How cool. I found a group on facebook that said "I am a 'my maiden name"

[DammitJanet]

I have a very strange maiden name. According to what one person said there are only around 900 of us in the US.

There were some folks in this group from Australia. How neat!

One thing that was really cool was people from here and overseas talking about being related to this French Baron whom I have always heard about being related to...and they talked about how this Baron was royalty and how he came down through Pennobscot Bay and married this Indian woman! So now I find out I have not only royalty in me but Indian! LOL.

Which means...that my kids get Indian not only from their dad but from me too...which means that my grandkids get it...which means...that Billie's kids are more "mixed race" too! LMAO!

 

[donna723]

Janet, that's so cool! Are all the people with that same last name related to each other somehow, even if way, way back? It must be fascinating to find relatives you didn't even know you had and finding out more about where you came from and your family history! And does that make you a Baroness ... even a little bit?

We have a very distant relative (we have great-grandparents in common) who has put together a 178-page loose-leaf book on his research into my paternal grandmother's family. One of my cousins sent me a copy of the book as a gift a few years ago and I can't stop looking at it! I have never met the man that did the book, didn't even know he existed before, but my cousin has corresponded with him and she emailed me a picture of him that he sent her. It was almost creepy! My dad was the oldest of four brothers ... and this guy looks EXACTLY like them, except he came along a generation later! You could have put him in with my dad and his brothers and you wouldn't be able to pick out the one that wasn't one of the brothers.

Neat stuff! Hope you have fun with it!

 

[KTMom91]

That's what makes genealogy so much fun! Finding distant family, hearing the stories...I love it!

 

[DammitJanet]

I dont know if we are all related but I think some of us have to be distantly if we are related to this Baron. He must have gotten around...lol. I am assuming that maybe women-folk didnt live long because of problems with childbirth and such so maybe that is how different parts of the family got different places.

 

[donna723]

One of these days I want to join Ancestry.com but it's a little pricey for me now. One of my cousins is really in to it though and sends me tidbits that she finds once in a while. She found one that neither one of us knew before ... our grandfather's father had died at a fairly early age, still in his 30's. He died when the horse he was plowing with fell on him, back in the late 1800's! Apparently that happened quite often back then. But we never knew that our grandfather had been forced to grow up early and take responsibility for his family when he was so very young. We just knew him as a crabby old man who didn't talk much because he had had a stroke before any of us were ever born. The things you learn ...!

 

[ThreeShadows]

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!! I just joined Ancestry.com this past week. Just what I needed, an other addiction! Someone please help me! I was online until 3AM yesterday, I couldn't sleep last night, I've let the housework and laundry go.

I might as well be adopted, I know so little about my ancestors, but I think I found some of them! I saw my paternal g'father's WWI and WWII draft cards. I swear I'll NEVER again complain about the intrusive nature of the US census....

 

[DammitJanet]

3S- what was the name of that Indian tribe you said your boys were from? It started with a P and was a long name. I think I ran into it in my reading today.

 

[ThreeShadows]

Passamaquoddy, part of the Abenaki Nation. Indian Township, Maine is a big center.

 

[DammitJanet]

Yes yes yes! Baron de St. Castine, a very extraordinary character. According to Voltaire, and the Abbe Raynal, he had been Colonel of the regiment of Coriagon, in France. He was a man of family and fortune: he came to America in l670, and settled among the Penobscot Indians, married a daughter of the Chief; and had several other wives. The baron married Abenaki, the daughter of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachemsachem Modockawando. She adopted the French name Mathilde and bore him 10 children

Treaties were made between each of the two major tribes, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddys, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. These treaties pertained largely to lands, goods, and services to be provided by the new state. Becoming a state in 1820, Maine assumed these treaty obligations, but reneged and appropriated a majority of the indigenous lands. These actions were in violation of the Federal Trade and Non-Intercourse Act of 1790, which forbid the transfer of Penobscot land without the consent of Congress, and were the basis for the 1980 lands claims suit against the state and the federal government.

 

[GoingNorth]

My ancestry is very hard to track via sites like this. I have some verbal history but not much. My problem is that my family were Jewish serfs in Russia and Russian occupied areas.

We were just listed as Baron Whatisface's Jews.

husband's great grandfather was Turkish. When he was stationed in Turkey, the townspeople there recognized the name and immediately treated him as a long lost relative. They held a banquet for him and everything.

Other than that, the only other "hit" we've had is that on my maternal side many of the men were rabbis and there's some info on that tradition being passed on down.

The countries we lived in passed from hand to hand being conquered so frequently. I've got a LOT of cousins probably since intermarriage was practiced nearly exclusively.

 

[KTMom91]

I was fortunate to find one of my cousins was the director of the Genealogy library at a major university, and he was required to trace the family. I had only been able to trace back to my grandfather's (Dad's father) grandfather (have a copy of his Civil War discharge paperwork), but Cousin L. was able to go several generations back, and was nice enough to send me a copy of the info. My dad's mother's family seemed to move back and forth between Michigan and Ontario, except for our branch, who went from Nebraska to CA. The standard line while I was growing up was, "If it's R...., we're related!" Similar to your last name, I imagine, Janet.

My mom's father's family is a huge mystery. Her dad's folks came from Nova Scotia, and when we started the search, we discovered that the maiden name on Carrie's (grandfather's mother) death certificate did not match any records anywhere. Apparently she and her mother lived with another family, and that was the last name Carrie used while growing up. Which leaves open the question...who was her father? No clue.

 

[Fran]

I'm pretty sure there is no royalty or Indian blood running through these veins. The information I know and the relatives I have met lead me
to believe they were all just hard working, average folks. No great discovery's to be found.
I'm sure it's fun if you haven't been connected with your family or known it's history.

 

[busywend]

We have evidence that Jossph Smith - founder of the Mormon religion is in the family.

Someone somewhere did a book on the family and my grandmother received a copy of it because she was in it. That is my mom's side.

My dad's would be harder as he was born in Italy so not many generations here. I do know that when his mother died his father married the sister - my dad's aunt. Apparently quite common then.

 

[GoingNorth]

From what I understand, Church records might be great for helping with genealogy searches. A lot of churches kept records of baptisms and the like.