Anyone else really into family history? I've been obsessed with it for over a year now. How far back have you gotten? Where are you from? Any cool stories?

My longest lines go back to the 1200s, and I'm descended from King Edward the 1st and 3rd, both of England, and all the many royals they were descended from. Those lines are very well documented. I'm also probaby descended from King James the IV of Scotland (the grandfather of Mary Queen of Scots.) There is some dispute about one person in that lineage, an Alexander Fleming who came to Virginia in the 1600s, there is no concrete proof that he was the same Alexander Fleming who disappered from Scotland with his family at the same time the other Alexander Fleming showed up in Virginia, but all the similarities/evidence that has been found seems to show they were the same man. 

I am Hungarian, Russian, French, English, Scottish, Irish, Native American, and a few others. I took the Ancestry DNA test last year. My husband is Mexican, Native American and Chinese, I have gotten his lines back to the 1740s in Mexico, though a lot of his lines are still deadends. Waiting and hoping that DNA results will help break down some walls. 

Family History is seriously so much fun! 

I am trying to get into it but my family gets so secretive! 

For example. My Maternal Grandmother is originally from Korea but refuses to tell me her given name not her "American" name D: So its fustrating! Makes me even more curious xD

I have also wanted to try that DNA test kit but am so unsure about it! 

My husbands family is the same way. One of his aunts has my husband's great-grandfather's passport and letters that that great-grandfather had saved from his family members. If we could look at them they would give us his great-grandfather's Chinese name, and birthdate, instead of the Mexican name that was gven to him when he arrived in Mexico. But she won't let anyone see them. It is super frustrating!! 

Where is the rest of your family from? Familysearch is free, and it's a great place to get started on your family tree. Ancestry costs money, but it's another great resource. I did the Ancestry DNA test since I already had a famiy tree on Ancestry,  my brother, both my parents, and my maternal gradmother also took Ancestry tests, my grandma's results should be arrive in a couple of weeks. It is really fun! Ancestry's biggest sale is Black Friday, but they have other sales throughout the year, so you don't have to pay full price if you are paitent and buy during a sale.  

A lot of my husbands lines end in the late 1800s early 1900s, and though I would LOVE to be able to take those lines back further, even getting one or two lines back a couple hundred years is really exciting. Knowing thins like where was my family during the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918? The Civil War? The Great Depression? Etc is really interesting to learn about.  

Thought about doing this!

MEMEME!

I've been dabbling in researching mine over the past few years. I'm currently waiting for my DNA test results from Ancestry to come back.

My maternal grandfather's side is a -word i can't say- to research. His parents came over from Ireland and wouldn't tell my Grandpa anything about where they came from...not their parents' names, not where in Ireland, nothing!

My mom got really into investigating my dad's Native American heritage a few years back, and it culminated in a trip to the tribe's res up in northern Wisconsin! My dad is about 50% Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa, and my grandmother was full-blooded. I'm just out of range for any sort of tribal membership/compensation, but my dad gets a small slice of the tribe's income (primarily from the casino they own) annually! My grandma's maiden name was Thayer, which comes from a far-back intermarriage with originally British settlers who were among the first to come to New England in the 1600's. Also in the Thayer family are such figures as Eli Thayer, who worked to try to establish Kansas as a Union state during the Civil War era and had also attempted to create an antislavery settlement in Virginia. There's a gull named after the family (Thayer's Gull, Larus glaucoides thayeri) thanks to John Eliot Thayer, who was a prominent amateur ornithologist and ended up donating his huge collection of over 50,000 mounted birds, skins, and eggs/nests to Harvard after his death.

On my mom's side we go back to Poland/Czechoslovakia but haven't done any major investigation into the who's who or who-did-what part of things. I do like listening to my grandma's stories about growing up on the east side of Detroit and taking the bus or riding bikes to Belle Isle to go fishing and swimming (the most unrealistic part about the story now is the swimming; the Detroit river is filthy now!) My mom was born in 1962 and the family moved out of the city after the riots in 1963. I would love to learn more about where the family came from back in Europe, if only to get clarification on the whole Czech/Slovak deal (since it's a minor bone of contention in the family).

My father says we're decendants of Mary Queen of Scots. He has a huge book with all of our relatives but I've never read it. Also, we have relatives that were Indian gypsies. I've been really wanting to know exactly what my heratige is but I haven't gotten around to it. I know that we have German, Polish, Irish, French and British but one day I will buy that test and figure out more! Or just read that dang book :P

My paternal grandmother is the most interesting, with her ancestors going back to landing in America only 20 years after the pilgrims arrived. Some great-great-great-great-great....etc,etc, grandfather was one of the founders of Hartford, CT and has his name on a plaque in the city. The rest of my family - paternal grandfather, maternal grandparents are all Norwegian or Swedish and came over sometime in the 1800's. Their only claim to fame is someone a few generations back got jailed for selling liquor to the Indians. xD I am 50% Norwegian, 25% Swedish, and the rest is a mix of English, Irish, Scottish, Finnish, and German. 

I just wrote a long reply to all of you, but I had to do it one handed as I had my toddler on me and it took so long HP logged me out and my message didn't post :( 

I love all of your stories!! And I'll rewrite my reply later tonight. And if anyone wants any help getting started on their family reseach let me know! I really, really love helping people, especially when I am running into to many of my own brick walls, helping others make discoveries gives me renewed hope and energy to keep reseaching my own lines. And I do promise to finish replying to everyone later. 

findagrave.com is a site my mom has used a lot as well while doing all this family research. :) She's got a giant book put together now.

I'd love to know my anchestry but ill probably never know it xD 

All I do know is that my moms mother is German, and i have a great greatgrandmother named Marinka (i am named after her) from russia

According to my randma we used to be travelers, and what I still remember is that as a kid I'd visit some traveler camp members.

I also have a neice from curacau

Gothika you should do some ancestry research! it's amazing what you can find!

I've tried! I haven't gotten very far, though. My mom's side of the family someone else did some research on Ancestry, but it just stops at a certain point and I can't find much else. Plus my great grandmother was adopted at some point in her life, and the records seem a little confusing (like how her mom seems to have like 12 kids with several different husbands despite the fact that she died very young?). Then on my dad's dad's side there is just nothing. I know his mother's name, but nothing else and I've never met him, so it's a dead end.

I know that I am at least partly Romanian (which seems to be where I get most of my physical features), and my great-great grandma was American but lived in the Phillippines and was a pretty famous chef and caterer (so I feel a connection to her even thouh I've never actually met her - I even inherited her locket which I had turned into my wedding ring, so it's very special to me) where she had my great-grandma, who had my grandma and they were in the Santo Tomas concentration camp. Their house in Manila was burned during the war and very few things survived. (My grandpa wrote a book about it called So Far From Home). My grandma was born a few days after they were liberated, and then they moved to Brazil and then Mexico where they lived for the most of my grandma's childhood and then eventually my grandma ran away to go to college in New York City. I also have some extended family from the Phillippines since my great-grandpa had another child there. I've met them! They live in the US now.

I know I had an ancestor who lived in India at least for awhile. And I'm related to Granville Hedrick who split away from the "main" Latter Day Saint (Mormon) group and formed the Temple Lot church in Independence, MO. Actually, Mormons keep very detailed family trees, so this might be a good way for me to further track my family on that side. If you're interested, there's a wikipedia page about it and about Granville Hedrick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Christ_(Temple_Lot)

I think my mom's dad is Finnish in origin, but I'm not at all sure. I know based on their last name and general facial structure that they are some sort of Northern European. I also sort of hit a dead end with them on Ancestry because I don't know much about them or anyone's name besides my grandpa's and uncle's.

My maiden name is Keiffer-Rose, Keiffer being from my grandma and Rose being from my dad's dad. I believe my dad's dad is Scottish, based on his last name, but as far as I know my grandma doesn't have any German in her and Keiffer is a German name. Anyway, that's pretty much all I know! It's definitely interesting.

EDIT: I don't know why I can't get that Santo Tomas link to work, but here it is:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Tomas_Internment_Camp

OH, I lied. The scandinavian side does have some claim to fame as my mother's 3rd cousin is Val Kilmer. :P

That's super interesting, Sam!

For what it's worth to all of you's, there's a Genealogy Reddit that's SUPER helpful, both in the links they have on there to good sites depending on where your ancestors are from, and if you get stuck asking for help on there is great!

Omg guys, it happened again. I even highlighted all my text, but I must have forgotten to hit copy because when I logged back in and went to paste my message there was nothing to paste. That message was even longer then the one before. Oh well. 

A super condenced version:

I am the type of person who needs to be busy and productive all day, I can't just watch tv or read or play games, I need a job. I also have had two horrible sleepers in a row and have to hold my toddler for his 2-3 hour nap every day and I get SO bored. 

SO many new records have been indexed in the last 12 months. I have been doing family history for 2-6 hours almost every day for over a year now. I love it, and I am bored. haha. 

So if anyone wants personal help getting started, or is stuck and wants help, send me a message, I have time and resources (I have a familysearch account, an Ancestry account and a My Heritage account so I can access newspaper articles and obituries along with everything else.)

I might not be able to make the break throughs you want, I have plenty of my own brick walls I can't get through, but you might be very surprised at what is online and what you can discover. It really is so fun.

And I love, love, love all of your stories!! And wish my stories would stop getting deleated. :p haha. I have Irish ancestors on both sides, Ireland is one of the hardest countries to research because everyone had the same name!!

i have a family member who is super into this (although ive never met her)
I just know I'm basically related to half of south texas. 
I have a few spanish kings im related to, Richard king (from the king ranch) stole land from my family back in the day, The king ranch is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) ranch in texas 
i know they have a book made up of the basics.

i know nothing about my paternal grandparents really. I was like 8? when they past away and never really visited with them, even though they lived less than 5 miles from us. I know my grandmother on this side went crazy into history stuff and had a ton mapped out but i have no idea what happened to it. My dad will talk history stuff on ocassion but its rare. he has siblings and I talk to those cousins on ocassion but again i basically know nothing about my dads side even though again all said siblings lived in town. They really are an ODD bunch. 

I've always wanted to do this!!  Especially the last few months I've gotten really interested in it just don't know where to start.

My family has never really talked about our history so all I know is my dad has a small fraction of native american blood.  Oh and apparently my last name originates in Lancashire