Awesome things our Ancestors did

My ancestors crawled out of the earth and followed a giant water skate to the middle place of the world.

When the flood waters rose the first time the world ended, my ancestors climbed the corn mesa to survive.

Thousands of years later, visitors came from the east, and my ancestors survived the second end of the world.

Oh, and on the white side of my family, one of them killed Lincoln. But that's maybe not so awesome?

I did all of that research on my family. I have three branches-- my father's pure german side-- those germans kept the BEST records-- all the way back to 1650.

So here is their story:

My grandfather and his brother came to the US in 1930, looking for work, and meaning to get the rest of the family out of germany. By 1934, when they were finally getting settled, and had money, the Hitler Youth groups were established, and their youngest brother was forced into it. Eventually, their sister started hiding Jews & US soldiers, and the brother from the youth group was a Lieutenant by this time... he used his power to protect the sister while she did her good deeds. Then he got killed on the Russian front... and her home was invaded by the Gestaupo. They were just about to find the american soliders in the basement, when one of the officers saw the memorial flag, pics, and medals of the dead Lt. brother. They told her that she would not be bothered again and thanked her for her brother's sacrifice. She kept helping.

now that i wrote that... that does sound like a cool story!

I had one great great uncle that was arrested by the FBI during WWI for "violation of the Espionage Act" -- what did he do? Got into a bar fight over the outcome of the war! lol word for word the files are documented online.

My Irish gggrand father got a drunk driving ticket by an alderman in 1869... drunk driving of a horse and wagon.

The italian side was sneaky.... all fo the italians coming into Philadelphia at the turn of the century gave the same address. When I first saw it, i thought it was friends or family and started checking them out... until i realized that half the ships were using that address "Banco D'Italia" --- smh. the italians did not want to be found LOL

My original ancestors are plasma beings from Andromeda, but somehow I got stuck with this body.

And now they put clothes on it!

Ick.

ETA. Ooh, shapeshifting! Being all embodied like that, I totally forgot about it! WheEEEeee!









(Great thread!)

I have a great-great-great-great[SUP]Nth[/SUP] uncle who was an honest to God pirate. He had the entire town in on it--they'd fake a lighthouse to run the ships aground, then swarm them and hide all the loot in the town church.

I am understandably proud of this.

While doing family research, it has been suggested that we started a war with Venice around 1471, and promptly lost...

My grand-dad was the guy who got Norman Borlaug to go to college. That's Norman "Father of the Green Revolution and Savior of a Billion Lives" Borlaug. That "Billion" is not a typo, although I'm not confident in the methodology used to calculate it.

Supposedly I am related to Laura Secord, a Canadian heroine in the War of 1812 who walked 20 miles to warn of an American attack. She also has a chocolate company named after her.

An ancestor of mine owned a shipping line with his brother. They held the government contract for taking transportees to Australia. The brother was a major player in the New Zealand Company and may have started a couple of land wars with the Maoris.

Samuel Pepys was an ancestor of mine. The name died out in our family with my grandmother: http://www.thepeerage.com/p22931.htm#i229310

My great-great-grandfather is rumored to have rode with Jesse James for a time, but it's unsubstantiated family lore. He looked a lot more like a lawman than an outlaw.

I have ancestors who fought during the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the American Civil War and WWI. My father was at Normandy and survived.

In this family we are so tired of wars.

Do you want to hear about the illegitimate royal side, or the gun-toting, bank-robbin', honest to goodness Ol' West outlaw side?

(Or maybe how each of those sides has a weird counterpart that was a - servant to said royals and a Texas Ranger -- the kind with a gun, not a baseball bat.)

Rhoda, that's a fantastic story.

Personal story I learned from my other grandfather last time I saw him, his grandfather was a slave-owner during the civil war. When the slaves were freed, he gave all of his a considerable portion of his own land for them to own (I think Grandpa said a few acres each), cutting his farm down to a fraction. Many of them took his family name and stayed in touch. When my grandfather was a child, one of them was his Uncle John. During harvest, Uncle John came and helped the other men, mostly whites, work the fields, and at the end of the day, my great-grandma had dinner ready for everyone. The kids ate in the kitchen while the adults ate in the dining room. Uncle John caught my great-grandpa in the kitchen getting the kids set up and said, "I should eat in here with the kids. The others won't like it if I sit and eat with them." According to Grandpa, my great-grandpa's response was, "John, you spent all day working with us. If any of them have a problem with you eating with us, THEY can come eat in the kitchen."

It's not much, and it's a tainted history, but it's a comfort to know that despite being southern and being part of the problem in the first place, my ancestors were not just willing to make things right, but believed in equality long before the rest of the world followed suit.

Are any of you finding uses for this great material in your writing?

Awesome stories, everyone!

Some great-great of mine was a stable boy for the prince of France, and moved to Sweden when the prince married into Swedish royalty.

I thought it was just a family myth until I googled it just now. The legend is sort-of true! Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was a commoner in Napoleon's army who rose through the ranks to marshal, then to be made Prince of Pontecorvo by Napoleon. When the heir to the Swedish throne Karl August died without an heir of his own in 1810, the aging monarch Karl XIII adopted Bernadotte and made him heir. Bernadotte became King Karl XIV Johan on May 1, 1818.

And my ancestor shoveled his horses' shit.

I know very little of my ancestors on the other side. I'm really curious about it though.

But on this side of the Atlantic, a great, great grandfather on my mother's side was an interesting guy. He came to the US from Potenza, Italy as a young man, married an immigrant from Ireland, and became a translator in the criminal courts. Soon after the birth of his second and final son, he shot and killed a man who- and this is where it gets fuzzy- was trespassing. It could be that he was doing more than trespassing, but also not. He was never charged for the shooting.

He was supposedly a crusty type. There were stories of his beating his wife and two sons mercilessly, so much so that one day his wife picked up and split, never to be heard from or of again.

Years later, after he'd remarried, he would have nothing to do with either of his two adult sons- as in, would not acknowledge their existence even if he were to pass them on the street. One became a professional singer and quite well known. The other a bootlegger who lived right across the street from his estranged father's sister. The father would visit his sister often, never glancing across the street to see his son's children with their noses pressed against the window, watching their grandfather walk into his sister's house. He would never say word one to any of his grandkids and no one ever knew the reason why. If they did, they weren't talking.

Not all darkness. I also had a great, great uncle who made it into Ripley's believe it or not for playing the piano with his toes; he also had a seat with a major symphony orchestra, but they insisted he use his hands.

My grandfather participated in the Italian Campaign in World War II, and led a group of Loyal Eddies onto their way to fight in the Battle of Ortona.

My great-grandfather was the first person to market instant pancake mix in Western Canada. Somewhere in the decade of 1910 or 1920.

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was president of the United States. Going through the ancestors of that ancestor hits upon some of the most important names in American, British and Frankish history (Henry II, Robert le Baron, Benjamin Harrison IV.)

Great-great uncle was the first missionary to set up a mission in Malawi.

Another great-great uncle was an engineer in the building of the Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yeah, I'm middle class.

*does calculations*

1985
1956 - m
1921 - gm
1890s - ggm
1870s - gggf
1840s - ggggf
1820s - gggggf - grandson of WH Harrison
1790-1800s - ggggggf - son of WH Harrison
1773 - WH Harrison

Alessandra Kelley said:

Lucretia Mott is also a direct ancestor. She once gave a speech against slavery in Philadelphia while a mob tore down the building around her.

Click to expand...

That's pretty darn awesome.

On my father's side, through his mother, we are supposed to be descended from Quanah Parker, the last Comanche warchief. I grew up hearing this story, about his mother Cynthia who was white, captured in a raid when she was four, grew up and married Quanah's father, and later was re-captured by the whites, ran away back to her Comanche home, was recaptured several times subsequent to that and finally died while imprisoned in a small cabin. (I always picture that cabin as down at the end of a meadow by a creek, for some reason.) The story goes that Quanah honored her by keeping his birthname Quanah as his warrior name when he reached adulthood as well as keeping that last name Parker. He went on to fight against the settlers but finally threw in the towel and became a farmer, which was pretty savvy of him, since it was really a lost cause by then, to stay in the old ways. He taught his people to farm, also. He is said to have had 17 wives, and lots of children. (My dad didn't tell that part of it.)

My dad would say, when we asked, "Oh, this was your great great great great great somanygreatsyoucan'tcount grandfather, it was a LONG time ago."

Of course it wasn't that long ago, but also my dad came from a family of tall tale tellers and I have no idea if this one is true.

I did grow up believing it which is almost as good.

What is true is that his dad, my grandad, ran away from home when he was 13 -- his aunt and uncle, actually, it is said, and no one knows much about his parents -- and went off on one of the last longhorn cattle drives.

West Texas tales.

Grandad lived to be 98 and died when I was only 12, but I did get to meet him a few times. He looked about half Apache to me, as I recall his old face. Right part of the country for that.

But that family line, wherever it originated, apparently left some record on the white settler side, for my maternal grandmother to find. She said that those people, my father's father's people, were some of the Acadians, who emigrated to Canada, and then went south down the coast. That journey was told about by Longfellow in the narrative poem Evangeline, which my mother loved to quote.

Some of them stayed in Louisiana and became Cajuns, but my dad's family went on into Texas where, my grandmother's information tells, two brothers married two sisters who were milliners.

That last I believe because, why make up two sisters who were milliners?

I come from a family of nobodies and I haven't done anything to change that.