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Lidless
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Posted: Tue 28 Jun , 2005 7:46 pm
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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Here's a cool thing. To see where all the people in the 1920s with your surname lived in the States, as well the derivation of your surname, use this link:

http://www.ancestry.com/search/SurnameP ... URNAMEHERE

So for Mortensen,

http://www.ancestry.com/search/SurnameP ... =Mortensen

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Rinon
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Posted: Tue 28 Jun , 2005 9:23 pm
the other half of the dyblamic duo
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...

Last edited by Rinon on Mon 07 May , 2007 3:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Wed 29 Jun , 2005 3:13 pm
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The Watcher wrote:
MariaHobbit wrote:
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.
Watcher,
Something else to consider: My grandmother's research ended with her death before computer use became commonplace. I just entered my maiden name on the search thingy at ancestor.com for the Ireland & the UK, and they claimed to find lots of records of that name in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. :oops: :blackeye Apparently my grandmother's conclusion as to the non-existance of the name in the UK was .... premature. I didn't pay to see the info, as I'm not interested in getting that involved right now, but apparently the info is there. :)

If I want to mess with it.


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Dave_LF
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Posted: Tue 05 Jul , 2005 10:13 pm
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I was with my family this weekend for the fourth and asked a few questions to get some of these things straightened out. First, the suggestion made earlier was correct. My ancestors (down one branch) were French people who fled to Holland to escape persecution, not the other way around. Also, it seems my family hasn't been in the US as long as I'd thought. One of my great-grandparents was actually born in Holland, and on the other branches for which we have information, you just need to go back one more generation.

One of my grandmothers wrote up her life history, and my mom made me a copy. It's quite interesting, though it unfortunately ends rather abruptly when she got married (she's still alive).

Also, I discovered that a pretty significant number of my forebears had nervous breakdowns after suffering some hardship, and wound up in institutions. Not altogether encouraging...


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The Watcher
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Posted: Tue 05 Jul , 2005 10:53 pm
Same as it ever was
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Dave_LF wrote:
I was with my family this weekend for the fourth and asked a few questions to get some of these things straightened out. First, the suggestion made earlier was correct. My ancestors (down one branch) were French people who fled to Holland to escape persecution, not the other way around. Also, it seems my family hasn't been in the US as long as I'd thought. One of my great-grandparents was actually born in Holland, and on the other branches for which we have information, you just need to go back one more generation.

One of my grandmothers wrote up her life history, and my mom made me a copy. It's quite interesting, though it unfortunately ends rather abruptly when she got married (she's still alive).

Also, I discovered that a pretty significant number of my forebears had nervous breakdowns after suffering some hardship, and wound up in institutions. Not altogether encouraging...
Dave -

I would not worry to much about the skeletons of those forebears - life back then was incredibily tough, and if disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, poverty, persecution, etc. didn't do you in, why would the fragile psyche be any hardier? I had one great grandfather who ran off and abandoned his family, I had another great grandmother who committed suicide, and many many relatives who never married and lived at home with their parents until they passed away. For example, in one family of nine children living to adulthood, only 5 married, and of those five, one had no children, two had only one each, one had two, and the remaining one had four. People often did not marry if they could not afford to. Many married late, in spite of what the history books claim. Many were widowed early on even if they did marry. Finally, mental disease was really unknown as we define it today, so confining people for these types of symptoms was not at all uncommon. It also may have had nothing to do with mental illness at all, it could have been things like epilepsy, stroke, mental delay, incurable disease or illness, even being destitute.

Last edited by The Watcher on Wed 06 Jul , 2005 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Lurker
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Posted: Wed 06 Jul , 2005 2:04 am
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French Canadian. My older relatives keeps telling me that our ancestors took part in the rebellion ("French Revolution") during the reign of King Louis and Marie Antoinette. They actually traced it with those who took part in the rebellion. That's why they keep teasing me I inherited their "rebellious and idealistic" traits since whenever there is a protest with regards to human rights, poverty, free trade and the like I'm there. It's in my genes, I can't help it! :)

My maternal grandmother is from Spain, so I'm 1/4 Spaniard and 3/4 French.

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Lidless
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Posted: Wed 06 Jul , 2005 4:17 am
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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Warn us in advance which days you're French, won't you?

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Lurker
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Posted: Wed 06 Jul , 2005 4:39 am
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Do I have to?

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Lidless
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Posted: Thu 07 Jul , 2005 11:16 pm
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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Yes, just as it's the duty of the women here to warn us when they are PMSing.


Edeeted for embarasing typo

Last edited by Lidless on Sat 09 Jul , 2005 3:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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The Watcher
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Posted: Thu 07 Jul , 2005 11:26 pm
Same as it ever was
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TheLidlessEyes wrote:
Yes, just as it's the duty of the women here to warn us then they are PMSing.
I have it on good authority that Lurker is French the first week of every month.

Now, I have warned you.

Now I guess my reward is to go off and PMS.

:D

:Q

Send me chocolate now, dammit!!

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Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, with a top speed of 120 miles per second, is a cow that has been dropped from a helicopter.

Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

- Dave Barry


Glaciers melting in the dead of night and the superstars sucked into the supermassive...
Supermassive Black Hole.

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Dave_LF
Post subject: Re:
Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2011 6:42 pm
You are hearing me talk
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Dave_LF wrote:
They said something about French Huguenots too, though that doesn't seem to make much sense unless it happened the other way around (fled from France to Holland instead of Holland to France). Something I learned today looking at the geneaology.com site, though, is that my surname was a "dit" name in the French army. Apparently during a certain period everyone who served was given an extra name to identify their company or something (eg Pierre Bourbeau dit Lacourse), and some people kept that name as their own after they left or passed it to their children (maybe someone else knows more about this than I do; hint hint). So I suppose it's possible that some relative of mine was in the French army and picked the name up there, but I don't actually have any French blood.
I thought I'd respond to myself after 6 years because I went ahead and had some genetic testing done, and finally got an answer! Since sons inherit their Y-chomosomes exclusively from their fathers, it's actually rather simple to figure out where a man's male forebears lived by looking at his Y-sequence and comparing it to a database. And since surnames are traditionally inherited in the same fashion, that means it is equally simple to trace where your last name came from. My paternal ancestors 500 years back most likely lived in northwestern France; specifically in either Brittany or Normandy. So the last name is not just a coincidence, and is not just the result of having some ancestor serve in the army. But comparing my genes to others in the database shows that overall, I am most similar to people who say their grandparents are Dutch, so that part of the family lore is true too. And if you boil my genome down to a pair of 2d coordinates, I end up occupying a region at the intersection of the German, French, English, and Norwegian populations.

Everyone can trace his or her maternal line using mitochondrial DNA the same way males can trace their paternal ones using Y chromosomes; I'm still trying to decide what the information on that side means. The group I belong to there is primarily Middle-Eastern, though it has been present in Europe at low levels for a long time. But I haven't yet been able to find anything about the specific sub-group.

Pretty fun stuff, all told.


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vison
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2011 6:58 pm
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How excessively cool!!!!

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2011 7:04 pm
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
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That is really cool! Where did you have the genetic testing done?

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2011 7:35 pm
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Interesting! :)

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Dave_LF
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2011 8:20 pm
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LalaithUrwen wrote:
That is really cool! Where did you have the genetic testing done?
23andMe. The price is less than half what it was a few years ago, and since they can also tell you about predicted drug sensitivity, susceptibility to a variety of medical conditions, and carrier status for recessive diseases, there are practical reasons for doing it too.


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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2011 9:37 pm
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OK, that site is really cool! Not only do they analyze your genes, but then they update you when some new info comes out that is pertinent to you!

I may have to do this for the celiac info alone. If I show a high risk for that (and my gluten intolerance is obvious- but doesn't show up in blood tests) then it would make absolute sense to get my kids tested, too. If they show a high risk, then they can start looking at gluten intolerance *first* instead of as a last resort with their doctors if they ever start having trouble.

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Dave_LF
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Thu 31 Mar , 2011 3:31 pm
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I should caution that your ancestry results may not be as specific as what I gave above. I was lucky and ended up belong to a haplogroup that was relatively localized, but that isn't the case for all of them, and I had to do extra research on my own to figure out what that location was.


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vison
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Thu 31 Mar , 2011 3:51 pm
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There are several risks associated with DNA testing by individuals: to quote an old saw, "It's a wise child who knows its own father". This is no joke.

I'm not trying to be a downer, but when people start digging into their genetic makeup they should be prepared for surprises. It happens ALL THE TIME. :Q

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Dave_LF
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Thu 31 Mar , 2011 3:55 pm
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Yup. There were no surprises for me, but to be honest, I was a little disappointed. I'd half-hoped to discover I had a Native American great-great-great grandmother or something like that.


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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Ancestry Thread
Posted: Thu 31 Mar , 2011 7:05 pm
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I'm interested in the health aspect alone. If I'd known 15 years ago that I was a high risk for celiac disease, I wouldn't have spent so much time thinking an upset stomach and associated gastrointestinal distress were just an unavoidable family trait.

There may be other equally unobvious ailments out there that I'm overly susceptible to that would be nice to know about ahead of time. It would be good to know for all my family, for that matter.

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