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Thread: Destroying family lore

  1. #16
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    With all the wars and major migrations of people because of those wars as well as famines and disease, I am very skeptical of any source claiming to identify where your ancestors came from. Just look at what happened in Europe recently with millions of people moving from one country to another. The Spanish Armada ran into a storm off the coast of Ireland and many sailors ended up on the beach and a lot of them that lived never went back to Spain.
    Lee Schierer
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  2. #17
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    More kids = more workers on the farm. Those that survived childhood diseases anyway.
    < insert spurious quote here >

  3. #18
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    You folks are industrious!
    My cousin in Seattle does the family tree thing, but I've never really been interested. My paternal grandmother told my dad once we were related to King David. I have no idea how she figured it out.
    Unfortunately, I'm a strong believer in the idea that DNA testing which can be accessed by "Agencies" whether legally or otherwise are much like having to carry ID cards.
    No, I saw what happened to my family in Europe in the '30s. I'll keep away.
    Young enough to remember doing it;
    Old enough to wish I could do it again.

  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stan Calow View Post
    More kids = more workers on the farm. Those that survived childhood diseases anyway.
    I wonder how many live births made it to adulthood in those times.

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Schierer View Post
    With all the wars and major migrations of people because of those wars as well as famines and disease, I am very skeptical of any source claiming to identify where your ancestors came from. Just look at what happened in Europe recently with millions of people moving from one country to another. The Spanish Armada ran into a storm off the coast of Ireland and many sailors ended up on the beach and a lot of them that lived never went back to Spain.
    That movement is actually pretty well documented by the DNA trail, Lee. Ancestry dot com, for example, even provides a migration map. The DNA trail combined with the huge collective participation is pretty amazing. Yes, there will always be some missing information...nature of the beast. Prior to the DNA tracing becoming pretty mainstream it was all about family records which, as this thread illustrates, could fall victim more often to myths and evolving stories.
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  6. #21
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    Those DNA testing sites have opened up their database to law enforcement and found relatives of wanted criminals. Then they looked closer at their relatives and found the crooks.
    Bill D.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...y-race/616171/

  7. #22
    1.GGGGGGGGF Gearhardt was thrown out of his his hometown in Germany for being a Quaker. Well, he was thrown out, but we aren't sure if he was GGGGGGGGGF or Great GGGGGG uncle
    2.GGGGGGGGF Gearhardt petitioned the Philadelphia Colonial Counsel to out law slavery in the colony. Yep he did, but don't know whether a grandfather or uncle.
    3.GGGGF Martin married a Moravian Indian near Bethlehem, PA. Well, several descendants have had DNA done and no indigenous native genes show up.,, BUT, I have a family portrait taken in the 1870's. She and most of the kids have darker complexions and high cheek bones.
    4. GGGF Abraham had 23 children with the same wife TRUE, I have nearly 1100 3rd cousins.
    5. GF Louis had been married before he met grandma. Oh yeah, he sure was, twice, he also had 2 other children before he met grandma that apparently she never found out about.
    6. GGGF Franklin, ran away from home, toured the west and married a Sioux Indian Woman. Nope, he never left the east, his wife worked as a toll taker on toll bridge near his home when he met her.
    7. GGGGGF Henry, left Pennsylvania in 1784 to go to Ohio to collect on land rewarded to Revolutionary soldiers. Nope, he was in the Royalist militia and was so hated after the war, that he had to leave. First he went to Canada, but couldn't stand the cold there.
    8. We come from a long line of Germans. Well no not really, an eighth of them came from Holland, and half came from Alsace, now part of France. One eighth came from Switzerland.
    9. As it turns out, the original Hilbert got on board the ship to America as a single man. He got off married with 3 adopted children. His wife's first husband died a few days after the ship left Europe.

  8. #23
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    I have a mostly northern European ancestry with a known, traceable, and relatively recent migration lineage from Ireland, Scotland, England, Norway, and Sweden. However, DNA says I am 88% Scandinavian and barely Scottish or Irish which tells me the known Scottish ancestors (NE coastal area) and possibly the Irish were mostly Viking offspring. However, using a combination of a solid DNA connection and the Latter Day Saints genealogy database, I have recently traced my English roots back 11 direct generations. That fellow was born somewhere around 1600 while his son was born 1627. I was really amazed about that informational finding (not via DNA directy, but via a string of church records of marriages and baptisms). Similarly, those same Vikings apparently found love in parts of Africa and brought it home because there is a low percent of northern African and Nigerian DNA mingled within. I find the DNA work intriguing because it does not change who anyone is, but can affect who they think their ancestors were.

  9. #24
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    Yes, of course. There were major invasions of Vikings into England. They stayed a long time, including in some ruling rolls, and controlled large pieces of territory. Royal blood is well mixed with Viking blood.

  10. #25
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    My Mom was born in 1920. She said as a child she was told the ideal family had four children. Two to replace the parents, one to increase the population, and one to die.
    Bill D

  11. #26
    Some of the migrations through Europe and across some long distances were quite amazing. At one point a Germanic group of mostly lumberman needed a place to settle. A Catholic Bishop, invited them to move to northern Italy to a mountainous sparsely populated area there. They continued there with their German language and customs until the Italian Government outlawed the speaking of German. When the Canton of Bern decreed that all Mennonites must leave the jurisdiction or face death, thousands of Mennonites left and scattered up and down the rivers. Some to the Palatine area of Germany, some to Holland, and even some to Eastern Europe and Russia. They went wherever they were permitted to settle.

    Moors took over much of the iberian penninsula and held it for many centuries. Not until the 1400' s were they expelled.

    Turks and Ottoman armies made several invasions of Eastern Europe taking over vast territories, even if only for a few years or decades. They were repulsed many times, one of the noted events was the break in the Siege of Vienna in September 11, 1683. (some disagree as to the date and claim the 12th) When the Turk army was routed and decimated as it retreated back toward Turkey. Each time the invading armies left children in their aftermath.

    The Crusades themselves caused a large shift of Northern European genes into the middle east and to a much lesser extend brought genes from the middle east back to Northern Europe.

    Hannibal's army spent a long time going over the Alps to attack Rome. His Army left north African genes in it's wake. Rome itself brought thousands of people from the extreme reaches of it's empire back to the capital where they were not celibate.

    Constant bickering between England and France for a thousand years, spread genes back and forth across the channel.

    Considering all of the population movement that occurred, it is surprising that the migrations can be traced as clearly as they can.

  12. #27
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    That's why I think the testing services that report your ancestry by countries are BS. Its not like your genes have little flags in them. Or that countries like Germany and Italy didnt really exist as countries before the 1870s, as well as borders changing all the time. When you see those commercials that say ". . . 75% Eastern European . . . " - what the heck does that even mean? So I wonder what they really can measure and guess. I'm just assuming its basing a analysis on your data and their database of other people who've tested, and statistically determined that xx% of people with similar genes live in a certain place.

    Anyone have a better understanding?
    < insert spurious quote here >

  13. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by Perry Hilbert Jr View Post
    Considering all of the population movement that occurred, it is surprising that the migrations can be traced as clearly as they can.
    True, but with DNA in the picture, there are a lot of markers that show up that help trace the movements as folks moved, married/procreated with locals, etc. It's a richer environment scientifically at this point because of that.

    Stan, reporting merely by "country" is in deed not the best thing, although country names do have a point of reference that helps folks picture geography based on current boundaries. Ancestry does use the current country labels, but from a mapping perspective, shows things more broadly. At the same time, when you dive in deeper, they can identify and isolate more granular areas because of certain DNA markers that permit that. Again, the point of reference for visualization might include current country names, but that's not how the underlying data is organized and analyzed. Here's an example of my high-level DNA map ... something that's constantly changing and being tweaked over time. (Please note this is not as detailed as it normally would be in the text descriptions because I currently have my subscription suspended due to lack of time to work further on the tree)

    DNAmap.jpg
    Last edited by Jim Becker; 07-27-2022 at 2:11 PM.
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  14. #29
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    Thanks Jim, that is helpful, and confirms some of my suspicions. It's just at odds with the way people typically think and speak of their ancestry. And Americans typically have trouble distinguishing political boundaries versus ethnic and cultural groupings. The difference between where people come from, and what their genetics are, is too complicated to boil down to what the commercials for these services seem to project.
    < insert spurious quote here >

  15. #30
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    Exactly, San...ethnic/genetic differences don't honor boundaries and the latter change many times over the millenia.
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