Ancestry

I thought it might be an interesting idea for our members to talk about their ancestry, origins and family history to see where we all come from and if you're related to anyone famous.

For me personally, being an Aussie we have no claims to anything famous. I think the furthest my family has been able to date back to is 1827 when a family member was sentenced in the U.K. for stealing some Sovereigns (would you believe it.) Then she was sent over to Australia as a convict where
she served her sentence then married a freedman. After that the family line just continue on.

So do you have any blue blood in your veins?

After reading my post and discovering that I wasn't quite correct my mother has pulled out some more family tree material which dates back to as earlie as 1743 with a whole line of English relatives.

Never really been interested in my family history, but I know it's been a source for boasting, in my mother's family that my maternal grandmother's cousin was a recipient of the "Righteous Among the Nations" thing for helping Jews during the Occupation in WWII. It's kind of a distant relation, but hey, it's something.

Quote: "CassTaylor"​Never really been interested in my family history, but I know it's been a source for boasting, in my mother's family that my maternal grandmother's cousin was a recipient of the "Righteous Among the Nations" thing for helping Jews during the Occupation in WWII. It's kind of a distant relation, but hey, it's something.
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​Cass,
I am grateful to your grandmothers cousin for what she has done.
Aaron

On the side of my father, I think I don't got any famous people. For instance one of my great-grandfather was repairing bicycles and stuff like that, while one of my great-great-grandfather was cleaning the roads back in the days. One of my great-grandmother was a domestic in the castle of my village during WW2. I know that her cousin was in the belgian resistance movement during the war and he got executed for that.
I did not manage to dig really deep in my family tree but I'd like to do so one day.

On the side of my mother, people were mainly living in southern Morocco and in the mountains so no great stories to tell, to my knowledge. We got one singer and an high ranking officer in the air force, though.

No kings in my family as far as I know !
I think the furthest we've been able to date back to is early XIXth century… but really difficult as some were from Austria, Bulgaria, Italy… Many soldiers during WWI or Indochine War, some résistants during WWII (one was working in a clandestine communist newspaper and there's a small street in a very small town named after an other one), then a gendarme… They lived mostly abroad (Laos, Soudan, Tchad, Algeria, Germany,...)

My great grand parents one my father side were living in Moselle, so u can imagine how difficult it has been for them, they went through the two wars and they lost everything, but they (and their parents, children) always remained "French" since 1870 (and almost all the archives disappeared).

My father was a researcher in genealogy, he made numerous publications related to the Huguenots, the French protestants. His tree gets back to the year 225AD with Niord Odin,Skadi of the Norse mythology
I was able to complete some scattered branches with the help of digitized archives on the internet in France and Switzerland and to study the genealogy of a "cousin" Louis VIERNE, organist at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, but I have not finished publishing this study so far.
Since everything was almost studied on my side, and I had very little left to study so I studied the genealogy of my wife and I made very large tables on excel

Archives are about readable until the XVIII century, and the difficulties of deciphering begin in the XVII century with the writing and Latin, see this exemple of 1608 ...

I have no claims to fame on either side. The furthest back I have traced my ancestry was in the 1850s when they immigrated from Ireland to the States.

According to one family tree my uncle worked with a few decades back, he came all the way to Olof Skötkonung (~980–1022), who basically was the first king of Sweden. But in the 1600's it's a little vague, to say the least, what happened. But yeah, it's a nice thought to be a royal decent, right? I mean, even if it's been 1000 years soon, I guess I still got a little blue in my blood.

My ancestry is the same as most New Zealand pakeha. Mostly English mixed with Scottish and Irish. There are some surprises though; one ancester was the very first police man in New Zealand (his badge number was 0001) and another was a prostitute who murdered somebody with a frying pan!

Quote: "zakaye"one ancester was the very first police man in New Zealand (his badge number was 0001) and another was a prostitute who murdered somebody with a frying pan!

​LOL! That's hilarious (not for the victim and its family though)

The most famous ancestor from my lineage was one Madeleine Force. Madeleine became pregnant and went to England to marry John Jacob Astor. Both boarded the Titanic for its fateful maiden voyage. Astor went down with the ship and Madeleine was rescued and eventually bore a son from the pregnancy. Unfortunately there was very little money that trickled down to the Force family. At least she was portrayed in the Titanic movie.

My recorded lineage on my father's side stretches as far back as my great grandmother, who was supposedly a Hakka*. Early in my grandfather's life, he left China for Indonesia. Some years after World War Two, he went back, but to a different village, where he took root and fathered my father. When my father was 4, they came to Hong Kong, where I was born and remain to this day.
My ancestry on my father's side beyond my great grandmother (which I got to meet and know) is lost in the original village, on a wooden tablet somewhere in Guangzhou. I would like to go and find it someday. Discover where I came from. Find my identity.

(No, wait; our identity! Long live the proletarian revolution! SPREAD COMMUNISM!)


However, my ancestry on my mother's side is pretty well documented, with a wooden board with all their names carved on sitting above an altar at my relatives' home in Sai Kung. Both of my grandparents on my mother's side were born and lived their whole lives in Hong Kong, as well as my mother.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people

I am a member too and got my ancestry DNA done 2 years ago with my partner's, (We paid for each others test - I mean what do you buy gay men who have everything?)

Anyway they changed it by email last week (Seriously WTH)

Until last week I was 69% White (Mostly Irish and Scandinavian, some English and a pot pourri of European ethnicties) and 31% Asian (29% Polynesian and 2% East Asian).

Now I am no longer Scandinavian, but are 71% White (Irish 49%, English 22%) and 29% Polynesian (26% Maori and 3% Hawaiian or Samoan). I just got whiter, may its coin collecting, how many brothers do you know collect coins and stamps, especially from colonialist entities.

I have been into geneaology for years and have got back to about 1820 for my Irish side, but my English part has many ancestors going into the 1700s, my oldest verifiable strand is a John Hammerton who baptised his daughter Katharine in 1610/11 and she is my 11 greats grandmother! I have a copy of the baptism entry!!!! Most of them left England and Ireland in the 1870s under the Vogel assisted immigration schemes.

The Maori blood is more recent when my Anglo Irish mother married my neer half caste father (API KAHI in Maori). The Maori side included an English great grandma who migrated here in 1925 as a domestic servant and married my Maori great grandad, whose Grandpa was a rich and powerful chief. Another grandson of his (My 2 greats uncle - Louis Potaka) was the first Maori/Jew (His mother was Jewish from Wales via Poland) in Antarctica who served as Byrds doctor in the 1934 Little America Expedition. Sadly he developed an addiction to medicinal cocaine after snow blindness and took his own life in 1936.

The Maori family tree is oral folklore and my oldest branch goes back to Tamatea the navigator, who is my 23 times great grandfather and captain of the Kurahaupo waka. I also have an ancestor called Kaitangata - which means "Eat people" in Maori, so yeah cannibals.