OT--any twists in your family tree?? - YouLookFab Forum

Category

General

Welcome! Read about what to wear and how to wear it on the YLF Blog. Join the YLF Forum to ask specific questions or just chat about fashion and personal style. Or check out the curated list of things we love in YLF Finds.

Outfits Ensembles Trends Advice

OT--any twists in your family tree??

Patty

Veteran

It's been a bit of a family history summer holiday this year. Two weeks ago we found out that we have aboriginal ancestry (Canada). Now, coming from a french family that basically cleared the land to help create a neighboring village in the early 1800s it's not entirely surprising except that the ancestor is not a local to Georgian Bay native but from Red Deer Alberta--thousands of miles to the west. Can you imagine traveling then!!!?? Just before the opening of the American west, a young Rice tribe member married a member of the North West Company and then returned to his homeland in the east in Quebec with their kids. Then these kids traveled back toward Georgian Bay. I wish I knew their actual story!
THEN I find out my Mom's Mom is the an adopted illegitimate love child of some couple in a neighboring town. The adopted Mom, my great great grandmother, was the doctor's washer woman who could not have kids so she was offered this baby girl and later another baby boy from another patient<---but none of this is confirmed except by word of mouth--Holey moley eh!!??
AND--my husband can track his family tree to the 1500s and their first arrival in Canada in the mid 1600s--just WOW!

General

21 replies

Latest reply was from mrseccentric

rae

(website)

Veteran

Patty, these stories are beyond cool! It's so wonderful that you know so much about your family -- and 1500s... wow! All I know is that my mom is from a farm in Hawaii, and my Dad's parents are straight from Lithuania and pretty much never wanted to speak of the old country again...

Astrid

Veteran

The brother of my paternal grandmother has a passion for ancestry and he has researched a family tree that goes way back, but I've never seen it.. I don't know all that much about the families of my grandfathers, but my maternal grandmother also has a family tree at home. She had to do this family tree in school during the Third Reich. Because of this one I know that I have french ancestry, Huguenots who came to Germany and germanised their french family name during the Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871. This name was the maiden name of my grandmother. And I know that my grandmother's ancestors from the other side of the family came from Poznań and they actually had a big estate and land there, that was lost after World War II.

Mo

(website)

Veteran

My parents both married 3 times so there are branches off the branches lol! Supposedly an ancestor on my dad's side was married to the late president John Quincy Adams. Never looked it up, though.
Interestingly, an old boyfriend of mine was both the uncle and father of his daughter. He and his former GF had a child, then later his dad married the GF's mom. The grandparents are still together. So this little girl only ever had one grandma and one grandpa.

taylor

Veteran

WOW! Juicy bits of info!

I am just now starting to dig into prior generations...who knows what secrets I will uncover:)

annagybe

(website)

Veteran

Supposed my great grandfather, an Estonian living in Siberia got mixed up in the Russian Revolution. According to my father he was actually pardoned by Lenin. After that he hightailed out of Russia. The family stayed in Japan and China for a while before finally settling in Australia.

Ornella

(website)

Veteran

Gee, Patty, one of my favorite shows is BBC's "Who Do You Think you Are?" where celebrities trace their family trees. There have bee some pretty awesome and touching stories, but yours is quite up there with the best.

Kari

Veteran

What awesome stories!

Mo, your boyfriend's family situation reminds me of that "I'm My Own Grandpa" song.

I have a couple historical trivia to share from my own family:
My mom's side is related to a the Billington family, a group of pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. One of the passengers, John Billington, ended up being the first man hanged for murder in the colonies. http://www.mayflowerfamilies.c.....family.htm
The family was apparently a bit troublesome on the Mayflower passage, too:
" Just after arrival, young Francis Billington shot off his father's musket in the Mayflower's cabin, showering sparks around open barrels of gunpowder, nearly causing a catastrophe."

Astrid

Veteran

Really interesting stuff!

I have one other curiosity to tell, even if it's not family related. But my grandfather is a violinist and was fairly well-known in the past in our neck of the woods. He has a violin that was made 1789 in Paris by a violin maker who died on the guillotine later on during the French Revolution. I learned to play on this instrument.

MsMaven

Veteran

Oh yes--quite a few bent people too, I've discovered. Several convicted felons, one participant in a mass murder who was never caught. Had a couple of great finds with the online Old Bailey records.

Currently I am writing a book about my great-grandfather who went on the lam followed by a federal marshal clutching an arrest warrant hot on his trail. Been working on it for four years, hope to get a first draft done before the end of the year. This is the reason I seem to be on and off YLF so frequently. When I need a break I come here.

Katiepea

(website)

Veteran

My only exciting bit of family history is that I'm related (thru marriage), to King Edward VII's most famous mistress, Lillie Langtry. I find it amusing that a family as boring as mine could have such a colourful figure.

Lillie was considered one of the most beautiful women of her time and trust me when she led a life that puts Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance to shame. http://www.lillielangtry.com/Pics01.htm -yes siree, she has her own fan website! (I only discovered it just now and am off to have a look myself. I sure wish I had some of her genetics because, gosh, she was a stunner...)

The only other semi exciting piece of trivia is that my aunty has traced my father's family tree back to the 1600's and has discovered that all my ancestors were known for their musical ability. How crazy is that?!

Anonymous

My great-grandmother (15x) was the Queen of the Netherlands. That's the most exciting thing we've discovered so far.

I'll keep the scandalous family history to myself.

Kristine

Veteran

How interesting!!

It's funny you ask about twists. My grandmother was a contortionist and performed at venues like opera houses! There are some scandals too but they're too recent to be quaint yet!

Beth

Veteran

I have no interesting tidbits on my side of the family, but DH's great-uncle (I think I have the greats right) was the judge who granted Wallis Simpson her first divorce. The stories about her in that area are legendary (as they were everywhere she went).

Janet

(website)

Veteran

Wow, lots of interesting stories!

My mom's side of the family is well-researched: we're descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and of the first native-born mayor of New York, Stephanus Van Cortlandt. I don't know much about my dad's side, other than the fact that there's a Scottish/Irish background.

Jonesy

Veteran

My family tree is much too twisted to share online :)! Everyone's stories are fascinating.

chewyspaghetti

Veteran

I think the most surprising thing that came out of my mom's genealogy research is that I am of African American descent- on both my mother's side, and my father's side.

Jenava

(website)

Veteran

I love reading everyone's stories...fascinating!

I think the most interesting thing I know about my family is that my great-great-grandmother's first husband died on his way back from the Civil War on an open boxcar. He fought in an Irish regiment from Wisconsin. The war ended in the summer in the south, and by the time they made it back to Wisconsin it was winter but they had no winter clothing so he died of hypothermia. She moved to Seattle to re-marry and homestead in Milltown, and one of their daughters married a Yesler (there's a street named Yesler in Seattle).

My great-grandfather was 50 when my grandmother was born, and my great-great-grandmother was 50 when he was born (he was the youngest...can you imagine having a baby at 50 before the turn of the century? I'm suspicious that he was actually one of his un-wed "sister's" sons, though, considering the times...). My great-grandparents met when she was his mother's maid. Apparently his mother's second husband eventually ran off with a "squaw"...so we probably have native relatives!

Aziraphale

Veteran

Oh my word....my mom's family history is full of interesting twists. Her mother (my maternal grandmother, my Nan) was the illegitimate child of a vivacious young working-class Londoner and a French diplomat. She (my Nan's mom) had actually been engaged to a young man of a much higher class, but he went away to fight in World War I and was terribly badly injured, and when he returned he was crippled and refused to see his fiancee on the grounds that he felt like "less than a man". So for about a year he wouldn't talk to her and she didn't know what to do, and ended up getting pregnant by the French guy, but then her fiance's mother, who really liked her despite the class difference, convinced her to try again with her son to help him heal psychologically (the physical healing had mostly taken place, but he was broken in other ways). So she had the illegitimate baby (my Nan) and gave her to her sister, married the injured war vet fiance, and left for British Columbia. There, they bought two small islands off the mainland coast (you could do that back then!) and proceeded to live in a tent for the next year! They went on to have three kids of their own. My Nan was raised in London by her kind-hearted aunt and, it must be said, cruel and unpleasant uncle.

Sadly, my Nan's mother never openly acknowledged my Nan. She exchanged letters with her for her whole life, but never told her other three children about her. I guess back in those days, that sort of thing was a big deal. Perhaps she thought it would be unfair to her sister, since the sister had raised the baby as her own daughter. But at any rate, the Canadian connection continued. My mom, inspired by the photographs of beautiful British Columbia that her biological grandmother sent her (despite the fact that she always referred to her as "aunt"), moved out here from London when she was twenty, met my dad, and never left.

None of this is in my genetic family tree, however. My parents were unable to conceive, and they adopted me when I was only ten days old. My birth parents were fifteen. But I am of English descent, genetically speaking (three English grandparents and one Icelandic one, apparently).

Patty

Veteran

Great stories--it's like an extension of the last three weeks I spent back home hearing so many family stories--what interesting people we come from!

Oh and I messed up my own story here--too much info in my head--I kinda mixed up two stories--as it really happened and it's traceable (LOL) the fur trader and his native wife made it as far east as an English outpost on a small island the west of Manitoulin Island in the great lakes. This island was ceded to the Americans after the was of 1812 and all British subjects were moved to another British fort that is now my hometown--but there was no town yet so these settlers had to make one. Two daughters of this couple ended up in a small village 20 miles away were my Great great... grandfather (who came from Quebec) to-be-met one at a dance. They were married a year later.
There-- that's better!

anne

Veteran

A very interesting thread.

I MAY have a convict in my ancestry. (As in, someone arrived in Australia by a convict ship with the right name, but not sure if it really is the ancestor!)

mrseccentric

(website)

Veteran

oh, how i love these stories!

archetypical holiday dinner exchange at our house growing up:

paternal grandma: "Did you kids know that some of your ancestors on your father's side came over to America on the Mayflower?"

Mother: "And some of your ancestors on your mother's side were here to greet them!"

(actually, they were living off the fat of the land in California - acorns and salmon and wildflower corms, yum!) so yeah, it was a little tense. especially growing up in California, where there's a lot of state pride about the missions and the gold rush, both of which were death traps/concentration camps for the native peoples. mom's family did not manage to retain much cultural heritage, but the indigenous view of history was there. mom would refuse to take us to any missions from the time we were little, even tho we'd here all these stories about the kindly padres and their civilizing influence in school. when i started learning how to research primary historical sources in school, found out mom's point of view was fully documented.

scandal and scoundrels? i'll leave the stories of bootleggers, madams, rodeo champions, mystery siblings, my 68 year old grandpa scaring a bear off of a grilling steak in the high sierras with nothing more than a rolled-up newspaper - for later.

needless to say, i love my family to absolute pieces. sounds like many of you here feel the same exact way! steph