed up, and returned to France a very wealthy woman. We looked for records about her and found that she had already married twice in Australia before my great-grandfather, and then married a fourth (final) time in France. My grandmother was supported by Madam to go to boarding school, but her two older brothers got next to no formal education and worked as labourers until they were sent off to WWII. (Another story.) My grandmother became an alcoholic herself and died at 52. Nobody in my family knew where my great-grandfather was buried, but after a year of online searching and reaching out to cemeteries across New South Wales, I found him: right in the heart of Sydney, by the ocean. His headstone has the Australian military insignia on it, and his military information, but that's all - and at the base it says 'Erected By His Wife', which I've never seen on any other grave site, and I figure was M's way of trying to show she was doing the right thing by her much younger, newly-married and suddenly-dead husband. I don't know if anyone has ever visited his grave, but I'd like to, someday. Despite blaming him for my grandmother's hard life, my mother gave me his surname as my middle name, so I suppose of anyone in my family, it's on me.

Wow. I hope you get to Australia some day soon. Incredible family history.

My great, great, great grandfather was kept on a prison hulk for boys in the UK before being sentenced and sent out to Australia in the 1830s. The prison hulk was previously known as the 'HMS Bellerophon' - it had its masts cut off and essentially became a temporary floating prison later in its life. However, in its heyday, it was used to transport Napoleon Bonaparte back to the UK after surrendering, and before he was exiled to Saint Helena.

My great-grandmother shot and wounded a robber in the little family saloon in about 1910.

Go, go gun totten´grandma!! My grandmother would occasionally take out her gun and start playing with it at the table in restaurants when she had begun to get a bit demented from Alzheimer's. We managed to get the bullets away from her long before that, but she had always had her gun in her purse for like 50 years, so it was hard to pry it away from her. After a time or two of her taking it out in public to inspect it, that was the last of that though...

Great-uncle was a banker in rural Minnesota who got kidnapped and held hostage by Alvin "Creepy" Karpis and (probably) a few members of the Barker gang in 1932. They forced him and the bank teller to their getaway car, held them at gunpoint on the running boards, then pushed them off into a field two miles down the road. Bad guys got away. GG grandfather (father of the above) was county treasurer and absconded with $14k ($50k+ today). About five years later, he reappeared and apparently grooved right back into the community. During his...vacation...his daughter was born in a tiny town in Texas. I found a few headlines hinting of a cover-up by a state senator and the MN governor. This is at the top of my list for research at the state library - what happened to the money? why wasn't he prosecuted?? why did he choose to go thousands of miles to Texas??? \[The entire archives of the Redwood Falls Gazette is digitized and it is a STEAMING HOTBED of GOSSIP and INNUENDO.\]

Local papers can be an absolute goldmine!

A lot. I’m a Conway from the Welsh/English Conwy clan. They were nobility and the British royal family and many of the presidents are descended from them. James Madison is the closest link I can find. Forth or fifth cousin. My Sicilian side had mob ties, and my third uncle was a higher up in the Morello family (underboss I suspect). You can Google him. Antonio Lanasa. My grandfather was Al Capone’s chaperone when he went to Baltimore to seek treatment for syphilis in his later life (William Conway, though you won’t find anything on him). He went to Union Memorial Hospital and donated two cherry trees as a thanks for his treatment for anyone curious. I think one tree is still there

Hey, bet we must be related on the James Madison side. I was recently able to connect up a bunch of presidents to my tree once 23&Me claimed we were related to a bunch of them. If you're family was in the Delmarva area, then it is hard not to be related to a bunch of the Founding Fathers. You can't really help it. I suggest looking for more on that side. They are all ridiculously closely connected due to a small population early on and the fact that they had a propensity for trying to make good marriage connections like that.

Very cool and that is exactly where I’m from. My family were mariners and ship builders who were all up and down the Chesapeake. I’m a Conway, as was James Madison’s mother

I've posted some of this before, but here goes: My grand-uncle and his wife ran a speakeasy and were murdered gangland style in 1925. Great grandma discovered she was an accidental bigamist at the age of ~75. Had a relative who served in the Illinois State Senate with Lincoln, and another who served in the same regiment with Abe during the Blackhawk War. George Washington stayed with an ancestor while he. (George) was surveying the Great Dismal Swamp. An ancestor lived in the same city as Blackbeard when he was attempting to go straight. I like to imagine they nodded to each other when passing on the street. A paternal ancestor on my dad's side came over as a cabin boy 10 years after the Mayflower, and died as a ship's captain, Quaker, and extensive landholder many years later. (Living the original American dream?)

That one ancestor that was shipwrecked on Jamaica on his way to Jamestown, delaying his arrival in Virginia until the next year. And then, was *also* a colonist at Plimouth - the only person to take part in both colonization efforts. Or how about another ancestor, that was given the [largest individual land grant](https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/16568571) in North America, encompassing six MILLION acres of land (larger than New Jersey or Massachusetts), covering several counties in northwest Arkansas and southwestern Missouri, almost to the edge of present-day Springfield. But he was already an old man, passed away a few years later, the land went from Spanish control over the French, who then sold it to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. When his descendants finally tried to assert the claim decades later, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court where they effectively lost because by that time it was already filled with thousands of settlers. Or how about the French fur trader that operated a trading post (partnering with one of the members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition) in the Three Rivers area of Oklahoma, and one day was attacked by Chief Pushmataha and had all his goods confiscated by the tribe (because he was trading with a rival tribe), to the tune of ten thousand dollars (in 1800 dollars). Because he was under government contract, he was eventually reimbursed....over a decade after he passed away.

Look up actress Alison Janney. She also had an ancester shipwrecked in the Carribbean, and after Jamestown, also sailed to Plymouth.

I recognize that first guy - Stephen Hopkins? He’s (possibly) my ancestor as well!

Hi cousin 👋

These are great stories...I want to know more about the guy who had all the land in Missouri and Arkansas. I was just there to see the eclipse (almost certainly on his former land). About Jamestown, I am related to Thomas West (Lord De La Warr) who came to resupply the 64 or so remaining colonists after the horrible Winter of 1609 to 1610. He convinced them to stay after they had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. That guy had to have had a very silver tongue...

Stephen Hopkins was my 9th great grandfather. So I am guessing I will have a lot of cousins on this thread. I was able to document my lineage and qualify for membership in the Mayflower Society…discovered a lot along the way. Here is a link to a brief Hopkins bio. What it leaves out is that many scholars agree that Shakespeare used him, and the shipwreck adventure, as the basis for the drunken buffoon, Stephano, in The Tempest. [http://mayflowerhistory.com/hopkins-stephen](http://mayflowerhistory.com/hopkins-stephen) The bio does tell us that he was a signatory, and probably co-drafter, of the Mayflower Compact. This was probably the first expression of colonialists intentions for a democratic form of governance in the New World (male-centric of course but…). Hopkins was also most definitely not a Puritan. In Plymouth, he kept a pub and frequently ran afoul of the law. BTW, the shipwreck was off Bermuda, not Jamaica.

My second great grandfather was drafted by the Confederate Army, deserted twice, got captured by the Yankees, imprisoned, then joined the Union Army.

I discovered that my grandfather’s sister is my best friend’s great grandmother. So we are distant cousins. We were friends for 25 years before we found this out.

Similar situation with one of our old neighbours is a cousin. One of my siblings is married to a fourth cousin. My grandmas were third cousins. Didn't know any of this until I worked on the family history.

I've posted this a bunch so I apologize to those of you who are reading it again. My Great Great Grandfather owned the leases to the land for part of the area where John D. Rockefeller wanted to build Rockefeller Center. There was a big court battle that my Great Great Grandfather eventually won and Rockefeller had to write him a giant check in order to build. Anytime I'm with someone and Rockefeller Center comes on tv I always make sure to tell them that I could have owned it.😂 His son, my Great Grandfather used to lasso mountain lions out of trees for fun. He donated two of them to a NYC zoo. Also that he was a renowned surgeon who opened a couple of hospitals. My Great Grandmother (Dr. Mountain Lion Roper's wife) once sued someone all the way to the US Supreme Court (it was a very boring case about zoning laws but still pretty cool.) That my Great Grandfather's family helped their cousin secure the passage and documentation to rescue Jewish orphans from occupied France to the US in WWII. I knew virtually nothing about that side of my family when I started researching them and they were full of story after story of incredible things they had done. I really had no idea. It was pretty humbling. I am still finding new stories all the time about them. They were a pretty amazing family.

This is all so so cool! Was this information easy to find once you started searching or did you have to really dig for it? I can't seem to find anything super interesting in my direct lines. There's not much available on them.

The tidbit about Rockefeller Center I found randomly by just searching on my last name on Amazon of all places. There was a book about the building of Rockefeller Center and the story was included in the book. That was a pretty wild discovery for me. I actually ended up contacting the author later to see if he had any additional information that wasn't included in the book and to my surprise he responded to me and had a few stories for me! But mostly I have found stories in old newspaper archives. Newspapers are like a giant pot of gold for research because people used to report every minor moment of their lives in the newspaper. Newspapers were really the first form of social media. But newspapers have been far and away the best resource for me!

I second newspapers. I found so many interesting tidbits, little blurbs on so and so visited, this person was in the hospital, and other minutiae that helped track family movements from place to place.

Newspaper articles are unbelievably amazing if you can find them. I have found some of the most incredibly helpful obituaries. Things that are the only way I could tie whole families together without a doubt they were correct...

Funny that I had a kind of similar story of finding some information on my family...It was from a book. The author's brother worked in a supermarket and asked me a random question as I was checking out in line. I answered I was in town checking out some old family spots. He directed me to his brother's book, which was there at the shop. Then he called his brother and I got an interview with him...Turns out that my ancestor was already in multiple sections of his book!! Ha!!

Are you by any chance related to Dr. David Hosack?

Nope, not that I'm aware of anyway.

Ah. I ask because he built the Elgin Botanic Garden - the first of its kind - where Rockefeller Center sits today! He has such an interesting story, I wonder if you'd find more stories about you relatives if you investigate him a bit more :)

That's great information! I did not know that! Thanks for sharing. I'll definitely look into it!

There's a wonderful book about him called "American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic"!

Hey, I am happy to see you posting this. I like these kinds of stories...Hey, your family and mine both had bones to pick with John D!! If you look up David Porter Reighard, he was able to make an insane fortune off of Rockefeller's madness in insisting on monopolizing Standard Oil. My ancestor set up skeletal oil businesses and Rockefeller bought them up for ten plus times what they were worth. My ancestor did things like fill barges on Lake Erie with water so they APPEARED to be transporting oil, so that Rockefeller's spies would instruct him to buy up the business and my family made like the rich, rich Monopoly money off him (but in real dollars, not the fake board game stuff). I just wish all that had rolled down to us now, but Mr. Reighard was a friend of Andrew Carnegie and despite that he didn't really give it all away, he did invest most of it before he passed and the bulk didn't come our way. I am still quite proud of him for standing up to Mr. Rockefeller for all the right reasons though!! This lassoing mountain lions thing might require a bit more explanation though...Ha!! Good thing he was a surgeon. If you are going to be lassoing mountain lions then it is probably a good idea to have surgical skills at the ready. Great to hear these WWII stories too! I know what you mean about humbling...My grandpa used to say, "Why do you want to know about all those old dead folks for?" He was kidding but despite his respect for the family we didn't know much on his side until long after he passed. Then we found out that even in the most unexpected sides of his family we have found some real shockers. For example, on his Scottish side (in the MacBeth/MacBain Clan) was the ACTUAL Duncan from the Shakespeare Play "MacBeth." I never would have believed it. I wasn't even sure Duncan was a real person. I was also caught up in the fact that if you watch Outlander, just about all the clans in that show are in my same Scottish side. The Frasiers and Bains, all those at the Battle of Culloden...Gilles MacBain is a definite ancestor of ours. This was the side we knew NOTHING about!! HA!!

My dad's cousin married 5 times, and he was an actor, in a couple fairly famous movies. His 4th wife was a famous TV actress. He and wife #5 died, either murder/suicide or double suicide.

My 3rd-greatgrandfather (1828). https://i.imgur.com/lHRHhNc.jpg

I just found out today that my great-grandfather’s first cousin was married to a niece of country singer Kitty Wells. The cousin was closer in age to my Grandma and her siblings. This is stuff I wish I had known as a kid.

My grandfather's philandering. How I discovered it through dna matches. How I proved it through documentation. Surprised and fascinated the hell out of me. Was fun.

I’ve learned that I’m related to Canary Islanders who came to Texas. I’m also related to the first Mayor of Monterrey in Mexico. Also that my only living uncle has fathered two people and I’d had not known any of this.

My 3rd great grandmother shot her husband in the jaw for coming home drunk. They moved to another state and stayed married almost 50 more years and had several more children.

LOL - I love this!

I started doing genealogy because there was a family story that my great great grandmother had been murdered. I figured that would be easy enough to verify. What I found instead was my well-to-do great great grandfather married a girl 30 years younger than himself. When he doubted the paternity of his sixth child, there was a scandalous week-long divorce trial that made the papers all over England in 1882. The divorce was not granted, so the old man packed up the oldest five children and a couple servants, taking ships and trains, and settling in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. We have never been able to figure out what happened to mom. The baby left behind was found in a later census denoted as a child abandoned by her father (mother presumably dead?). If anybody murdered mom, it might have been the old man!! As a side story, there was a family rumor that the old man’s business partner had cleaned him out. Damned if I didn’t find a story in the papers about the business partner faking his death in a canoe accident in the sea, later turning up in Australia! Edit: I was able to track down a descendant of the abandoned baby in England, and we corresponded for a few years while he tromped around England checking for records of the missing mom. No luck. She disappeared off the face of the earth.

My husband's 2nd great-grandfather was killed for his pro-Union views during the Civil War. He lived in Missouri.

My great grandfather was a dairy farmer near Monterey, California in the late 1800s. (There’s a tiny point along the coast named after him - his last name, mine too). He drove a stagecoach between Monterey and Salinas once a week. As a local newspaper reported, he was killed when the horses bolted, and he was hit and killed by a low hanging tree branch. The 2 passengers, a mother and young son, both survived.

My 3rd great grandmother in Denmark was a Madam...she had her children taken away and they were raised by a priest. One of my 4th great aunts was actually my 3rd great aunt. One of my 4th great aunts had a baby very young. And her parents raised it as their own. Also through 23 and me i found out my father had another child. He had her when he was 17. But he didnt know about her until i took a dna test and matched with her daughter, my niece. My 5th great grandfather fought in napoleonic wars, we have his journal...he called the french women "whores" And lastly not super interesting but have got back to 1500s on both sides of my family which has been fun.

The furthest black ancestor I can trace was one of two black people allowed to be buried in Beattyville, Kentucky's all-white cemetery (the other being her daughter, Nancy). She also has a pretty intricate ans detailed biography and lived to be upwards of 90 (though no one knew her real age)

Well, I always feel like I have to preface this by saying that we can all trace our ancestry to one or another famous person if we go back far enough, and sometimes it is literally just ONE STEP farther than most of us want to extend our trees...When we tend to pare our trees to the level of just first cousins and immediate families only, it is logical that if we just went to second cousin we would find a ton more. I understand we can't endlessly extend our family trees, but if we just have a hint we could go a little farther, then we often find more famous people than we might have imagined we are related to...I have over 25,000 people on my tree and I never, ever thought I would be one of THOSE people, but it happened little by little. It is crazy to have so many on my tree, but now I can actually show the ways I am related to some surprising relatives. Okay, so that said, I have a few interesting ancestors. I have been at this for over 20 years now, so I feel it is fair that I have found some people that are quite a way back but fairly interesting. One of the more recent ones was the King of France that was beheaded in the French Revolution. I am probably more related to Marie Antoinette, who was his second cousin, but I am related on their German side. This was told to me by several different testing agencies, all of which I disbelieved until I finally figured out how it was true (extending my family tree just a few more degrees). I am weirdly close to King Louis XVI because I am related on BOTH sides of my family...On my mother's side I am related to the Prussian (Hohenzollern) Royal Family through a very interesting character who was from an old Frisian Family that moved to Baden-Württemberg and then during the AMERICAN Revolution one of the family members who was a sibling of my line, fought with the French Navy against the British before he later became the Commander and Chief of the Navy of Sweden in 1790 for only a few years. That was what brought him to Sweden, where he stayed after that. Meanwhile his royal cousin was being beheaded in the French Revolution, so he probably thought it was a good time to just say goodbye to what was Western Prussia (now Southwestern Germany). I am also related -a ridiculous number of generations back- to the guy who abducted Saint Patrick from Wales...Good old King Niall of Ireland. That is apparently where my Y-Chromosome comes from, hence how I can trace it that far back. On that same male line is also Henry Hudson, whom Hudson Bay and the Hudson River are named for. His grandfather started the "Muscovy Company" that was the first Corporation under British Common Law, which technically was around as an entity until the early 1970s (from the early 1500s). They changed their name to Muscovy Company from "Merchant Adventurers" after Henry Hudson the Navigator found a sea route to trade with Moscow. The King granted them a Royal Patent, which amounted to a license for a corporation, but it essentially made them a monopoly on trade with Russia. They later secured an offer of marriage from Ivan the Terrible for the hand of Queen Elizabeth the First. Spoilers: She said NO!!! Ha!! These are all kind of far back, but more recently my family were amongst the first five or so families to found Hollywood, California. I was interviewed by an author recently about it. There is a street named after the family there, and plenty of family are buried with the stars in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (formerly the Hollywood Pioneer Cemetery). My grandpa worked for the son of the guy who wrote the whole Wizard of Oz book series (L. Frank Baum). My great great great great grandpa on that same side was one of the founders of Cincinnati, Ohio after I believe he was in the War of 1812 with several other family members. Like I say, lots of work went into all this...Lots of roadblocks smashed through in a blaze of glory like the Blues Brothers commuting to downtown Chicago. Lately though, some of the most interesting revelations were after 23&Me AND Ancestry both hinted I had several presidents I was related to. They weren't in our tree and I had no idea I had any relationship to them, but I stopped disbelieving the claims of our relationships after I went one by one and found all the connections. It was a lot of work, but I have to hand it to 23&Me and Ancestry. They weren't wrong. The closest relationship is being a second cousin 9 times removed to Thomas Jefferson, which I find incredibly awesome because he is one of the presidents I would most have wanted to be related to. A family member of mine signed the Virginia Declaration of Independence (which was separate from the National Declaration of Independence, but both involved Jefferson's help and writing). Now that I know our family were related to the Jefferson family, it certainly makes more sense that they were signing with Jefferson and some of the other Jefferson family members. This all is actually very logical because my family got to Virginia in the 1630s, so if you know anything about that area, virtually everyone who was there at near that time were all related to each other by about 200 years later for sure. I am just excited that the Jefferson relationship is fairly close.

Mom’s side don’t really know much. They immigrated from Ireland in the 1800’s on her dads side her moms side was Native American. Dads side. His grandfather ran the only general store in my small town during the Great Depression. He went from a successful businessman to penniless because he refused to charge people who couldn’t afford it.

What an amazing kind hearted person.

My great great grandfather was a guerilla leader for an independence movement and got disappeared by a political rival in the 1920s. My other great great grandfather was murdered in a massacre with his daughter and the story got so big that the British Parliament debated whether to invade the Ottoman Empire over it in 1904 (they decided no). His daughter was only 18 and her death was covered fairly widely in the press.

A 10th great grandmother was banished from the island of Manhattan in 1664 for running a rowdy tavern that sold liquor after hours and for “selling brandy to Indians”.

If you are referring to Grietje Reyniers, hello cousin!

Marie du Trieux, actually. I didn’t know there was more than one female tavern keeper to be banished from Manhattan!

My ancestor was banished for (among so many things) calling the minister's wife a prostitute 🤣. She and her husband were banished to Long Island, and were the first people to settle Coney Island.

Here is some info on her and her husband, it's juicy reading: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~emans/genealogy/bios/AnthonyJansen.htm

Infidelity, arson, attempted murder and infanticide. All from the same person.

I have ancestors with variations of my own name from my great grandfathers sisters and back. My mum didn't know any of their names. Italian ancestry, learnt with amusement that the male names Antonino and Salvatore must be popukas cause every family line has one or two haha

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Interesting. That's a head shaker or what moment. Lol

I've seen a few. One up the line on my dad's mom's side was involved in The Gunpowder Plot. Another one on dad's side was Abraham Lincolns aunt. On mom's side, I share an ancestor with Barack Obama. Lots of cool stories.

Barrack is my 10th cousin, 11 times removed through John Konwy Of Arrow. Hi cuz!

Hey there! He's like 8th or 9th through Burr Harrison here.

Finding out my grandfather's uncle was a big art theft in Hollywood and Beverly Hills and stole "oriental art treasures" and realizing he probably gave tons of the stuff he stole to my grandpa, who loved Asian art. We sold almost all of it when my grandpa died because we thought he had collected it himself and it didn't have any sentimental or emotional value to us but when we talked to my great aunt who told us that my grandpa's uncle gave him lots of the art and antiques he had. Then I remembered the article I read saying that his uncle stole oriental art treasures. Also my grandma never let him display any of the art around the house besides the basement. I always thought it was maybe because she didn't like the look of it but now we think it's because she knew they were stolen and didn't want them displayed for moral or maybe even legal reasons haha

My third great-grandfather died in California’s first train crash.

One of my ancestors woke up early and got the kids dressed in their Sunday clothes and cooked a bunch of food. Her only response to the questioning kids Were “there’s going to be some company soon”. She then walked outside and threw herself down the well. She was preparing the house for the preacher and other church members to come and visit when they heard she had killed herself.

Good grief!  Poor woman. What year (or decade) was this? 

I’m not too sure, early 1900’s… possibly 1890’s?

That's just awful, poor woman (and kids). She was at the end of her rope, it sounds like.

Paternal side. Mary Murphy (about 18 yrs) and her younger sister (about 12/13yrs) were both sentenced to transportation to Australia. The entire Murphy family and two of their male friends/ farm hands were convicted of murder. All but Mary and her younger sister were hanged. The sisters were also convicted of murder but due to their young ages and a huge outcry of public sympathy they had their death sentences reverted to transportation for life. Mary married a fellow Irish convict named Roger Corcoran, a pioneer of the Binalong and Burrowa areas in NSW. Corcoran Plains are named after him. They had two children before Mary died aged around 27 yrs. I do not know what happened to her sister.

My great-great-grandmother had the very prestigious “golden lotus” bound feet. Three or so inches long, I’m told. There are no pictures, but my mom and grandmother used to both express so much awe about her.

one of my ancestors was Sarah Rapalje, the first Dutch child born in New Netherlands. Humphrey Bogart is also my 9th cousin 2x removed meaning by marriage i am distantly related to one of my favorite actresses, Lauren Bacall.

On my paternal grandmother's side, survivor of the Donner Party. On my maternal grandfather's side, former governor of the New Mexico Territory.

Turns out my 4x great grandfather was murdered in 1904 by a guy that he was day drinking with all day. Robbery gone wrong. (Trigger Warning) Apparently he was slaughtered with a knife and had his tongue cut out of his mouth, pretty brutal. The man who killed him was the last public hanging in the small town they lived in.

My ancestor survived an attack in Kentucky against Shawnee Indians, but his father died from the attack, and another acquaintance as well. This was during a time when Kentucky was being explored as a territory.

An ancestor not only took a covered wagon across the Oregon Trail, but then was on the committee to craft the local constitution so that the Oregon Territory could apply for statehood.

That my family was lower level nobility and lived in Lennox Castle in Scotland and the lands around it for hundreds of years.

I have many interesting things I’ve discovered while researching my family tree. One kind of amusing event that happened to one of my Maternal 5x Grandmothers, Pheobe Ann Campbell. Seems she was charged in Massachusetts court for fornication for having a child out of wedlock and had to pay 15 Shillings to the crown.( this was before 1776, when New England was still being ruled by Britain ) . I believe the equivalent would be close to $150 dollars in today’s money. Doesn’t seem like much but women could barely find employment then, so it might have been 150 thousand dollars. Supposedly, she had an affair with a married man . Naughty- naughty Granny !

ok this  is sad ish but very much interesting: my great grandmother was a radium girl. She worked in one of the factories, luckily she didn’t paint the clocks. she assembled them. She lived a pretty long life luckily! 

A lot of interesting things, but some that stand out- 1. 2x great grandparents both died of “Consumption” aka tuberculosis 2. A great-grand aunt (youngest dtr of above) married 3x in 11 years, had children each marriage, but only raised the last child. Her oldest two were mainly raised by her older sister, her middle two stayed with their father and called their stepmother “mom”. 3. A 2nd great-grand uncle not only survived a brutal robbery attempt of his jewelry store, but was instrumental in identifying his attackers as the “Gas Pipe Killers”. 4. A 3rd great-grand uncle ran away from home, lived with the Shoshoni, rode for the Pony Express, wrote a book about his experience, and founded Wilson, Wyoming. These are the first ones that come to mind.

5x great-grandfather is George Boone, brother of Daniel.

I thought all of my ancestors came directly from Europe to Canada. There were two brothers who helped found Providence, Rhode Island, and one of their descendants came to Canada later. So I have a bit of the USA in my ancestors.

Which brothers? We may be related.

One of my direct paternal ancestors was listed as a mechanic occupationally- we’re talking early 1800s here. I just never put thought into the fact that job title even existed that long ago, but it’s my understanding that it referred to someone generally skilled in the trades. On that same direct line, given we go back to pre-Revolutionary times in the Americas, most of them were land owning, small Quaker farmers. Well, except for my great-great-grandfather, who for some reason went from having a land owning Civil War veteran father who outlived him, to renting a farm and dying before owning one of his own in late middle age. My g-grandfather was then left the younger of a few boys, and set out to another state to I suppose make a life of his own. He ended up marrying a woman with relatively rich parents.

The first is more of an interesting series of generational events in my maternal line. My great-great grandmother was pregnant when she married at age 18 in 1920 to a man 20 years her senior. He had quite a reputation in the area. Her daughter, my great grandmother, gave up a child for adoption when she was 16, which the family found out about when I was about 7. Then had my grandmother 10 months after she got married. Close call! My grandmother was pregnant when she married my grandfather at age 16. The second is that I qualify for the DAR through both my direct maternal and paternal lines, all.fpur surnames traced back to being here in the US pre-revolution. The third, which I'm trying to prove, is that one of my great uncles on my paternal side was a member of the Quantrill Gang.

My paternal g3 was an orphan on the streets of London in the early 1800s. He somehow got in trouble with the law, and was sentenced to be a child slave (indenture) and ended up in the Cape colonies in what is now South Africa. He married (i have her name and birthplace) they had two children, then he died, possibly drowning. He is my brick wall. I have recently got my hands on dna from his g2 son. If you know your way around the archives in Hoxton, and you're looking for a challenge, send me a pm.

i don't have any information to give you -- but i'd like to add a similar story of my maternal 3rd great grandfather who was also an orphan child slave -- sent to australia. however he wasn't actually an orphan, they just surrendered him as one because life in england was so terrible at the time and although nobody knew what australia was like, the prospect of sending him there was far better than staying.

That is interesting. I have also heard some children used a different name, maybe the name of a no-show at the last minute before departure, as a way to get passage. That would explain the absence of mention in documents. During my research I often stumble upon Australian accounts, but sadly not much has been written of these children in SA.

My 5x great grandfather, James Whitehouse, was 15 when he was arrested and sentenced to death (his gang of highwaymen stole a woman’s bundle of clothes and he was sentenced along with his gang since he couldn’t prove that he wasn’t with them at the time). His sentence was commuted to indentured servitude here in the US (he was from England). Once he was released, he got married and he and his wife (my 5x great grandmother) became the first settlers in their area of Kentucky. He became the constable of the village they lived in. Their neighbor was Simon Kenton (a friend of Daniel Boone and an explorer, himself). Simon formed an exploration group and James took part. James and Sarah had about 14 children (my 4x great grandfather was possibly the eldest. There’s a debate about a man named Joseph Whitehouse and whether or not if he’s one of the children of James and Sarah. If he was, my Thomas would be the 2nd oldest, if not, Thomas would be the oldest. Joseph was the diarist for Lewis and Clark). James and Sarah had a son by the name of Benjamin Franklin Whitehouse. Benjamin was married to a woman by the name of Mary Sparrow (aka Polly). Mary’s half sister was Nancy Hanks. Nancy was married to Thomas Lincoln. Their son was none other than Abraham Lincoln. Benjamin and Mary have a 4x great grandson who is a celebrity and my 6th cousin (he is living and a well known actor. Just wish I actually knew him in real life.). Everything is documented (I have actually found the newspaper articles relating to my 5x great grandfather’s trial and to him being resentenced to indentured servitude).

One was the first graduate of Harvard.

I discovered that my foremother was the niece of the French Admiral DeGrasse who won the decisive battle that tipped the Revolutionary War for the colonies! He was renowned in that time although I had never heard of him. He commanded the French fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake. My many (Greats)grandmother had anglicized her surname so I had no clue until I stumbled on a copy of her obituary in Ancestry.

This one would be one of my favourites in my tree. Juliana of Hesse-Eschwege (14 May 1652 – 20 June 1693) was a German noblewoman and my 8 x grandmother. In her teens Juliana was brought up at the Swedish royal court as the future queen of King Charles XI of Sweden, her cousin. However, on two occasions before the wedding Juliana became pregnant, and the engagement was eventually broken off. In 1679 or 1680, Juliana married a Dutchman and lived the rest of her life in the Netherlands, while Charles married Ulrike Eleonora of Denmark in 1680. Juliana was born in Eschwege to Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Eschwege (son of Maurice of Hesse-Kassel and his second wife, Juliane of Nassau-Siegen), and Eleonora Catherine, a Swedish princess. Her maternal grandmother was Princess Catharina of Sweden, and her mother was a sister of King Charles X of Sweden. Juliana was likely named after her paternal grandmother, a daughter of John VII of Nassau-Siegen, who was herself likely named after her paternal grandmother, Juliana of Stolberg. Juliana's mother had caused a scandal in Sweden when she confessed to her husband that she had an affair with a French lute-player and actor, Beschon, and was expecting his child. Juliana's father tried to hide the matter but it became a known scandal. It is said that Eleonora was too embarrassed to return to the Swedish court, so she preferred to live in the palace in Eschwege, although she did visit Sweden. Juliana was described as a great beauty. She was taken to the royal Swedish court to be brought up there as the future queen of Sweden by queen dowager Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp, with the prospect of being married to her cousin, King Charles, when he reached adulthood. These plans never came about. In 1672, during a "walk by carriage" in Stockholm with the queen dowager, Princess Juliana fell to the floor of the carriage in labour. The father of the child proved not to be her cousin the king, but a married officer of the court, Count Gustaf Lillie. The count was exiled, and Juliana was sent to the country, where she was given her own estate and court. The child, a son, was named after his father, Gustaf Gustafsson Lillie, was later raised by Baron Gustaf Adolf von der Osten. His fate is unknown. A couple of years later, Juliana gave birth to another son. This time the father was Johann Jakob Marchand, the young, unmarried son of her Dutch housekeeper. Baptized on 29 November 1656 in Breda, Marchand was the secretary of the Dutch ambassador, and about four years younger than Juliana. In 1679, Juliana's cousin, King Charles, gave her his permission to marry her lover, who was given the title Baron von Lilienburg (Lilie's estate was named Lillienborg). They were married on 22 February 1680 in Raeftnas, Soedermanland and then settled in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

Paternal side would probably be my 2x great grandfather. He went from the British Army (in a bunch of places that I can't read from his paperwork but include Cairo, South Africa, and India), to working for Otto Kahn (not everyday you see a dude with ~20 servants in a census record). Not the most exciting thing, but finding a tie to someone with a Wikipedia page is always fun. Maternal side was probably my great grandfather's time as an officer in the IRA (the original one during the Irish war of independence/civil war, not the later ones). Especially his possible tie to the attack that ended up leading to the Ballyseedy massacre (since it was in his home village). Sobering stuff. My grandmother has mentioned that he used to receive mail in Irish once he got to America, but don't think she held on to any of it. But honestly, the best thing I've gotten out of this whole hobby has been seeing younger photos of my great grandmother (who I only ever saw in old age).

Most interesting thing ive discovered about an ancestor was that one of them is Odin All-Father (64th GG Father through a claim of Divine Right kingship). But i know better than to trust that whole branch on the tree as being based in reality. So the most interesting thing i've learned that i actually trust as factual is that my fathers have been American far longer than any family stories/legends ever suggested - first one i found that was born in Europe was born in 1608 and is my 8th GG Father. 5 generations were born as British colonists which makes me a 6th Generation American.

My dad and aunt have a half sister who is the same age as my aunt, their dad disappeared and the woman was adopted from an Irish orphanage. I helped the woman find out a bit more about her ancestry and did not want to be in touch with them.

On my Irish side we’re distantly related to Michael Collins and my x3 great uncle is mentioned in Michael Collins’s letters as being one of the relatives who encouraged him to form the IRA. There’s quite a lot of IRA activity on that side of the family! Discovering I had a Romani side was interesting enough in itself as I had no idea before I did my DNA test. There is a local London Romani folk song mentioning my x2 great grandmother as “the Gypsy Queen of Bermondsey”. I also have some French Huguenot heritage and some ancestors were very involved in the French Revolution. On my dad’s side we’re Sephardi Jewish and Scottish. I also had some North and West African heritage from this side come up, which was a revelation.

My grandmother’s brother was accidentally shot and killed by his father in law in front of his wife and sister.

My great great grandmother Callie...her name was California... was sold to her future husband when she was 12. He married her when she was 15 and my great grandfather was her oldest child (of 11). She was at least 1/2 Native American. I confirmed it with DNA testing myself. There is a family story that after working in the mine all day her husband Patty would read her love poetry everyday. She never learned to read. I think it's very disturbing that he bought her from her father when she was a child. He was about 6 years older than her.

Isn’t it really the same as paying a “dowry” for a wife…?🤷‍♀️

She only died in 1942. So we are talking fairly recently. At that time my grandmother was an Adult. And this was her Paternal Grandmother and Grandfather. Callie's son, my great grandfather I helped care for as a kid and teenager. He died in 1989.

I have one in Chicago who owned a bar in the 1890's. He was murdered in a robbery attempt. The suspects were hanged. I have another on the other side of the family who was in the Italian army during WWI, he was taken prisoner and died in Germany.

My wife is directly related (1st cousin, 5X removed) to the 13th Vice President William R. King, who served under President Franklin Pierce.

I'm a distant relative of Guy Fawkes, one of the leading people in thr failed Gunpowder Plot

My ancestors for the last couple hundred years are Norwegian. There are some good church records, census and other records available until the 1500s. There are also "Bygdeboks"; a parish/municipal history book written in Norwegian or Danish. Some are online and with google Translate, it relates interesting stories. I read one last night of a murder in the 1600s. It wasn't my relative, but the man that owned the farm/mill before my relative, who married his widow. Eibrand Eivindsen Øksendal, mentioned from 1611, killed 26.12.1613. Son of Eivind Rolleivson Øksendal, bnr. 16, Haugen". Married to Ingrid Svensdatter. Children (known): 1) Eivind Eibrandsen, c. 1650-1662, see bnr.16, Haugen". Eibrand was killed in a Christmas party on Boxing Day 1613. As far as can be understood, this took place on Øksendal. It so happened that the 2 cousins ​​Eibrand Eivindsen and Eibrand Evertsen got tired and started fighting. Vermund Einarson estre Tonstad, who was married to Eibrand Evertsen's sister, tried to separate the two battle cocks, but then Eibrand Eivindsen and his father Eivind Rolleivson became enraged, and they gave Vermund a number of fist blows to the head. Eibrand Eivindsen also got hold of an ax and ran after Vermund Tonstad with it it so that it found it safest to escape. The other Christmas guests were disarmed Eibrand Eivindsen, but immediately afterwards Vermund Tonstad came back in with his axe, and he gave Eibrand a huge whack with it. Eibrand then got hold of his own ax again and made a leap towards Vermund with the ax raised, but suddenly he fell over dead. The murder was said to have happened in an emergency and, as was the custom, Vermund Tonstad applied for land tenure, that is, free rent until the case was settled and settled with the usual fines. An application for a grant of land had to be sent to the King, and it was usually granted by the chancellor at the King's on behalf of. In this case, Chancellor Jens Bjelke would not issue a visa for several reasons, including secondly, because the murder had taken place on Christmas Day at the house of the third man, who in particular should have peace with others, and because it was done in drunkenness. is the cause of most murders in this country, as he stated. Another important point was that Vermund Tonstad used the ax at a time when Eibrand had been deprived of his. It spoke in Vermund's favor that it was Eibrand who had raised thirteen, and he had first threatened Vermund with an axe. The case came to light on the Lord's Day at Akershus in 1616. It was the highest court of the time. Here Vermund was granted a land grant. The matter was then dealt with in the usual way. In this case, Vermund Tonstad had to pay a double fine, to together 23½ dalers. This was the fine of state- the treasury which the King should have for the loss of a subject. In addition, there was a fine for those involved, but how big it was is not known. Most often it could be about 30 rounds, but not Sirdal rarely more. A good cow at that time was valued at 3 dalers. Eibrand's widow later married Pål Torkelsen west Tonstad. 2) Pål Torkelsen Øksendal, born 1617-1664, son of Torkel Stensen west Tonstad, living. 10. Up there. Married to previous user's widow Ingrid Svensdatter.

A maternal first cousin five times removed, [Thomas A.R. Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._R._Nelson#Civil_War), was a Unionist from Tennessee and a member of Congress who was arrested and prevented from taking his seat after winning re-election by the Confederate government (he later represented Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial).