Know your roots?

[Ray1936]

Just sharing a random thought, and perhaps blowing my own horn just a bit.

There's been a lot of attention to genealogy lately, with several TV shows dedicated to the subject, and bundle of web sites hollering for attention [[many also hollering for your bucks). So I wondered how many DYers were into the subject?

I got started back in 1997, and it has fascinated me ever since. My luck in getting my male line back through the centuries has been amazing, and I post it here for your amusement. All these entries have solid documentation to back it up, also. It goes:

Ray1936 -- 1936 - present
Rudolph Ashley Downing -- 1900 - 1961
George Dowell Downing -- 1874 - 1951
Benjamin Henry Downing -- 1841 - 1908
John Benjamin Downing -- 1817 - 1879
Joseph Downing -- 1786 - 1822
Thomas Downing -- 1758 - 1829
Joseph Downing -- 1734 - 1804
Thomas Downing - 1691 - 1772 [[Emigrated from England)
Thomas Downing -- 1660 - 1739
Edward Downing -- 1625 - 1683
John Downynge -- 1597 - 1632
Thomas Downynge -- 1560 - 1618
John Downynge -- 1530 - aft 1560

The line came from Bradninch, Devonshire, England, and is dcumented in the parish records of St. Disen's Church of that village.

Who can top this?

[East Detroit]

I am pretty sure I could trace mine back to Adam and Eve if I put enough effort into it. Maybe after I retire.

[Blueidone]

Very interesting, Ray. My father's family also came from England...but I'm not sure of where. Some of my distant relatives have traced it back and have visited every city the family lived in, including England, Vermont and I think New Hampshire. I will try to find out exactly where...maybe our families came from the same place :-)

We have been unable to trace my maternal side, unfortunately. Mom was adopted by an aunt and uncle when she was only 9 months old. Her mother died in the Spanish Flu epidemic around Detroit in 1919. We know her father was French Canadian...but have no information on where he was born, to my knowledge. Again, I didn't do all this...but other family members have.

When I win the lotto, I hope to travel to England to see the place my father's family came from. :-)

[Ray1936]

When I win the lotto, I hope to travel to England to see the place my father's family came from. :-)

Hey, that makes two of us. Make ya a deal. If I win, we both go. If you win, we still both go!

[Jimaz]

It's not strictly paternal but my aunt traced it back about 18/19 generations to Richard Olmstead, born about 1430 in Olmstead Hall, Essex, England. From there it fans out to one of three possible fathers named Holmste[a]d in a record dated 1367.

It's a bit disturbing to consider that I descended from such a long line of obsessive-compulsive record keepers, but there you have it.

Some good stories:

In the winter of 1841, Seymour went to Michigan where some inducements were being offered to settlers.

Jacob Andrus Senior served in the French and Indian War during the summer and fall of 1757.

"November 22 1757 In ye morning after I had Gott Som Breakfast I went into ye City and Gott a Tea Cittle Mended I went to Captain Lampsons to see Lieutenant Cararrarie But I did not find him
There I drunkt som Punch Before night I crossed ye Ferry to Green Bush Then Andrus and I eat som supper at Col Ransleys Andrus sed it was a pies of a man we eat Then we went down to Lummos and drunkt som Sider"

"Andrus sed it was a pies of a man we eat" ?!

[Lowell]

Nice work Mr. Downynge. What online resources for genealogy do you like Ray?

[gnome]

With going back in time, you get 4 different people to research in every generation. On my dad's side I can only get back to 1885 when his grandfather arrived at a German colony in Alabama. On my mom's side the line goes back to 1632 and setting up shop in Massacuets.

One of my great great great unlce's was Charles Larned, yes, the guy the street is named after.

[Blueidone]

It's a deal, Ray!

Very cool, Gnome...about the Larned link! I don't think anyone in my family anywhere did anything important...except have me, of course :-)

[gnome]

Thanx Blue, can't lay much claim to his exploits as he is so far removed from my direct blood line...

I do have a story I find interesting, ... this is back in Pennslyvania, circa 1730 something and a greatgrandfather is out in the fields with his brothers doing what farmers do. A band of local indians happen upon them and greetings are exchanged along with a little lunch.

Seems the local indians have brought along a guy from a distant tribe who is touted as being a good wrestler. Well one thing leads to another and a friendly wrestling match is served up after lunch. Sorry to report that the great grandfather wailed on the out-of-town muscle and this lead to the other indians taking offense.

The great grandfather is killed along with the brothers and the farm is lit ablaze. Now, is just so happens that my great grandmother is about 27 months pregnant at the time and hid in the barn during the burning. She survived is some sort of a cellar and gave birth during the raid.

She ends up walking 15 miles to the next settlement, with the newborn, to report the incident.

I think of her everytime I feel inconvienced by being forced to park 20 spaces away from Kroger's front door.

* I get tired of trying to figure out how many "greats" these grandparents are, I call all of them great grand whatevers.

[Blueidone]

Great story, Gnome! Thanks for sharing it.

[Ray1936]

Nice work Mr. Downynge. What online resources for genealogy do you like Ray?

The granddaddy for searchers is www.ancestry.com, but they charge an arm and a leg any more. You can get a freebie for ten days, but need to provide them with a credit card and remember to call by telephone to cancel after nine days, or they'll charge. Some libraries subscribe to it for patrons; check your local library. Ditto for www.heritagequest.com which is also a charge site, but many libraries carry it.

A site that is good for checking information by state and county is www.usgenweb.com, but it seems it has not been updated or added to very much during the past several years.

The LDS [[Mormon) web site at www.familysearch.com is very valuable. It also has the social security death index [[SSDI) which has the name and vitals of every person who has received ss benefits and died from 1961 to date.

The LDS has Family History Libraries all over the country, including several in southeast Michigan. Use the site above and look for links to locations for area libraries. They are staffed with very knowledgible volunteers who will be delighted to help you in your search. And, of course, THEIR granddaddy is in Salt Lake City [[been there, done that). Well worth a trip if you really get into this thing. [[As an aside, it's a very beautiful city also, well worth a visit even if you're not into the family thing!)

No, I'm not LDS, although I've found family ties to that church. In fact, I was amazed to find two great great grandaunts buried in St. George, Utah, just 70 miles from my LV home. You just don't know what you're gonna turn up!

[Ray1936]

Jimaz, that's an amazing find of a story! And it's always puzzled me how Andrus and Andrews get so intermixed in a confusing way following lines [[One Andrews in my family line).

[reddog289]

Times like this I wish that I could speak to my Fathers Father. But he was full of it too like my Dad and his brother. I have tried to reserch my family tree, Yet have found nothing new on the web.
My Mother got mad at my great Aunt, She sent Mom and Dad on a goose chase through Woodmere Cemetary with no luck.I can say I go back at least 3 generations on my Mothers and Fathers side, Thats it.
Found my Great Grandpas name from something posted here which was cool.Other then that nothing.

[56packman]

My father's line is traced back to about 1550 in Holland, this was done by relitives who still live there, we were made aware of them in the mid 1970s when they contacted my grandfather. He had come from Holland in 1910 as a 14 year-old by, he worked as a cabin boy aboard a Dutch passenger ship. On their stops in New York the boys would go ashore and take in the sights of NYC during the 16 or so hours of free time they had while the ship was being restocked. The last time over he got a job at a hotel/bar and the ship sailed without him.
My Father's mother is from West Virginia country folk [[hillbillies), that is the side we know the least about, the supposition is that they were English/Scottish.
All of this research on my late gramps side was handed to us by our Dutch relatives. My mother's father's people came from Ireland in the 1770s, her Mother's parents came from Prussia in the 1880s.

[dtowncitylover]

I've done tons of genealogy for my mom and dad's side. My grandfather, my dad's side, is very American. His father's family, the Rodes [[my grandfather was adopted at the age of 12 by his step-dad so our name is different) were one of the first families of Virginia, along with most of the wives' families too! The Rodes family eventually settled in Tennessee and as my grandfather says, his grandparents were very wealthy and a part of that Southern Gentry society. But their son was a dead-beat, which is why my grandpa's mother left him. My grandfather's mother was German who ran away to Chicago from an Iowa farm to escape the strict German Lutheran life. If you go long enough on one of the family lines, I found the illegitimate children of some of the kings of Western Europe, so that's cool. My dad's mom was born in Highland Park, but her parents were from Lancaster, Penn and their families were Lancaster society. Abraham Zell is my great-great-great grandfather who was a tobacconist and has a patent registered at the US Patent Office, or whatever it's called.

On my mother's side, it is the same story but Canadian. We were original British and Irish settlers who were farmers. But my mom's biological dad was English and his father, Sidney Louis Tuner was a pilot during World War 1 and flew in the MacRobertson Air Race. My grandma's mom, however, came from England with Dr. Barnardo Homes at the age of 12. It was a program for destitute children who some became indentured servants, like her. We assume she was an orphan because they only records I have been able to find is her registration paper when she arrived in Canada.

It's been quite the adventure trying to find out where I come from.

[jiminnm]

That's quite a history Ray. It seems that your ancestors generally lived longer than average for their times.

My father's parents came from Poland about 100 years ago. Tracing back further is a bit difficult since I don't speak Polish. But, we met a couple who live part of the year here in NM and part of the year in Warsaw. They're going to do a little sleuthing in Poland for me, and we may visit them.

[terryh]

German -English roots here...I believe statistically most Euro Americans trace at least a portion of their lineage to Germany and England...I wish I had a cool Italian -Sicilian background...

[Retroit]

^Me too! My Italian grandparents came to America as single young adults hoping to escape from poor lives as peasants. Can't trace my ancestry back much further than their parents. I guess young people aren't interested much in their ancestors - LOL.

[detroitbred]

Ray, my sister and I were just talking about how sorry we are that we didn't ask more questions and get more details about our own roots. My dad [[ George Coleman...DPD) died a few years ago, mom died many years ago when I was 16. All grandparents are long gone. We really have no one left to talk to. I know only that my grandparents and my aunt came over from England to Ellis Island, my dad was born here. I have tried looking at ship manifests from Ellis but grandfathers name was George and Grandmothers name was Charlotte. Seems like there were many people with those names back then! I don't know what year they came here, or even where to start looking. I would love to know more. I am getting nostalgic in my old age!

[gazhekwe]

I know a lot of my ancestors were born right here, and those that came from Europe came from France and settled from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Montreal [[Abraham Martin, Plains of Abraham) around 1600. Beyond that, we can't seem to go. Somewhere in France there may be records. Here, church records on both sides can be traced way back, but not beyond the advent of church records.

[Mikeg]

Ray, that Friday night celebrity genealogy show makes it seem so easy, doesn't it?

I subscribe to Ancestry.com and also Footnote.com, but both seem to keep upping their subscription rates, so I may soon be cutting back to just Ancestry.

Fellow forumer Frankg purchased some large PDF files containing old Detroit city directories that he has shared with me. They can be downloaded from this page [[replace each x with a /): http:xxgrobbel.orgxgenealogyxdirectories . Help yourself but please don't put a link to that page on a blog or in a posting. If you do, I might get too many visitors and bandwidth usage that would cause me to exceed my monthly allotment.

On the subject of ancestors, with the help of many other relatives, I have compiled a pretty complete pedigree on both of my paternal grandparent's ancestors going back to New France and Europe and the 17th and 18th centuries..

On my paternal grandmother's line I have a

• 6G grandfather who came to Detroit from Quebec whose surname was Rivard [[b. 1686 - d. 1729)
• 6G grandfather who came to Detroit from Germany whose surname was Yax [[ b. 1709 - d. 1793)
• 5G grandfather who came to Detroit from France whose surname was Beaufait [[b. 1733 - d. 1808)
• 7G grandfather who came to Detroit from Montreal whose surname was Campeau [[b. 1677 - d. 1751)
• 4G grandfather who came to Detroit from Quebec whose surname was Pitre [[b. 1752 - d. 1834). His paternal 2G grandfather [[b. 1636 - d. 1689) emigrated from Flanders to Arcadia in the mid 1600s.

On my paternal grandfather's line, my 2G grandfather Franz Anton Grobbel emigrated to Macomb County in 1849 from Westphalia [[Germany). One of my German cousins has researched that family line even farther - back to the 11 August 1670 marriage of my 7G grandmother, whose name was Elisabeth Grobbel. She had inherited the Grobbel Hof in Obringhausen, Westphalia from her father, Georgen Grobbel. Her husband's name was Jakob Böddecker and after the marriage he became "Jakob Böddecker, genannt Grobbel" [[Jacob Boeddecker, called Grobbel). In Westphalia and other German states, so strong was the connection of a person's identity with the Hof on which they lived, that people were called by their "Hof Name" instead of their birth surname. Since normally the Hof was inherited by the oldest surviving son, this wasn't a problem. But in the unusual situation where the Hof went to a daughter, chances were good that she and her husband's children would carry her surname into adulthood and history. That's why my surname isn't Boeddecker!

My German cousin has also been able to find the names of each of the earlier inheritors of the Grobbel Hof all the way back to my 13G grandfather, Hans Grotebolle [[b. abt. 1460). The records before that are kind of spotty but he did find the name of what is probably my 16G grandfather who was mentioned in the tax records as being the proprietor of the Grobbel Hof in 1398. His name as written as "der schwarze Gobelen von Obringhausen" [[the black Grobbel of Obringhausen).

[Ray1936]

"Ray, that Friday night celebrity genealogy show makes it seem so easy, doesn't it?"

It sure does, Mike! Makes for some fascinating TV, though. That's neat having your Grobbel line back to pre-Columbian times. I can't really seem to get beyond 1500. I have found one link to connect me back to the 1100's, but the documentation on it is sadly lacking so I don't add it to my database.

The link to the directories works fine: I'll guard it with my life.

My mother was born in Germany in 1916, and emigrated to the US with her parents in 1923. A relative still in Germany did all the research on her line, and takes it back to 1600 thanks to church records. Bit of a story there, too.

The Cathedral in Regensburg, Bavaria, has shelves and shelves of genealogical records. Regensburg also was the site of a major Messerschmidt factory during WW II, and the town was heavily bombed by allied forces. Thank God, the cathedral was spared and the records all survive. Anyway, I have full documentation on Mom's family line thanks to my cousin, Heinz.

Sometimes you just get lucky.

[oladub]

Ray, I got lucky twice.

A second cousin from British Columbia I didn't know was doing family history and stumbled upon me. She made a contact in Norway who traced the paternal line back to about 1700.

I was stumbling around on http://en.geneanet.org/ [[recomended for tracing lowland ancestors) where I came across someone In Flanders who did geneology with my mother's second cousin I wasn't aware of. I emailed them all the old funeral cards my garandmother had collected and they found that they had made a mistake and were then, with the funeral card information, able to trace one line of the family back to about 1700. I was also sent a photo of my great grandparent's house.

Then there is a gap in the family back to 18,000 B.C. when Haplotype I [[M170) emerged. That paternal line ancestor "was probably born in one of the isolated areas people were forced to occupy during the last blast of the Ice Age, possibly in the Balkans. As the ice sheets covering most of Europe began to retreat around 15,000 years ago, his descendants likely played a central role in recolonizing northern Europe." -personal genetic history, the Genographic Project, National Geographic A high percentage of Scandinavians and Croatians descend from the Haplotype I guy.

[Ray1936]

That angle of DNA searching for ancestoral roots is fascinating. I sent in my 'Cheek Swabs" a couple years ago and got the Haplotype of R1b1b2. Unfortunately, so far it doesn't exactly match with the other Downings of the same numbers, always a few factors different. But my line came from Devon, and most of the Downing came from further north of the island. Maybe if I go back to BC I'll find a great gramps who worked on Stonehenge...... LOL

[sumas]

Which Campeau, I might have some stories to share.