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Post by patricklondon on Dec 31, 2013 15:34:04 GMT
I've been doing this on and off over the years. Most of my ancestors are very ordinary labourers and craft workers, some of whom must have lived in far from affluent circumstances. But some interesting patterns emerge - just how many migrated into London long before the railways, for example, how often a first wife died after too many children, and father marries again, how far some of them travelled around the former British Empire, and so on.
And then there are a few surprises. It turns out that an old family story, about somebody being born the wrong side of the blanket in Jamaica, is - though garbled - basically true. One of my ancestors lived in a long-term relationship with a mixed race woman (and I suspect he was himself some plantation owner's little accident), so about 8-10 generations back, I have African slave ancestors. And then there was the great-uncle who dabbled in Fascist politics - until the unfortunate incident with a transvestite's revolver...............
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Post by bjd on Dec 31, 2013 16:42:11 GMT
"And then there was the great-uncle who dabbled in Fascist politics - until the unfortunate incident with a transvestite's revolver..............."
Don't stop now, Patrick!
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 1, 2014 2:59:31 GMT
Really! What a way to leave us hanging. Bjd, so glad you found that cousin with the website & more information. I have a cousin who's posted a tree online that helps make sense of the some of the convoluted relationships on my mother's side. My dad's side is easier, since many many genealogy aficionados have come from those branches. Another thing I find striking, and it's supported by what my husband finds for France, is the sheer number of children people had and the high mortality rates among them. So true. I find making trees horizontally on paper makes it much easier to trace & keep track of people than the vertical trees used online. Of course, when making those lines of children it becomes depressingly obvious that women started having them around the age of eighteen & continued yearly into their forties, unless they died before then. And as you say, not all of those children made it into adulthood. many died in childbirth or shortly after, and the husbands would remarry within a few months. Yep -- time to get a new cook/nurse/housekeeper!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2014 3:19:57 GMT
Another thing I find striking, and it's supported by what my husband finds for France, is the sheer number of children people had and the high mortality rates among them. So true. I find making trees horizontally on paper makes it much easier to trace & keep track of people than the vertical trees used online. Of course, when making those lines of children it becomes depressingly obvious that women started having them around the age of eighteen & continued yearly into their forties, unless they died before then. And as you say, not all of those children made it into adulthood. Yes, one of the couples in my family tree had four children in France and all of them died in infancy. They then headed out for the new world, and their subsequent six children all lived to create a new generation in New France. many died in childbirth or shortly after, and the husbands would remarry within a few months. Some of those filles à marier and filles du Roi in my family tree married three, four times as their husbands bought it. Women were scarce and men were desperate for company!
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Post by bjd on Jan 1, 2014 8:10:45 GMT
I am using two websites for making a tree at the moment -- my Polish cousin linked me to his on myHeritage -- so I could find links to my section of his father's branch. You can choose to display vertically or horizontally, but of course, the computer screen is never big enough. My main objection is that it is run by Mormons, although, to be fair, they have provided a lot of information by microfilming so many records. Options for information include "date person was baptized into LDS".
I have also been using Gramps, which is a free online software. And I read about another called GenealogyJ, which is shareware like Linux, and invented by some Norwegian guy.
I can't go very far back because of missing information, but I think what I would like is indeed to put it on paper so I could visualize it all at once. Even though I leave off a lot of secondary relatives and concentrate on the direct line, there are still a lot of people. I guess I could find a roll of paper to do it on.
One of the big advantages of Gramps is that they provide options to print out lines of ascendants or descendants and the list includes all the dates of birth, death and line of relationship.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 27, 2015 18:34:01 GMT
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Post by onlyMark on Nov 27, 2015 19:36:54 GMT
So the child of my grandad's sister (one generation above me) or the grandchild of my aunt (one generation below me) are both 1st cousins once removed. I think it makes sense but I'm not sure.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2015 21:18:56 GMT
Yes, I use one of those charts (close relations) myself. I've just recently been contacted by some removed cousins from Québec, realatives who carry my mother's maiden name, and they're holding a reuinion this summer, so if I can swing it, I'm going.
I found out recently that Justin Trudeau, Gilles Duceppe and Thomas Mulcair are all descended from the same New France couple from the 1600s, as am I. I keep good company.
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Post by whatagain on Nov 27, 2015 22:23:47 GMT
I'm not going to make friends here, but I read somewhere that due to people being unfaithful, the probability of any genealogic tree being 'unpolluted' is about nil after x generations. x is quite low.
Somebody wearing my name wanted to make our tree and contacted me on FB. I accepted then removed him of my 'friends'. I couldn't answer a basic question : does the fact we share the same blood make him more interesting than a complete stranger I meet in a chance encounter ?
So I enlarge my community of friends when meeting them and having a beer with them - alcohol is for me a better bond than blood.
Except close blood, of course. I'd die for my daughters...
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 27, 2015 22:34:42 GMT
I'm not going to make friends here, but I read somewhere that due to people being unfaithful, the probability of any genealogic tree being 'unpolluted' is about nil after x generations. x is quite low. There is actually a term for that, Pariswat. It's known as "a non-paternity event". Somebody wearing my name wanted to make our tree and contacted me on FB. I accepted then removed him of my 'friends'. I couldn't answer a basic question : does the fact we share the same blood make him more interesting than a complete stranger I meet in a chance encounter ? The cousins I met this summer and I were all great-grandchildren of a group of brothers. One of them referred to us as "cousins of the 4th generation", which is a good description I liked all of them, but I truly loved one in particular.
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Post by onlyMark on Nov 28, 2015 8:15:02 GMT
......the probability of any genealogic tree being 'unpolluted' is about nil after x generations. x is quite low. I was horrified to find out I had been polluted by French blood.
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Post by whatagain on Nov 28, 2015 14:14:38 GMT
......the probability of any genealogic tree being 'unpolluted' is about nil after x generations. x is quite low. I was horrified to find out I had been polluted by French blood. Heheh... I was supposedly pure with german blood in the 17th, we mixed into it French blood and Belgian blood - that we know of.
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Post by onlyMark on Nov 28, 2015 18:51:45 GMT
My great grandmother was a French nun who was excommunicated after having an affair with a Bishop. Of course nothing happened to him but she fled to Alexandria to start a French school.
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Post by whatagain on Nov 28, 2015 20:57:32 GMT
Good for you ! The bishop let her go ? A woman with quite a stamina as it seems...
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 27, 2019 4:15:01 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 27, 2019 5:29:07 GMT
Interesting. I just wish that all of the DNA testing companies would include this service with the DNA test fees.
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