Does anyone use Ancestry.com? If so, what's the most interesting thing you've found? (or if you haven't used ancestry.com, share an interesting thing about your ancestry that you've learned)
I found out I'm 1st cousins 10x removed with Benjamin Franklin!
I also found some cool pictures of DH's and my ancestors, like this one of my DH's 3rd great grandfather, who came over from England and went west in the 1850s (real life Oregon Trail 
)
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
While it may not have been directly through Ancestry.com, my Gram was interested in doing family history before she passed away. She found her father-in-law's naturalization document from Ireland. Also, we found that there were a LOT of spelling errors on documents back then! Birth Certificates more than anything else, at least in our family.
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@mediagirl: very cool! It is amazing to me how lax they were with documents back then, haha. I've found names spelled so many different ways on different documents/censuses!
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
@Shutterbug: I love this stuff. We have a folder of documents that my brother scanned in for all of us to keep. It's documentation my Gram found/kept together/wrote down about our family history. Really, really cool. I love knowing this stuff!!
GOLD / wonderful olive / 19030 posts
@Shutterbug: so cool! What is the cost for for the site, do you know off hand? I've always been interested in history and would love to dive into both sides of my family!
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@LuLu Mom: it's free to set up a tree with the info that you have, but if you want to research the records, etc it's $19.99 a month for USA records only and $29.99 a month (I think) for the whole world's records. If you cancel your subscription you can still have access to your tree, just not to the actual records you save (so save them to your computer if you plan to cancel!)
cantaloupe / 6692 posts
I couldn't get too far on either side of my family but when researching DH's I found out his moms side is descended directly from Scottish royalty. I can't remember the specifics now but one of his ancestors was left handed and found that he had an advantage in sword fighting so he trained all of his descendants and relatives in left handed sword fighting and that even today, most of his descendants are either left handed or ambidextrous.
What's crazy is is that both DH and his mom are ambidextrous! His mom could write with both hands perfectly and while DH can only write with his right hand, he bats, golfs, shoots, and everything else left handed.
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@Danizaur: that's amazing!! As a lefty (with Scottish heritage) I love that story!
pear / 1998 posts
I really got into this last summer and I hesitantly looked into my dad's side. He didn't know much about his dad and his mom didn't keep much about her family, so I didn't know how curious he was about it. I didn't want to step on any toes.
But I found a lot and when I showed him, he lit up! He said a lot of memories came back from his childhood and he remembered hearing about people I found.
His roots trace back to 1750s in America!
I'm kind of at a dead end with my mom's side. I've tracked them to coming to America, but it's hard to find out more from their home countries.
My favorite part is seeing all the names!
pineapple / 12526 posts
DH and my good friend's husband are 4th cousins. We found out after I was working on his family on ancestry.
Ive found tons of cool stuff. I;ve actually been looking into it fairly recently. I;ve gotten as far back as 400+ years on a few of the branches.
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@TemperanceBrennan: I love seeing the names too! Great baby naming source material. I found out that DH and I both had really strong tough ladies in our ancestry that share a name and I hope to use that name for a future daughter some day. One of them adopted my grandmother when she was 3 and kept being looked over at the orphanage in favor or babies. The other (DH's great grandmother) raised two boys as a single mother during the depression. I found their divorce records on ancestry and the reason, 'extreme cruelty', broke my heart 
(cropped for privacy)
pineapple / 12526 posts
@TemperanceBrennan: This is where Im at with DH's dad's side. Ive tracked them coming from Italy, but the records before are nearly non-existent. My mom actually paid for my membership because she wanted me to look into her family.
bananas / 9229 posts
@Shutterbug: What can be done free, if anything? Just setting an account up with your own knowledge?
hostess / watermelon / 14932 posts
I've always wanted to do this!
My maternal grandmother was very interested in this and found out a lot of things recently by accident or coincidence!! Her maternal cousin lived a few streets over and she had no idea, and she also by chance came across family IN Ireland and located our family's plot before they came to America. So cool!!
My maternal grandmother's Dad was 2 when he came here from Scotland, where his family had fled from the famine in Ireland.
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@LindsayInNY: I think so. I had a paid membership for a while, then I cancelled it and I could still see all the stuff I had on there (names, dates, pictures) but I couldn't access the records anymore. I think you can search for records and it will show you the matches, but you can't see all the info. For example now, I only have the USA membership, so if I do a search for my ancestor Joe Schmoe and an Irish record pops up, it will say something like "Ireland Birth Records, Joe Schmoe, mm, dd, yy (actually those letters, hiding the date) and then if I click on it, it shows me how to sign up for the international membership.
hostess / watermelon / 14932 posts
@Shutterbug: that is heartbreaking! I feel kind of bad to even say this in the same sentence, but what beautiful handwriting.
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@sorrycharlie: I know, beautiful handwriting is such a lost art now!
grapefruit / 4703 posts
Another thing I did when I hit a dead end (with my paternal great grandmother) was contact the town where she died and ask if they had any records on her. They had her death certificate (she died when my grandfather was very young) and for $10 they mailed me a copy. It was so amazing!
papaya / 10343 posts
so cool!
My dad is a member so I can see the tree he set up but I haven't used it myself. I think the coolest thing I found on there, besides it just being cool that he tracked parts of our family back to the 1500s, is that we had family who lived in Salem Massachusetts in the 1690s during the witch trials!
bananas / 9357 posts
Wow! Cool! I've never even thought about trying ancestry out but now I want too!
bananas / 9229 posts
@Shutterbug: I don't want to pay though so I've just been adding family members!
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@loveisstrange: haha DH was afraid I was going to find out that he and I were distantly related or something! I did find out that his something like 6x great grandfather was a revolutionary war colonel and is buried in the town I grew up in!
pomegranate / 3729 posts
I found out that a 2nd or 3rd cousin on my Dad's side had already traced that side of the family (with my maiden surname) all the way back to France in the 1600's. I just had to click on the little leaf and then found out from there! On my Mom's side, her cousin used it to find out that Pocahontas is my 10th great-grandmother
bananas / 9357 posts
@Shutterbug: do I put in my married name or my maiden name when you're getting started?
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@mrskc: do maiden. It will add your married when you add your spouse (in searches, etc)
bananas / 9357 posts
@Shutterbug: ok thanks! And I should have at least tried because it told me to enter maiden! doh!
coconut / 8279 posts
@Shutterbug: My maternal grandfather's mother's family can be traced back to the Mayflower and we're related to the Adams of Massachusetts, so I really am a Masshole through and through 
On my husband's side - his family, both sides, are Indonesian (moved from Indonesia to Holland) but his paternal grandmother's family was from Australia and was Irish!
honeydew / 7589 posts
I'm related to Laura Ingalls Wilder, Winston Churchhill, Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde, and President Obama.
pomelo / 5220 posts
I haven't used it but my mom and my aunts have traced our family all the way back to Scotland. I love seeing all the old family names and reading the census records about their occupations.
GOLD / wonderful apricot / 22646 posts
There isn't much on there for my family since I'm a 1.5 generation immigrant. But I did sign up DH Can't wait to explore with him later!
pomelo / 5509 posts
@Shutterbug: I am seriously afraid to trace mine and DH's families because I'm really nervous we'll somehow be related! Hahaha. We met in the state that we currently live in, and discovered we were both actually born in the same, different state. A little further into the relationship, we found out that his mom's family and my dad's family both lived in the same small, rural town growing up, and went to the same little one-room schoolhouse. Freakin' small world. They remembered each other. I'm scared we're like, 3rd cousins or something. 
wonderful kiwi / 23653 posts
@mrsjyw: Yeah I feel like it's pointless to search our families; even if they have an international version. I don't even think any of our grandparents had birth certificates in China 
pomelo / 5000 posts
I'll have to check it out! I'm always skittish about providing personal information, but it sounds like a safe group.
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@Happygal: you can make your tree private if you want (although the public trees are great sources of information!) and the details of all living people are private as well.
GOLD / coconut / 8266 posts
@LindsayInNY: my local public library has an ancestry.com account which patrons can use for free! Check out your library.
For those of you with ancestors who lived in/immigrated through NYC, try this website: http://italiangen.org. It is so simple to find certificate numbers and then I order them through Salt Lake City.
bananas / 9229 posts
@swedishfish: Ahh, good to know! Another way to waste time (in a good way!)
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