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Dindraug
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 7:29 am
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Jaeniver wrote:
We are Protestant remember ;) during the Huguenots i'd say the protestant french would flee to Holland not vice versa.

again, i can be very very wrong here.
No, the Catholics fled to France or Catholic regions of the Holy Roman Empire, or England (occasionally) or America. Don't forget that the Dutch Republic was formed from the territories of the Spanish and the Hapsburg family, staunch Catholics.

They fled Holland to flee local persecution during the wars of religions, the thirty years war etc etc.

Many protestants fled the other way, and obviously the borders flap around like salmon on a beach, so territory that was Protestant (or Anabaptist :P ) one day may be Catholic the next.

The Houganauts mostly fled to Navarre, to Scotland (allegedly) or England, although many did end up in your own city (if I remember right?)
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Although Czechoslovakia had a large German population, I don''t think it was territorially part of Germany until Hitler's annexation of it and other parts of the old Hapsburg Empire during the 1930s.
It was not just ethnically German ;) The treaty of Versailles which set the border in 1919 (?) did it to take territory that was previously German and made it part of Checoslovakia for strategic reasons. Technically it was never Germany, but it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire which was itself formed out of the Holy Roamn Empire which is effectivly greater Germany.

Those crazy Europeans huh :cheers

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Jaeniver
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 8:45 am
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Ahhh thanks again Din darling ;) you cleared it up, was tossing and turning about it last night not understanding what piece of the puzzle i was missing.

And yeah not just my town though (we have no Catholic church only protestant), but the entire west for the biggest part for that matter. only the far east and south still cling on to their Catholic beliefs although the nation's official religion ( as practised by the royal family) is protestant. we do, however, have a Catholic prime minster. Weird country anyone ;)

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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 2:51 pm
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And, of course, we all descend from this person.

:)

I have relatives who have done all the hard geneological work for me. My greatgrandmother wrote a book about her life and all the relatives she knew about, and my paternal grandmother did vast amounts of geneological research in the same family. We took all that data and put it onto a computer program for the whole family.

I was once contacted by someone researching my maiden name, and I sent him a copy of my great grandmother's book, in exchange for the promise that he'd share what he learned with me. I never heard from him again, the scum bag!

My father in law did lots of genological research into his side of the family, so again, all we had to do was take his work and add it to our program, and now we can show the kids data back to the 1500's. It's kinda cool... but not something I'd want to spend a lot of time doing.

Interestingly enough, my maiden name sounds Scots-Irish, but there are no links to family names in either Scotland or Ireland. :scratch I figure the first one with that name was on the run from something, and changed his name as soon as he reached America.


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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 3:02 pm
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Idylle and Din,

Well, I hardly know you two, but I still feel like giving you this: :hug:


:D

Thanks a bunch!


Lali

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yovargas
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 3:03 pm
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For some reason ancestry and lineage have never been something that interests me personally. All I know of my family history is the my parents and my grandparents were all born in the Dominican Republic, as was I. Beyond that, I know next to nothing about my family, though I recently heard (due to my newest niece being born a redhead!!!!!:D) that a great-grandmother of mine had red hair and green eyes so presumably she was European.

On a different note, am I the only Hispanic person on the board? I find it odd that there are so few of us around...


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The Watcher
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 3:06 pm
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MariaHobbit wrote:
And, of course, we all descend from this person.

:)

I have relatives who have done all the hard geneological work for me. My greatgrandmother wrote a book about her life and all the relatives she knew about, and my paternal grandmother did vast amounts of geneological research in the same family. We took all that data and put it onto a computer program for the whole family.

I was once contacted by someone researching my maiden name, and I sent him a copy of my great grandmother's book, in exchange for the promise that he'd share what he learned with me. I never heard from him again, the scum bag!

My father in law did lots of genological research into his side of the family, so again, all we had to do was take his work and add it to our program, and now we can show the kids data back to the 1500's. It's kinda cool... but not something I'd want to spend a lot of time doing.

Interestingly enough, my maiden name sounds Scots-Irish, but there are no links to family names in either Scotland or Ireland. :scratch I figure the first one with that name was on the run from something, and changed his name as soon as he reached America.
Something to keep in mind concerning your maiden name, people also were often not literate, or barely so, and if whoever first recorded the name here based it on how it was pronounced, or simplified the spelling to something that sounded familiar, it very well could have significantly changed what the new surname sounded as, and it may be something as simple as that. You did not say what the name actually turned out to be ancestrally, so there is not a whole lot more I could suggest. On the other hand, you could pretty much state that you were whoever you wanted to be once you got here early enough on in American history and there would be no way to prove or disprove it, naturally.

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Leoba
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 3:08 pm
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My mother did a tremendous amount of research on her married name, her maiden name and on anything else she could find that linked in. Unfortunately for me, most of the days spent pulling family members out of the Northamptonshire parish registers by the bucket load were prior to my fourteenth birthday – and one has to be fourteen before one can set foot inside a record office here. I did get to delve around army records (transport to the Boer War IIRC) at Kew and a few remotely connected births, marriages and deaths and census returns. And there are still a few tricky unfindable sods it would be nice to track down. But most of the easy stuff had been done.

She got my maiden name back to 1653, when the register there began and there hit a bit of a full stop. From the end of the nineteenth century backwards, they were all concentrated in a small Northants village, where they seem to have quietly lived out their lives as shepherds and farm labourers for many a century. One of these days I plan to have a rummage through some of the other papers (enclosure records and rent records and the like) and see what other interesting titbits I can fill it out with. I’m not sure if there are manorial records going back further (I can't see anythign of the sort on The National Archives Website), but that’s really my only hope of finding something pre-parish registers.

So the next project is to tackle Din’s genealogy - thankfully his mother is the custodian of a fair few original certificates which give us a good starting point and between the various London repositories we really couldn’t be better placed. It’s rather time for a new project that’s at issue!

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The Watcher
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 3:21 pm
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yovargas wrote:
For some reason ancestry and lineage have never been something that interests me personally. All I know of my family history is the my parents and my grandparents were all born in the Dominican Republic, as was I. Beyond that, I know next to nothing about my family, though I recently heard (due to my newest niece being born a redhead!!!!!:D) that a great-grandmother of mine had red hair and green eyes so presumably she was European.

On a different note, am I the only Hispanic person on the board? I find it odd that there are so few of us around...
Wow, Yovi! I think that your ancestry would be especially interesting!

As for why I got the bug, it was simply because neither of my parents were at all interested in their genealogy, and all of the older generation had passed on, so my sources were fast disappearing. I did surprisingly well for starting off with so little to go on, I picked everyone's brains, and then went with what I had, connected up with a paternal second cousin who had also tackled some of it, found others more remotely connected to me who also had some bits and pieces - it actually was quite a bit of fun, and when you did find a positive link, it was like panning for gold and finding a nugget in the bottom.

As far as hispanics here, I couldn't say, I am just a Northern European mutt.

Last edited by The Watcher on Thu 23 Jun , 2005 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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IdylleSeethes
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 11:12 pm
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Aside from the changing of names during immigration, it was sometimes considered useful to change names or their spelling in later periods. In my own family we have "Leedy" in my mother's line. This is a nominally English name. However the family immigrated from Switzerland as "Lidi" and kept that spelling. Several generations later, it was decided to change the spelling to "Leedy". The most famous name change was done as WWI was starting. The ruling family of England is actually of German heritage. With the certainty of war between Germany and England, it was decided to change the family name from "Hanover" to "Windsor" because it sounded more patriotic.

Another thing to look for is the tricks of geography. As discussed earlier in the thread, the map of Europe changed quite often and many European countries like Germany, Italy and others already discussed were created long after immigration from them to the US started. You need a map of Europe as of the birth date or an identifiable town name to verify the country.

There is a similar problem in the US. In the 18th century, the coastal colonies and the early states, extended to the west. So, for example, mid 18th century Virginia became mid 19th century Kentucky. We have several confused geographic locations from that problem in my family tree. The eastern US map stabilized with the Civil War and the creation of West Virginia, but west of the Mississippi, things were still in flux for a few years.

I found my sister's file and I'm trying to figure it out. It has almost 14,000 names in it and it is a real pain to navigate.

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Lidless
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Posted: Thu 23 Jun , 2005 11:31 pm
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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My adopted uncle, my adopted father's twin, spent a lot of time tracing the family history. Apparently it goes back to a French knight who fought for William I and was awarded a large part of Cornwall / Devon. There are only about 4 Prowses in the London phone book, but four pages of them in SW England. It turns out that they (alas not me) are direct descendants of Charlemagne.

Even so, no wonder I couldn't turn back the tide on TORC...

Last edited by Lidless on Sat 25 Jun , 2005 4:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Leoba
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Posted: Fri 24 Jun , 2005 9:28 am
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IdylleSeethes wrote:
The most famous name change was done as WWI was starting. The ruling family of England is actually of German heritage. With the certainty of war between Germany and England, it was decided to change the family name from "Hanover" to "Windsor" because it sounded more patriotic.
True. But I'd swear the change was from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor (the House of Hanover finished with the death of Queen Victoria). ;)







*is very jealous of people who have managed to trace their ancestry back before the advent of parish records!*

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Jude
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Posted: Fri 24 Jun , 2005 10:16 am
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TheLidlessEyes wrote:
It turns out that they (alas not me) are direct descendants of Charlemagne.

Even so, no wonder I couldn't turn back the tide on TORC...
:scratch Are you confusing Charlemagne with Canute?

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Nienor SharkAttack
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Posted: Fri 24 Jun , 2005 2:30 pm
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As far as I know, my family is mostly Norwegian, probably decending from some crazy - but hopefully famous :P - viking. :D

The exeption is my grandmother, who came from the US. Her parents were Jews who had to flee from Eastern Europe in the beginning of the 20th century, and they went to America. Then, during WWII, my grandfather also had to flee to America (he blew up some bridges the Germans needed and things like that...), and he met my grandmother there and she went back to Norway with him when the war was over.

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IdylleSeethes
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Posted: Sat 25 Jun , 2005 12:44 am
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Leoba,

From a more lighthearted history:

http://www.etoile.co.uk/Muse/001221.html
Quote:
The House of Windsor was established by the command of George V at the 17 July 1917 meeting of the Privy Council where his declaration read, in part, ‘all descendants in the male line of Queen Victoria, who are subjects of these realms, other than female descendants who marry or who have married, shall bear the name Windsor.’ This decision affected many more people than himself, his wife, Queen Mary, and their children. It affected all the descendants of Queen Victoria who lived in his realm. That’s quite a few people and not all of them, were like himself, from the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, some were from the House of Hesse, The House of Saxony and The House of Battenberg – Prince Philip’s family dynasty. Yet that’s all it took to change the family’s surname of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Albert’s, and the name of the ruling House. It’s good to be King.
Victoria (Hanover) had married Albert (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), so Edward VII , the son of the Hanoverian Queen of England, was technically the only Saxe-Coburg-Gotha monarch.

The reason for the change was:
Quote:
Part of the problem was a cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was also a descendant of Queen Victoria. Due to the hardship and terror brought on by the First World War, many people grew suspicious of the British Royals and any allegiance they may have had to Germany. George V, in a bold move to show where his and his family’s allegiance lay, decided to change their surname and that of their dynasty to something decidedly English. He chose Windsor, the name of a castle.
It gets more confused later though because of the "male line" part of the statement. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Windsor

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laureanna
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Posted: Sat 25 Jun , 2005 1:15 am
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Yov, in answer to your Hispanic question, I know that Berhael is from Spain. I'm from Alta California. I grew up with a Hispanic aunt, cousins, and sister-in-law, and went to a heavily Hispanic school, and spoke Spanish tolerably*, so I feel sorta Hispanic. Does that count? :D

*pero ahora no requerdo nada, lo siento.

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IdylleSeethes
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Posted: Sat 25 Jun , 2005 4:09 am
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Sorry for the double post, 3 hours later. My internet service is very erratic this weerk.

Last edited by IdylleSeethes on Sat 25 Jun , 2005 5:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Lidless
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Posted: Sat 25 Jun , 2005 4:49 am
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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Jude wrote:
TheLidlessEyes wrote:
It turns out that they (alas not me) are direct descendants of Charlemagne.

Even so, no wonder I couldn't turn back the tide on TORC...
:scratch Are you confusing Charlemagne with Canute?
It appears so. :oops:

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Sunsilver
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Posted: Sat 25 Jun , 2005 5:17 am
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My adopted father traces his lineage back to a tiny little town in the south of England called Micheldever. It is right next to East Stratton, another small town. Neither of these towns usually shows up on road maps, they're that small! My father's grandfather was born there, and emigrated to Canada in 1881, aboard the ship Baltimore. My cousin, Lois, still has his sea chest with the date and the name of the ship carved into its top.

When Lois visited Micheldever in May, she found all the tombstones in the cemetery from that period were no longer legible. She did do a search through the birth, death and marriage records in the registry office in Winchester, and thinks she found my great-great grandfather's birth record! (I am awaiting further news from her on this!)

The family name is Jeffery, which is most likely of Norman origin (Geoffrey would be the most likely French spelling.)

My adopted mother's first ancestor in Canada was German. He was an official in Bismarck's government. One of his sons was drafted into the German cavalry, and killed when a horse kicked him in the head. Fearful of his remaining boy meeting a similar fate, as Germany seemed to be on the brink of war, he emigrated to Canada. He brough with him his wife, countess from Leipzig (he eloped with her: her family didn't think he was of noble enough lineage to marry her!) They settled near Belleville, and built a lumber mill. Unfortunately, the mill burned to the ground. Some American soldiers had been seen in the area earlier in the day, and it was thought that they had torched the mill (this would have been during the War of 1812.)

My mother, who just passed away at the age of 92, still remembers her German grandma, who lived with them for awhile when she was old and sick and dying of cancer. She taught my mom to speak a little bit of German. I think there is a pin and a gold chain in my mom's jewel box that belonged to her. Most of her belongings were burned when she died, as they thought the cancer might be contagious.

I know very little about my birth father, other than that he was of Scottish descent, and very talented in music (vocal music). He composes and arranges music, and loves opera.

My birth mother's brother has traced their ancestry back to the original settlers in Canada, but before he could trace it any further, he developed Alzhiemer's and had a stroke that prevents him from reading. The family name is Armstrong (Irish) and they came to Canada prior to the potato famine. Over the years, several Scots married into the family, along with one lone Englishman.

[feels envious of those across the pond, who can trace their ancestry back many centuries...]

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The Watcher
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Posted: Mon 27 Jun , 2005 2:45 am
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Rather fascinating news that I just learned today. My mother's family on the maternal side is 100% German, if you count Prussian, et al into it, but in any case, I had traced all of her family lines back to arrival in America, but had no where near enough to take it back any farther to the various German areas. But, just this weekend, my mom dug out the family photos that she had inherited from when my grandmother died because of a visit by two of her first cousins, and they spent hours going through some of these, with German identifications on the back, to figure out who some of these people were. ( I wish she would have done this sooner, my grandmother died over four years ago, but so be it....my mom had big emotional issues with it as well, even though my grandma was 92 when she passed away.)

Anyway, my ggg grandmother was a Selig, which is actually Russian Jewish in ancestry, although she lived somewhere considered German territory when this photo was taken, circa 1850-60?, and her daughter and son-in-law, surname Loenzer, emigrated to America prior to 1870 to the Illinois/Iowa area surrounding Davenport/Moline. They then became Unitarians, which, according to some things I read, was a viable alternative to those of Jewish ancestry when there were not temples or other Jews to celebrate the original faith with. Makes sense, I never had figured out the Unitarian link before, but I have not proven any of it.

All I can say is it seems I have an awful lot of religious radicals in my background - from excommunicated RCs, to Jews turned Unitarians, and I think that this is just great!! I love learning about this sort of stuff!!

Does anyone out there know about the popularity of the Unitarian Church with Jewish immigrants? Especially among the farmlands around the corn belt of America so settled by German immigrants in the latter half of the 19th century?

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Tue 28 Jun , 2005 3:06 pm
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I wish I had some info for you, Watcher, but I don't. Anyway, that's very interesting! :)

And everybody else's history is interesting, as well.

Lali

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