Wonderful, you are having such great success. That photo is a real treasure.

Lindsey here kindly helped me backtrack into my family a little. I found out something very surprising. Not particularly bad or good, just puzzling, and anyone who could give more info is gone, leaving me and my sibling to wonder.

Carry on, ladypat!

I haven't used DNA but did start a family tree on Family Search. But I find myself reluctant to flesh out the tree on my siblings and their families because of family problems in the past. So my tree remains incomplete. Has anyone else had an issue like that??

I haven't done dna testing, but I have done a lot of work on my tree. It's been very interesting. I'm in Facebook groups with some of my 3rd and 4th cousins. I've been able to gather a lot of pictures and stories. I've found a lot on my own, but parts of the family have had a lot of research already done. I try to do my own work so I know it's correct or as correct as I can get it. I've accepted that there are some things that we will truly never know.

I actually have a lot more info on my family than I would have expected. It's fascinating. Of course, the men are easier to track. I try to keep as many random facts as I can such as great great grandpa was a redhead. His daughter in law was afraid of electricity and would not touch a light switch.

My great grandfather did photography. I don't know what happened to the photos he took and kept for himself. He was literate in a time when my other family members mainly weren't. He sent his photos out to aunts and uncles and siblings. Photos have been trickling back in. I love it. Getting each one is like finding a treasure.

Murraysmom, I think maybe a private tree on a place like Ancestry might be a better to flesh out the other limbs. Or you could get a second account with a name that isn't yours and flesh them out with that. An aunt and I are the two people I've seen working on one of my lines. I get notifications when she changes things. I rarely change things. I mainly add notes or pictures and ask questions when I have them. She knows it's me so she directly emails me.

I have been doing genealogy for over 20 years and I love it. If you make a tree at Ancestry any people who are living are made private automatically. So no one can even see their names. The names only appear after a death date is placed or you mark them deceased. You can also make your whole tree private if you want. I have my DNA and also many members of my family have done DNA also. It is a fascinating hobby. I also love finding old photos and having them in the tree also. The best part is contacting cousins and finding out what information they have. Some times you are happily surprised at what each different branch knows about the family. I wish you good luck with your family search!

When I was young, and there was no DNA, and no internet, I remember friends of my parents traveling all over the country and world to do genealogy research. I remember thinking "How boring!" Now I am that age and I am loving it. Please continue telling me more of your stories.

My dad enjoyed researching his family and traced our ancestors back to the 1600's and the Jamestown area. He said he found trying to find anything in Europe preceding their landing was frustrating. He was excited to tell me that the first born male in America had the same name I gave my son centuries later.

My great aunt on my mother's side traced their tree back to Increase Mather who was a minister and brother to the more well known Cotton Mather. I found a collection of Increase Mather's sermons at a book store several years ago which was interesting.

A thing about fleshing out the family tree is you need to decide how you are going to flesh it out. Do you include, especially after the mid 1800's all of the wives and children that a man had or just those of your direct ancestor. Before then it was not uncommon for both men and women to have multiple spouses. Men because their wives died in childbirth and of other causes. Women when their husbands died unless they had property that provided income had to remarry. A widow became basically the property of the nearest male relative to decide their future. Contrary to the male line being easier to trace in most of my family the female line is easier. One thing to think about is that except in a few cases you know who the mother is but as said many places the father can be iffy.

On Ancestry I have gotten back to the 1400's and could go further In two lines if I wanted to. A problem that you may find in Ancestry is that people have the same names within a family and the birth and death dates can be switched between them. I thought I had several finished then I realized the information of the birth, wedding, death dates were not correct. An example was a baby born after a father's death there is no way the father listed could be born after the birthdate of the father.

A pet peeve of mine are the people that use place names that did not exist at the time the person was living. Many of the early colonies were much larger than when they eventually became a state and some like Virginia and West Virginia were divided after that. Stating that someone was born in a particular state or county before the US even existed is something that is common. Happens in other countries also especially England.

"A thing about fleshing out the family tree is you need to decide how you are going to flesh it out. Do you include, especially after the mid 1800's all of the wives and children that a man had or just those of your direct ancestor."

I include all spouses if I find verifiable information on them.

I have worked on my family tree off and on since about 2008, mostly on Ancestry. My mother's side was pretty easy, since census records were good (although spelling wasn't!), I knew my great-grandparents' names, and other researchers had done a lot of work tracing the family back to England -- assuming that there are no mistakes.

My paternal grandmother's family had created a family tree also, and I received a copy; but unfortunately it only goes back as far as the great-great-grandparents. That did include the town they emigrated from but so far I have not found them in translated records from Russia.

My father's paternal line is another story, and could make an interesting episode for one of those TV shows. My paternal grandfather became a he-who-shall-not-be-named in my family and apparently the same in his own family. I do not know why, and if my father's first cousin knows, she isn't talking (when I was put in touch with her, she initially denied that he existed, then that he was really related to her). There is a lot more to the story and because of all that, tracking my paternal grandfather's line was difficult at first. I have been fortunate to uncover a lot of information about that family, but still have not been able to trace my grandfather (or his brother) between 1926 and his death. I may have found a photo of him in a newspaper, but don't know how I can confirm that it truly is him.

I do see people making completely illogical mistakes, as Maifleur said; and also making the mistake of assuming that your Joe Lastname is the same person as their Joe Lastname, even though no other details match. Because of this, one needs to take hints from other family trees with a grain of salt until you see the records yourself, or can contact the person to ask their source.

raee since he is not to be named within the family I would look for marriage records on Ancestry unless the family was hyper religious back then. One of the most common reasons for disowning someone was marriage to someone that as not acceptable or being gay. Being gay was not a bar to contracting marriages or having children especially if there was property involved. Depending how far back it is quite a few swung both ways and while it was frowned on it was accepted if you kept it discrete.

I am a volunteer at our county historical society and do genealogy research for people. It is very addictive and interesting. Ancestry has surely picqued the interest in many people but it can easily lead you astray. We spend a lot of time helping people disprove what they have found on Ancestry. Once someone posts something it goes like wildfire and becomes difficult to stop.

Our research is " page turning" in old books, church records, family histories, etc. ....not online. It is important to know that most surnames had more that one spelling. We have a local name that has 50 different spellings. As someone said, first names were often used over and over again creating much confusion. Many times each male child was given the same first name and used their middle name. It is a like solving a mystery. We have a lot of stories to tell!

Enjoy your searches!

raee, are you dealing with someone who possibly had an alias? We have some interesting characters like that in my family? My family member was identified by his real name at his death. It was around the same time period. They were running moonshine, but there is other stuff they were hiding from also.

After I retired, I began researching my family tree and discovered the other branch of my relatives that I did not know about. My ggg grandfather's 1st wife died after having 6 children. Two yrs later, he married again and the 2nd wife produced 3 children and then died. He married for a 3rd time and there were no more children. I descend for the 2nd wife and my dad did not know about the other part of his family. He spoke only of his direct line. His father refused to pass any information about the family. He said it wasn't important and threatened to cuff his children if they asked again.

Its my suspicion there was a family split between my grandfather and within his family. The 1st and 2nd wives mentioned above produced a set of half-brothers. The first set of brothers used a different spelling of the surname; The first set used a double-d in the middle of the name whereas the 2nd set used a single-d. However, I am inclined to believe these different spellings were due to illiteracy rather than a family split. Father back in the line, illiteracy was common and the original spelling has been lost. Third parties spelled the name as they heard individuals pronounce it. I have been able to reconnect with the other that part of my family and found there had been a group of them living just 2 counties away from where I had been raised, and another group one county away. Farm folks in my part of the world did not travel much during the Great Depression and WW2. Our social contact was limited to our neighborhood.

I don't have the brain cells to understand DNA and genetics so I'm not even going to try. My sister did it and got back a report that shows absolutely zero Native American and we were always told that on our Mother's side our Great Grandfather was Native American. I was livid thinking that we were lied to all those years. So when I questioned it she said that we get 50 percent of our DNA from each parent, meaning that if the Native American DNA was included in the 50 percent that was left out that would be the reason why it didn't show up in the report. She said even though we are full siblings if I did the test it could still show up in my report. I don't know if this is all true but it's too complicated for me to check it out. I still don't know why people all over the world have different DNA since supposedly we all come from humans in Africa back at the beginning. As for researching the line through names and places that wouldn't work for my Dad's side since it's rumored that our family name was assumed for some deep dark reason. We are probably better off not knowing.

I have no interest in finding more family. I have 5 cousins on my moms side, and 1 left on my dads side (2 [brother and sister] died many years apart). I have a few aunts and uncles (1 set on both side have passed away in recent years. My dad brother and sister died within a week of each other).

My mother had one part of her family tree traced back because she found a family on Vancouver Island who share her maiden name. It's a rare name so the husband asked his wifes brother (he's a genealogist) to trace the families. They're second cousins, sharing the same great-grandfather. My mothers fathers side originated in Armenia. Travelled through Turkey, then France. Then off to Germany and finally The Netherlands. We've heard similar stories from my mom's mothers side and we know that my dads fathers side also came through France before settling in The Netherlands.

As for my husbands side: I can just go to the museum here in Calgary and talk to his family. His family originated from the reserve that borders the city and there's a ton of history about his family in the archives.

My faint attempts at genealogy are most interesting to me as they allowed me to place family members in history. My only 'recent' immigrant to the US was my maternal grandmother, who claimed to be a Scot and an Episcopalian. She did arrive NYC on a sailing ship from Glasgow (pre-Ellis Island), but the ship's manifest shows that she and her mother, sister and brother had boarded the ship in Ireland, and that her mother's given and maiden names identify her as Irish Catholic.

The history there is that it was a handicap to be Irish Catholic in NYC when she arrived in the late 1800's. The family was also dirt poor and probably illiterate. Knowing more of her story has softened my feelings for a woman I experienced as hard and suspicious. She had reason to be. All of her immigrating family was dead of TB by the time she was 30 and married -- to a Scot whose ancestors were in Revolutionary Army -- and who also had a Irish-origins mother. My mother was their only child, born in a boarding house in the area where the UN now stands. It was owned by an earlier-immigrating aunt of my grandmother. (Not many women owned property in those days, leading to my conjecture about the real nature of the house. Another secret?)

By the late 1800's in the more progressive areas women who were widows could own property in their own name. Unmarried ones not normally. Even though it was allowed it did not mean that they had total control over it. If you know the woman's name and are interested a search for a marriage certificate may discover it this is true. Many people for lack of money, religious persons, or simply for convenience declared themselves married similar to some today and listed themselves as such on things like census.

ritaweeda, what your sister told you is correct! How much DNA from any one ancestor, especially from several generations back, is passed down, can vary a lot between siblings and cousins. So it doesn't mean that you didn't have a NA ancestor, but just that none of his DNA hasn't been passed to your sister. You would have to look for other ways to confirm his ethnicity.

adellabedella, it is quite possible -- one of my cousins believes that he and his brother were involved in criminal activities in that time period. My grandmother had hinted to someone but never came out and said for sure-- she apparently told someone that she threw him out because of bringing guns into the home. She had told one or two family members that she changed her (and her sons') names for business reasons (because of racism) but another time said it was to be sure that grandfather would not be able to have contact with her or the boys.

maifleur, I have found the marriage record for my paternal grandparents. Another interesting part of the story! This was back in 1920. My grandfather lied about where he lived (Cincinnati instead of Cleveland), and used his brother's birthdate (I am not sure if 19 was underage for a man then), but answered honestly about his parent's names. There is quite a backstory to his relationship with his father, going back to 1908, I have learned. Digitized newspapers are a wonderful thing! It appears that his father was quite religious, too, and probably didn't approve of my grandmother who was something of a socialist and didn't follow many religious customs at the time.

Thank you adellabedella and ghoghunter for your information. I will check out the privacy measures of Family Search.

One neat thing I discovered in doing the small amount I have is that I found a cousin on Facebook. Our grandfathers were brothers. There were five siblings. Two went to Cincinnati and three went to Indiana. He is from the Indiana side and said he never knew where the other two brothers went and was happy to connect with me. He does a lot of work cataloging and gathering information from cemeteries. He knows a lot of history and I am happy to have found him too.

Thanks again.

Raee, I found a line like that. A person who was killed at the same time as my relative was also living under an alias. They died in 1934 and were running moonshine. I think he must have killed someone or robbed some place because the alias doesn't make sense to me otherwise. I contacted one of this man's descendants. They never found out his real name. I think my relative knew and was probably related to him. They were both originally from Kentucky. People would get into trouble there for all kinds of crime and go other places with a new name. A lot of the Kentucky people went to Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma and other states and territory.

If you did a dna test or could use your sibling's test, you might be able to find out who your grandfather was or at least narrow it down a bit. If he was that bad, there are probably newspaper stories.