barnmom - It is fun! Make sure you get a copy, if she will give it, of your family records so you can pass it along. There are always surprises as to exactly where your family came from and when.

I have been meaning to do it for years but never got around to it. I wish I had done it when I was younger and all the older generation was around to answer questions. I knew my grandfather was from Quebec but didn't realize it went back to 1804. I am just getting started, I am sure I will find lots more interesting things.

Here is one of the names I couldn't pronounce. Any guesses on how to pronounce that first name?

Scholastique LE CLERC 1830 (Great Grandmother)

Clare

How exciting. You probably have some Civil War links in the family,too. Start digging through those old trunks in the attic.

My DD and SIL began tracing his family after we got a subscription to Ancestry.com (not an ad for the service at all). My American roots only go back to the early 1900's, but his go back to the founding of the country. One forefather came over in 1639, and settled in New Sweden, now the Swedesboro area of NJ/DE. Ancestors on both sides of his family predate the Revolutionary War. My grandchildren are now eligible to be in the DAR/SAR (not sure if that's good, but....). Now we are working on the international branches of the family trees.

Enjoy, it's addictive.

Most of my ancestors go back to Canada, then to Ireland and France so going to be a little harder to trace. Both my parents were the first to be born in the U.S. I have a friend that traced his back to 1600's. I am going to ask him for advice.
Clare

Clare, it is exciting! I remember the thrill when I was first starting, and found my great-grandmother's family in the 1880 census.

Remember that a lot of genealogy on the internet is wrong. On the LDS site you linked to, the IGI is actually from source documents, but the Ancestral File is whatever anybody wants to put there. It must always be verified. I have a cousin who regularly sends me stuff from the internet like people who died in 1740 fighting in the Revolution.

Scholastique LeClerc: Sko-las-TEEK Luh-CLARE.

I bet you can go much farther back! Most French Canadians have ancestors among the original colonists (called habitants). My son-in-law is part French-Canadian, so when my granddaughter was born I looked into his ancestry; most had already been done, so I could research the historical background. I found she has an ancestor who was the first permanent European settler in North America. The early French settlers are very well documented. You will get back to the 1600's!

Clare, I love genealogy. It's been one of my favorite hobbies for over 20 years. I have published one book on my Mom's genealogy & am working on my second - Dad's. Dad's has been harder as I've had to make connections in Russia for assistance. I am so close to completion...it needs a bit more writing & editing...same place it's been for several years.

I'm also a contact for others searching for information from Dad's village in Russia. That's been a lot of fun helping others. I never know when I'll get an email or a phone call from somebody asking a question & then it might take me weeks to locate their answer. Very fun.

Here's my book on Mom's genealogy.

{{gwi:1440810}}

/tricia

cloudy christine - Thanks for the information, any is appreciated. Where did you find all French Canadians ancestors information? And thanks for how to pronounce that name. I bet you won't see that on favorite baby names! LOL
Clare

Clare, I forget where you live, but if it's New England, you're in luck for French Canadian research in libraries.

For online research, here is the link to FamilySearch.org (LDS) research guide for Canada. A good place to get started.

Here is a link that might be useful: Canada research guide - FamilySearch.org

Clare, FamilySearch.org is a decent place to start but be careful & always look for 2 confirming & independent sources. LDS does not require documentation & it is notorious for errors. I use it as "hints" rather than facts. There's info there about my immediate family that's wrong.

Same with ancestry.com. Be wary of those family trees. Thousands of people just copy something they found on another tree into their's without obtaining documentation & so errors get passed along from one tree to another. A basic genealogy guideline is aim for 3 independent sources for every piece of data. Another easy place to get tripped up...church records are often baptism/funeral dates & not birth/death dates. Check church records for marriage banns as well as marriages. Also remember the change from the Julian to Georgian calenders. England & its colonies adopted the change in 1752 but other countries are different.

Geneology is addictive.

/tricia

I agree with tricia, those two sites offer a great way to start your search. And you can see and download copies of birth, marriage, immigration,census and draft records, through these sites, and it's really neat to see a document related to one of your parents or grandparents.

If you need to confirm, you can get source documents from local record offices. My DD and SIL have been doing that, through their public library as well as the LDS center. They have microfilm sent to them through library exchanges, and they order hard copies of records, from town halls, or vital record departments in small towns and counties all over. They've headed down a few dead limbs on the tree, but after almost a year of hard work, they have gotten a lot of good, reliable documentation. And it's been fun.

I got really hooked on ancestrycom a few months ago sort of as a lark to wile away winter and also because my dads gone, my mom is getting worse with alzheimers and there are few of their era left in the family and we all sort of lost touch since dads death in 94. I'm also doing one for my aunt who is not really a blood relative but her and my mom were brought up together since birth more or less like cousins in the same house, long story. Anyways it was never discussed that her mom back then in 1929 was never married to her father and she thought that she might possibly have a half-brother. I did some checking and found out she did in fact have a 1/2 brother and since the last name was not common I found a reference to it for some bakery over in the UK,, phoned them and it turned out to be her nephew she never knew she had.. he was also doing some family research but didn't know anything about his grandfather because his dad never spoke of him. This nephews sister who is now about 77 had heard talk that their father might have had a 1/2 sister but no one ever spoke of it either.. They'd never even seen a pic of their grandfather which my aunt had so I emailed it to them.. They were thrilled to find it out.

On my families side I got back in touch with some UK relatives I found on ancestrycom I hadn't seen since the 70's.. One is a 2nd cousin who after her dad died her sister waltzed in basically took everything, photo's etc. and they themselves haven't spoken in 25 years.. So I had lots of photos of her dad and grandparents, her and her sister as kids, aunts/uncles etc.. and emailed them all to her. She was so happy because she has a son who's 25 now but he was born just after her dad died and loved to hear stories about him but she never had any pictures to show him. So now she does.

It's very addictive.. I sometimes sit for hours upon hours,, like a video game sort of I suppose.. always trying to get rid of those little green leaf "hints" LOL

When my DD was born I did a quick family tree using old family bibles and just talking to my grandparents. I went back to the early 1800's easily on my side, both parents, and all the way back to the mid 1700' on my then DH's mothers side but was stopped on his father's side because his mother wouldn't talk about him just said he was a gangster and better left forgotten. LoL

My family is listed in the Blackburn Association database, my great great great grandmother, on my dad's side, was a Blackburn. The database goes back to 1675 when John Blackburn was born in Ireland. It traces his 105,000 descendants and has 425,000 linked names.

For some reason I seen to be the keeper of all the old family bibles although the oldest one we have is from my now DH's family and he has no interest in it at all. My dad has a couple of those really fancy framed family birth and death records, don't know what you call them, that must be 150 years old from his father's side of the family. I try to keep up with our family and now with our first great great arriving in May I hope my DD will keep it going on.

momj,
I have a box of old pictures of men in civil war uniforms from DH's side of the family with not one name, date or anything on them haven't a clue who they are or how they are connected to DH but neat pictures anyways.

Claudia

Here is a link that might be useful: Blackburn Association

Any pictures of Lincoln in that box!

cloudy_christine - I do come from New England. I would love to use this as an excuse to go back there and do some research. It has been 32 years since I have been back. Maybe I should do a road trip next summer. Thanks for the link.

triciae - Cool book. I will be happy if I can find names and dates. I did go to Ancestry.com and found that someone had already traced the family tree back to 1600. I will have to verify the information. Thanks for the tips.

momj47 - Thanks for the advice. I am barely starting. I know I have a lot of research ahead of me. Good thing I like to do that. I was a librarian.

pkguy - Yes I am hooked now. I would love to find lots of interesting stories. I should have done this years ago when my parents and other relatives were still alive. I guess my Mom passing away last Spring made me realize how fleeting time can be. I hope to do her side of the family some day too.

partst - Since I started this, it has been decided by my 4 siblings that I am the keeper of the family history now. One of my brothers is sending me all the photos that were in boxes at my Mom's home. I am suppose to sort them and make copies and send them to everyone. It will be fun to see the old pictures I have not seen in over 30 years. And a lot of work too. LOL Thanks for the link.

Clare

Clare, in Boston, the New England Genealogical Society, a fabulous place, has lots of French-Canadian sources. Members can access some things online; I don't know everything is available that way.
And in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, there's the American-French Genalogical Society. The web site is useful too.

Here is a link that might be useful: American-French Genealogical Society

I second CC's suggestion of the New England Genealogical Society...it's a national treasure, IMO! Don't forget about the National Archives. They answer email questions without charge & were the ones who located my paternal grandfather's port of entry. He had always told family and put on his citizenship application he entered through Ellis Island even providing a ship's name. He didn't. He came through Portland, Maine. I searched for years to no avail. The National Archives found him in less than a week & sent me a copy of the ship's passenger list (they did charge for the copy of the passenger list).

/tricia

cloudy_christine - I will check out the New England Genealogical Society and the American-French Genalogical Societyin the future. Thanks for the link.

/tricia - Interesting how the truth is different from the stories we grew up. I was always told that my great grandfather came from France. It looks like my ancestors were in Quebec all the way back to 1600. Unless the information I have isn't correct. That is why I will have to do lots of checking.

Thanks everyone. One other question, what family tree forms do you use? I noticed there a lot of free ones you can download online. Wondered which ones work the best, especially if going all the way back several generation like to the 1600's. How do you print that out?
Clare

I use Reunion, which only runs on Macs. It has some drawbacks, and if I were starting now I might not use it, but it makes pretty nice charts. It's not really possible to print out a tree that goes back that far, unless you want to assemble it like a quilt. Ten generations back, you have 512 ancestors. (You probably won't find them all!)
You have four great-grandfathers; maybe one of them did come from France to Canada. But a lot of family stories are wrong.

Part of the fun doing this is finding out the skeletons in the closet and that some of the stuff you heard passed down is just plain malarkey or embellishments. LOL

What I do find really interesting though for example is that I can find the old UK census records for my relatives back into the mid 1800's listing all the family members, ages, etc, their street addresses back in Manchester UK and then go on Google Streetview and see that some of their houses/tenaments are still standing. And to think that in some cases there were up to 10 of them living in these tiny tiny narrow 2 bedroom little rowhouses and they had boarders as well.

My goes back to 1788, when my great-great-great grandparents were married in Prussia and had my GGGF in 1796. His wife's maiden name was Friderici and her relatives still live in Switzerland, and so I guess she was Italian Swiss originally but spoke German. They inherited lots of land, which makes the records fairly easy to research, but they sold the land in Europe before and after they immigrated to Texas. I have copies of letters describing the land transactions, which are written in German and with German handwriting, which is a bit difficult to read, even for Germans. They almost immigrated to South Africa instead of Texas, but chose Texas because there were already a lot of Germans there. They lived in Galveston and Houston before moving to central Texas, and they entered the country in Galveston, like others of my ancestors. Some ancestors entered via New Orleans and Charleston, SC, but none came through New York or the NE.

Lars

I use Family Tree Maker. It allows for writing and printing of a book. I don't know the full capabilities but my first book, "Family Ties" is 800+ pages & the genealogy goes back to the late 1200s (one direct male line). There are 1,872 individual people entered & I cut off with aunt/uncles & their spouses. I couldn't go any further & hold it to one volume due to publishing size restrictions. Dad's book, "Thunder On The Steppe" is now about 600 pages. So, the software is capable of holding a tremendous amount of data including photos. Family Tree Maker is also good at helping organize your sources & assisting with the bibliography (a lot of work).

Lots of family stories turned out to be inaccurate. My favorite was that we were related to Sir Francis Drake. Ah, yes...but, no. Yes, we are related to Francis Drake but the wrong one! (grin) There's an entire book that's been published about a famous 1930s scam in Iowa about a huckster who bilked folks from their life savings saying he would claim Sir Francis' fortune & they'd receive a share. I've spent years plowing through records of that scam. The dude died in Leavenworth.

/tricia

cloudy_christine - 512 ancestors - that is a lot of names to write down! It does begin to add up the further back you go.

pkguy - I was going to look up the places in Quebec and France and see if I could find them on the map. I would love to go there someday in person.

Lars - What really surprised me was that my family was in Quebec since 1600 and I am French all the way back to the 1500's. I thought sure some other nationalities might have mixed in. But not until my parents in 1944 when some Irish got added to the mix.

triciae - I heard stories growing up that on my Mom's side that we were related to Buffalo Bill Cody. I doubt it, but won't know for sure till I do that side. Cody is an Irish name. Amazing that you could trace it as far back as 1200's. I will check out Family Tree Maker.

Thanks everyone for your help. And I love reading your stories.
Clare

My father told me that his grandfather was a friend of Buffalo Bill's, but I can't see how, since he lived in Pennsylvania. But my Dad did actually know his grandfather, so maybe.....

On my mother side of the family we have traced our family back to King Edward the 1st. One of my cousins has a name that my great grandmother had. It is Coantha

momj, no pictures of Lincoln looks like they were on the other side maybe I should check and see if any of them are Jackson or Lee!

I was telling my dad about this thread and ask him if there was anything I should know about the family that he wanted to share with me now that I was old enough, LoL I'm old, any skeletons or secrets. Maybe I shouldn't have ask because he told me some things that I would have never guessed about in a million years. So now I have to tell my DD that her gangster grandfather on her father's side is nothing compared to my side of the family! Well maybe when she's old enough. And yes it will take some changing on the family tree but he made me promise not to say a word as long as his older sister is still alive. I thought we were the all American hallmark family... Not

Claudia

It is cool to find out your history. I too have skeltons in my family's closet (uncle Harry owned land that was where the red light district in He11's Half Acre was in Nashville, a few thousand years ago. He was a respected judge, so doubly bad!). Here's a piece of my ancestor's (born/died (1775-1849)) last will and testament:

"Third I give and bequeath to my daughter XO one good bed and furniture, one cow & calf this she never recd & my other children have; ...Not considering my daughter XX in a situation suitable to transail her own business I wish and direct that XX be appointed her Guardian and that he take charge of her & her estate..."

He was my mother's (Ann), mother's (Dot), mother's (Jennie, Harry's sister), mother's (Charlotte), father's (Presley), father (James). So is that five greats?! Sheesh. A long time ago. They settled in Nashville and married here in 1797. Nashville was considered to be founded in 1779. So my family has pretty much been here since the founding and never left. Makes it easy to find all of our records. Dad's side, same thing.

A couple of days ago I found that I could search my father�s mother�s family even further than I could his father�s, and that took me back to South Carolina on the French side of the family. I could go even further back on the father�s side if I wanted to contact my relatives in Switzerland, but I would have to write to them in German, as their English is not so good, for some reason. I might do that at some point; my German is very good, if not modern.

Anyway, the other night I had a dream that I was going to a family reunion at some large house in the country, and I hardly knew any of the relatives there. I had a suitcase and traveling gear with me, and I set the suitcase down in the dining room or kitchen. More and more cousins kept arriving, and some of them seemed like sketchy characters, whom I felt I might not be able to trust. The house kept getting bigger also, until it morphed into a warehouse that had lockers in one of the hallways. I put my suitcase in one of the lockers for safe keeping but left my traveling gear in the dining room, unsure of what I should do with it. I thought I should keep some of it with me but was convinced that it was okay in the dining room. I ventured out into other rooms in the warehouse (it had multiple levels), and eventually I discovered that I could no longer find the lockers where I had stored my suitcase. I began to become nervous at this point but told myself that it was just a dream and that I would find everything when I woke up. However, when I tried to find the dining room with the rest of my things, I began to panic and became very lost in the warehouse, having no idea of where I was or where anything was. At that point I decided that I HAD to wake up, but when I did wake up, my pulse was racing, and I felt almost like I was having a panic attack. I can�t tell whether the anxiety was caused by my blood pressure medicine (which seemed to have the opposite effect) or whether it was from the virus I had that was coming back.

To calm myself back down, I started reading again. Right now I am reading anthropology books at night to help get to sleep and I am currently in the Upper Pleistocene Epoch, which is one of my favorite periods, but it might be causing me to think too much about my ancestors.

I found out yesterday that my health insurance will help pay for psychotherapy, and so I am thinking about looking for a therapist to see if I have issues that I need to resolve. They usually put me on more medication, but that might be okay. I think I have a chemical imbalance that makes me psycho sensitive to certain medications. It might also have something to do with what I eat.

I'm not sure how much more I want to find out about my ancestors at this point - I'm sort of afraid they might come back to haunt me. My famaily has been in Texas since it was an independent republic, but that was not so long ago.

Lars