Positive Post Fridays

I got my long-awaited National Archives package today! I'm currently going through about 200 pages of CMSR and pension records related to Pvt. William F. Town and Julia Ann Town, fourth-great-grandparents of mine.

Two big discoveries so far:

- I didn't realize the extent of William's battle involvement (New Orleans!), or of his war-related disabilities. (Actually, I didn't know he had *any* of the latter, but actually he spent much of the war hospitalized and barely functioned when he got back home. Awful stuff.)

- Julia was adopted into the family of Solomon Hazelton at the age of four months, but still kept the surname Moore until marriage. No wonder she's been such a brick wall for me.

Instead of going directly through the National Archives this time, which I always find very hit-or-miss, I contracted American Civil War Ancestor. (http://www.acwancestor.org/ratesservices.htm) I'm pleased. I'm so used to incomplete packages or poorly-done photocopies from NARA, so getting a nice CD-ROM filled with high-quality photos of every single page in William's file, even the backs of envelopes, has been great. It's nice to have a fellow genealogist help you, since they know what's important to copy (read: everything), whereas NARA tends to just photocopy the basics. I got hundreds of image files from ACWA, and only on two of them did I spot anything problematic -- one had a crease they didn't quite work out, and they forgot to unfold a bent corner on another page. Otherwise, they did a great job. I'll never order directly through NARA again.

Private User, have you tried DNA testing yet to see your genetic breakdown by country? It's pretty amazing.

I plan on doing that next so that I can verify whats listed here. Mind sharing your results?

Which results? My mtDNA haplogroup is U4c1, if that's what you mean. My ethnic percentages were way off. A *lot* of lines I believed to be English weren't. I am increasingly of the belief that starting with a DNA test instead of an Ancestry account makes sense in this new era of genealogy.

We have projects and threads dedicated to DNA testing if you're interested.

Private User That's very interesting. What were they instead of English? Are you sure that the DNA testing results are accurate? Which projects? I wouldnt mind reading over them.

Don't forget not all Englah people , were orginal English. By the time they made it to New England they were all Engkish and Scotish for the most part. But if you trace back far enough they could have arrived in England from france, with William the Conq. They were french invading England. Not too mention the Vikings invaded and so did the Romans.They could be English and something else.

I am just sending in my dna for mtDNA analysis today. I did the Ancestry test for my parents and myself (not very useful!) and did a Y-Chromosome test for my Dad and a cousin from the Dutch side of my family. Now I have a lot of learning to do to understand what it all means!

Matthew, a lot of the ancestors I presumed to be English were Scottish, Irish, or even French-Canadian. I also had some of my Bahamian lines that I thought were English turn out to be Irish, French, or from various African groups. One "English" ancestor turned out to be Danish. Many turned out to be Welsh. I was able to confirm all of those cases through paper genealogy after getting the genetic results.

Yes, I do trust science over paper records. Which, as a historian, is something that kills me to say, but it's true. :) I also tested myself and my parents and (then) living grandmother through multiple companies to be sure. I didn't find any discrepancies.

We have literally hundreds of DNA-themed projects (http://www.geni.com/project/search?q=dna). http://www.geni.com/projects/DNA-Primer-A-portal-for-genetic-geneal... is the best place to start.

Congrats on taking the big leap, Wendi!

English, Welsh and Scottish are are all connected by their Celtic ancestors and whoever invaded them. Like I said if they came from England they still are English but they could have been decended orginally from france, Rome or Scandinavia. Even the Irish had some of those background plus the Spanish Armada crashed on their shores and i am sure they got together with the local at one time or another.

Ps , Ashley, African would be a race not a nationality.

Remember, where you are born is your nationaity, what you are decended from . could be anywhere, and your race is your color and your religion is whatever you choise to be.

Here's something:

The story itself isn't one you could call positive at all, but I've finally found out what happened to a mystery fourth-great-aunt of mine: Sally P. Town

I had wondered for years about her, and now I know.

A very sad story, Ashley. I can see why you're interested in her.

I don't care if there are still only a couple people posting here -- I'm determined to make it work!

I buried my grandmother today, which would ordinarily be a very sad thing to do, but we had a rather joyous service and I was able to spend time with extended family members I don't get to see often. I was also able to show some old family photos I found in Grandma's belongings and get some identification help. I heard some new (to me) family stories that will help a lot with sorting out my lines and filling in grey areas.

So sorry Ashley! Will say a little prayer for you!!

Okay, I'm a little late again this week. Sorry, Ashley.

My good news of the week is that I became a co-Administrator of the Scandinavian DNA project at Family Tree DNA.

This isn't a new interest for me. I'm already active behind the scenes in DNA discussions on FTDNA, on Geni, and on Facebook. Also, I'm the Admin for the Hauri and Gelsenius yDNA projects on FTDNA. The Hauri project is one of the oldest surname projects, founded in 2000. The Gelsenius project is a new project I'm trying to launch.

DNA has much more potential among Scandinavians to unlock clues to ancestry, because Scandinavians adopted surnames much later than the rest of western Europe. In Britain, France, Germany, etc. it's not a surprise if you take a DNA test and match other people with the same surname. In Scandinavia your close matches will almost certainly have other surnames, so matches can show that two apparently unrelated families are actually closely related on the male line.

I love this stuff.

Ashley - So sorry to hear about your grandmother *hugs

Justin - Congrats!

My happy genealogy story for the week is that after looking for months and months and months for my great grandfather's naturalization papers, but not finding them or anything about them anywhere, my request to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services finally came through and it was the right person. So now I finally have confirmation of how and when he came to the US as well as confirmation of his place of origin aside from just the burial society. Yay!

I love those stories, Wendi. I never have found anything about my great grandparents' naturalization. Just the ship's passenger list and a minute order in the court. I keep hoping. I don't need it, but it would be interesting to find more. It seems your persistence paid off!

Because of being "served" census records my through MyHeritage data subscription, making a little progress expanding my Boston based great grandparents tree. There were "in laws" in the household! Once I added the wife's brother, I was served a naturalization court index record with my great uncle as a witness & sponsor, which confirms the relationship. They were printers.

I found where my great grandfather Loubris ,was naturalized awhile ago but nothing more about him , except what his occupation was in Belgium ,where he lived here in Mass. and his death. Oh of Course his parents were listed on the death record but that's it. They are lost Belgium somewhere and France even further back as we know where in Paris when The Eve of St Batholomew's Massacre happened. They were still talking about it in the late 1900's as the street Paris ran red with blood and they still hated Catholics, from what I heard. So we cousins have decided it must have been really really bad way back then. What I have read about it was bad, really bad. This a lost branch of the tree.

Hey Justin Durand tell us something interesting about your royal background. How far back can you trace that line? There mustve been some pretty extensive documention on that part of your tree.

The most interesting thing I can think of is this -- it didn't turn me into a royalty watcher ;)

In Response to your Question about removing a branch of a tree I found a Grandmother in a line I did not know to exist.
Christina Princess Of Sweden is your 28th great grandmother.
Kathleen Ness-McCulley is Christina Princess Of Sweden's 23rd great granddaughter.
View the full relationship path:
http://www.geni.com/c/64f072efe598d4f2d972a2b2969393f9dc65ebf9
Kathleen Ness-McCulley is my 23rd cousin 7 times removed.
View the full relationship path:
http://www.geni.com/c/c2d631d5c835dfd324b3c5f02d45e6548dbeb06b
Ryann Kristine Ness is my 17th cousin once removed.
View the full relationship path:
http://www.geni.com/c/2d3c87bb619538cd9c8906766ca4f77a0f8381e3
Ryann Kristine Ness is Margaret Darcy's 17th great granddaughter.
View the full relationship path:
http://www.geni.com/c/1416346d0ef06094516235a71781c4f6140c6f13
Margaret Darcy is my 16th great grandmother.

Mieszko I Piast, Duke of Poland is My 32nd great grandfather.
View the full relationship path:
http://www.geni.com/c/02e32948baa49b1afe8e2e40084282cd505525d7

And It Keeps Growing let me know If I can help

I love it when that happens. As we get more lines connected on Geni we start discovering new connections. It's great to know the work is paying off!

I haven't had much time for genealogy this week, so my positive post has to be tongue-in-cheek.

I have two cats, Calvin and Sybil, that I got 12 years ago as kittens from my sister's ex-husband's sister's ex-husband. I know that their father's name was Tigger, and their mother's name was Tiny, but they're just standard house cats so I haven't had much hope of tracing their genealogy. (I mock them with this whenever they get too uppity. They might act like they're royalty, but they can't prove it.)

So, a chance meeting this week with their former owner gave me a new piece of information. Tiny's mother's name was Freya. Yay! One more generation.

I haven't been able to verify yet whether this Freya was the Norse goddess of that name, or whether she was a cat named after the goddess. My two cats have one theory; I have another.

I won't be adding this information to Geni. Unfortunately, the chances of connecting them to the Big Tree are pretty remote ;)

I found a photo of my fourth-great-grandmother. Check it out: http://media.geni.com/p13/a7/d0/df/6e/5344483ac83032df/mrs_original...

It was taken a year before she died. Unfortunately, her home that she's standing in front of was washed away by Hurricane Irene in August 2011.

I also learned that she had a hand-written journal that another descendant has possession of, in Arizona of all places (we're from Vermont). So I'm trying desperately to reach that descendant and get a copy of it.

Private User Very cool!

Justin Durand All of our pets are descendants of royalty simply by the their very nature ;)

I think Geni should allow for pet profiles as well. My Dog, Razzi, is quite popular even though he has no descendants.

Ashley, that's like the 2photo albums of tin types in the family. i have never seen them but my mother sis and one was promised to her. Of course she never got them and i can't find that end of the family. So I more then likely will never see it.Too bad. i would have liked to just taken pictures of the photos for me. they could keep the books.Copies would make me happy!

Ya my two boys are just plain old cats. So who knows where they came from. Royal or not.

My boy has just had two knee replacements. Fortunately no dogs to run around the house and bump into him. (He isn't descended from Royalty either).