Tracing the family ancestors.

Cherry Picker

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Anyone else like tracing their family history? During the frozen winter months, I like to dig into my family ancestry. This winter I was able to trace back to 1583 in England and show our connection to two past Presidents. John Adams & John Quincy Adams. I love the picture of my Great Grandad, Terrel, who I was named after. My born name is Terrell Adams. He moved just south of Dodge City in 1885.
 

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Wow, wonderful picture! I traced back to my 6th great Grandfather who immigrated from Germany in 1756. And while we are showing pictures here is my Grandfather who was the cook at Teddy Roosevelts hunting camp in Montana. I have his 1894 Winchester and chaps.
 

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My hunt for ancestors was complicated by a ne'er-do-well grandfather who changed his last name from Kyne to Kirby to duck wives, bill collectors, law enforcement, etc. I didn't find out this until 2019. His brother Fred was about as bad, being divorced from his wife because she found out about his girlfriends in NY and Canada. I never met either of them, since my grandfather died in 1951 and Fred died in 1925. I regret that my Dad never got to meet his extended family. His grandmother didn't die until 1955, so if he had known, he may have been able to see her. His grandfather, however, died 30 years before he was born. The grandson of Uncle Fred's wife (who remarried) theorized that they inherited money long before they were mature enough to handle it.

So, while we have information on my Mom's side of the family, and some from my Dad's Mother's side of the family (even though she was born in Silesia, then Germany, but after WWII Poland, which was then "degermanized" by the Soviet occupation, with all non-essential Germans deported), we have only the little I've been able to discover on my Dad's Father's side of the family. I have 1st cousins in Hamburg, NY, who have chosen not to respond to my letter, and I won't bother them again.

I think I did find that I had a 3rd cousin, a gazillion times removed, who came over on the Mayflower. :)

-- Tom
 
My brother has done considerable research on our family. Dads side of the family has been a difficult search. Mothers side of the family he traced the name back to around 800 in Scotland. Great Grandfather grew up in the Staunton Va area. He and his brothers all joined the Confederacy due to being hungry. Every unit that came thru the area took all the food they had. He was wounded in the foot. It became infected and they too his right leg off below the knee. He moved to Wv after the war, built his log cabin and delivered the U S Mail On Horseback.

As a youngster i got to hold his belt buckle and uniform buttons I have no idea what might have happened to them My Grandmother was very protective of those items.
 

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I wished I could trace things better, but lack of much info keeps from me finding a lot of specifics. Basically, on my dad's side I heard they came from Germany somewhere around the early 1900's and changed the spelling our our last name to make it easier to pronounce. On my mom's side I heard that my great, great, great, (not sure exactly how many "greats" either 2 or 3) grandfather was a full-blooded Cherokee chief, so at least part of my ancestry is the original owners of part of this country :lol:
 
My wife and I have done our family trees. Was very surprised when my great great great grandfather along with his brothers and her great great great uncles and cousin were all in the same civil war calvary unit in Wayne county Virginia (now West Virginia).
It was the 16th VA Calvary CSA.
Aren't you just amazed by history.
 
I like to study the genealogy of the people that originally lived on the permissions I hunt. That way I can try to identify things that they might have personally dropped. For instance I found this on this woman's property.
 

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The ancestors on my moms side of the family came here from Ireland during the potato famine and fought for the confederate army of Tennessee. On my way to dads side, they came from Spain in the days of the explorers and started a life in California. They were some of the first settlers there and later made the trip to Iowa in a covered wagon.
 
Interesting Tom. My ancestor, John Alden, came to America on the Mayflower as well. They may have known each other.

Terrell

My hunt for ancestors was complicated by a ne'er-do-well grandfather who changed his last name from Kyne to Kirby to duck wives, bill collectors, law enforcement, etc. I didn't find out this until 2019. His brother Fred was about as bad, being divorced from his wife because she found out about his girlfriends in NY and Canada. I never met either of them, since my grandfather died in 1951 and Fred died in 1925. I regret that my Dad never got to meet his extended family. His grandmother didn't die until 1955, so if he had known, he may have been able to see her. His grandfather, however, died 30 years before he was born. The grandson of Uncle Fred's wife (who remarried) theorized that they inherited money long before they were mature enough to handle it.

So, while we have information on my Mom's side of the family, and some from my Dad's Mother's side of the family (even though she was born in Silesia, then Germany, but after WWII Poland, which was then "degermanized" by the Soviet occupation, with all non-essential Germans deported), we have only the little I've been able to discover on my Dad's Father's side of the family. I have 1st cousins in Hamburg, NY, who have chosen not to respond to my letter, and I won't bother them again.

I think I did find that I had a 3rd cousin, a gazillion times removed, who came over on the Mayflower. :)

-- Tom
 
My maternal Grandmother comes from the Singer(formerly Sanger) family. story is the revolutionary war split the family...one Brother fought for the colonies and the other fought for the british. at the end of the war the king gave those who fought for england plots of land in Canada. they never spoke again. (family reunion was always held east of Toronto Canada)
My maternal Grandfather was born in Belfast,Ireland and my Great grandfather was actually a riveter and worked in the shipyards of Belfast on the Titanic and the sister ships...later moving the family to Niagara falls NY in 1917.
don't know much about my fathers side except the German ancestry can be traced back to the German state of Saxony .... the Saxons...
 
I discovered that the husband of a German cousin of mine (in Germany) put together a whole web page dedicated to our family tree over there it goes back to the late 1700's and shows many of the families that married into my father's surname. My dad came here from Nuremberg area in 1960, alone, a fledgling baker at the age of 20...whose first mode.of transportation to work was a motorboat on the Hudson River before he even had a license to drive a car. He was drafted in '65 before even obtaining his citizenship and joined the Airborne.

I've done further research on my surname, and it appears my fathers ancestors came to the rural towns north of Nuremberg from further east, possibly from the mountains along the Czech-German border, not far from what is known as the Sudetanland. There are graves near there with variations of my name going back 500 years.

I hate to say it, but my mother's side is actually more interesting than my father's! He father's family was the last of a clan to move from the tiny Isle of Man to Rhode island and later further inland. Through that conduit I have Irish, Norse, Scottish, and various other Norse-Celtic influences. My great-great-great grandmother from there was born in India! It stands to reason that she was the daughter of a British military, government, or business person working in India during the British occupation. Oddly, I've always had a deep interest in eastern religions and philosophies.

There was one young fellow with my mother's very uncommon maiden name who, like my father, came here alone as a very young man to work as a joiner. He made it to Wisconsin or Michigan on the steamship American in 1867 and there is no further record of him. What's amazing about that is that he was born in Bremen, Germany not the Isle of Man, and his first name was Gustav! My uncle surmised that Gustav was the son of a British sailor and a German woman. Those British military men sure got around even long ago!

My mother's mother's family is a different story. They were Polish with some French mixed in. My Polish(German educated) great grandfather was an ambitious businessman who also got around alot and was no family man. He was in the import-export business, and traded many things...although Coffee and wild animals for pets are the only ones verified. He eventually left the family to pursue his dreams, and was eventually invited to join a coffee dynasty somewhere in South America. Apparently he didnt take up the offer, and ended up retiring as a coffee buyer for A&P supermarkets. Oddly, I ended up marrying a Peruvian girl myself, and we go down there.almost every year.

Sometimes it really seems we inherit not just genes, but also the Karma and Dharma of our ancestors. Oops, LoL! There's the India connection in me right there! And moreover, my dad was a baker and I'm a butcher! And I never really met him until I was 32. I hope my son doesnt become a candlestick maker to seal the fate! And here's the real kicker: When I met him, my father and I had just independently got done reading the same book about Oetzi, the 5000 yr old German mummy found frozen in the Alps . We were both fascinated by that. It almost makes me think we are actually related to that guy quite directly.
 
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Metal Pig I think it is very interesting to read about your ancestor as you can learn a lot you had no idea.

My Mothers side is a pretty event full as well. For example, my Mothers maidian name of Kincheloe. The real first man in space was Iven Carl Kincheloe Jr. a test pilot killed while testing a F-104A. In the mid-1950s, Kincheloe joined the Bell X-2 program and on September 7, 1956,[6] flew at more than 2,000 mph (3,220 km/h) and to a height of 126,200 feet (38,470 m)[2][6] (some sources list 126,500),[3] the first flight ever above 100,000 feet (30,480 m). For this he was nicknamed "America's No. 1 Spaceman." He was awarded the Mackay Trophy for 1956 for the flight.[7]

*On September 25, 1959, Kincheloe Air Force Base in Michigan's Upper Peninsula was renamed in his honor;[13] formerly Kinross AFB, it closed in 1977.

*A monument stands approximately 1½ miles (2½ km) east of his hometown of Cassopolis, Michigan; an angular stone slab twelve feet (3.7 m) in height, it bears a silver model of the X-2 pointed skyward.[14][15] (41.915°N 85.973°W)

*Kincheloe Elementary School, part of the nearby Dowagiac Union School District, is named in his honor.[16]

*The television program Hogan's Heroes included a character named Staff Sergeant James Kinchloe, played by Ivan Dixon.

*In 1992, he was inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor.[17]

*In 2011, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.[18][19]
The Society of Experimental Test Pilots Iven C. Kincheloe Award is named in his honor.[20]

*The Purdue University Arnold Air Society squadron is named in his honor.

The X-2 program was halted three weeks later, after a fatal crash resulted in the death of Mel Apt in a flight in which Apt became the first person to exceed Mach 3.[8] Kincheloe was later selected as one of the first three pilots in the next rocket-powered aircraft program, the X-15,[9] and would have been part of the Man in Space Soonest project.


I discovered that the husband of a German cousin of mine (in Germany) put together a whole web page dedicated to our family tree over there it goes back to the late 1700's and shows many of the families that married into my father's surname. My dad came here from Nuremberg area in 1960, alone, a fledgling baker at the age of 20...whose first mode.of transportation to work was a motorboat on the Hudson River before he even had a license to drive a car. He was drafted in '65 before even obtaining his citizenship and joined the Airborne.

I've done further research on my surname, and it appears my fathers ancestors came to the rural towns north of Nuremberg from further east, possibly from the mountains along the Czech-German border, not far from what is known as the Sudetanland. There are graves near there with variations of my name going back 500 years.

I hate to say it, but my mother's side is actually more interesting than my father's! He father's family was the last of a clan to move from the tiny Isle of Man to Rhode island and later further inland. Through that conduit I have Irish, Norse, Scottish, and various other Norse-Celtic influences. My great-great-great grandmother from there was born in India! It stands to reason that she was the daughter of a British military, government, or business person working in India during the British occupation. Oddly, I've always had a deep interest in eastern religions and philosophies.

There was one young fellow with my mother's very uncommon maiden name who, like my father, came here alone as a very young man to work as a joiner. He made it to Wisconsin or Michigan on the steamship American in 1867 and there is no further record of him. What's amazing about that is that he was born in Bremen, Germany not the Isle of Man, and his first name was Gustav! My uncle surmised that Gustav was the son of a British sailor and a German woman. Those British military men sure got around even long ago!

My mother's mother's family is a different story. They were Polish with some French mixed in. My Polish(German educated) great grandfather was an ambitious businessman who also got around alot and was no family man. He was in the import-export business, and traded many things...although Coffee and wild animals for pets are the only ones verified. He eventually left the family to pursue his dreams, and was eventually invited to join a coffee dynasty somewhere in South America. Apparently he didnt take up the offer, and ended up retiring as a coffee buyer for A&P supermarkets. Oddly, I ended up marrying a Peruvian girl myself, and we go down there.almost every year.

Sometimes it really seems we inherit not just genes, but also the Karma and Dharma of our ancestors. Oops, LoL! There's the India connection in me right there! And moreover, my dad was a baker and I'm a butcher! And I never really met him until I was 32. I hope my son doesnt become a candlestick maker to seal the fate! And here's the real kicker: When I met him, my father and I had just independently got done reading the same book about Oetzi, the 5000 yr old German mummy found frozen in the Alps . We were both fascinated by that. It almost makes me think we are actually related to that guy quite directly.
 
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