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Family Tree
Aug. 11th, 2015 05:25 pmSo one of the things I've been doing to keep myself distracted is genealogy. I've been working on my family tree on and off for 15 odd years, not really getting anywhere, and not paying for an Ancestry.com membership, just using the free version. For my birthday last year, I think it was, Nin got me the DNA test thru Ancestry, and after I got the results, I figured it was time to pony up for a paid subscription. I pay for a few months, stop for a few, start up again. When I pretty much stopped writing, spending the time on Ancestry.com filled the void. I wish I'd done the paid version so much sooner! Finally, I was getting somewhere. I come to discover I'm related to all the royalty :D on my paternal grandmother's side. Wrong side of War of the Roses, and mostly the female line, but I was surprised as heck. Now I know why my great grandmother was, reportedly, such a snob. It was kind of cool discovering Eleanor of Aquitaine was my umpteenth times great grandmother. On the down side, evil King John is my umpteenth great grandfather. The amusing discovery was Rollo aka the first Duke of Normandy, from Vikings, is also a great grandfather. So when we were in SoCal, and we were in Hot Topic, and saw the Rollo bobblehead, I had to have it.
So through all this, my mum keeps asking, what about my side of the family? Unfortunately, her parents died when she was a child, and she was adopted. So her side of the family was a bitch to even get back a few generations. However, Ancestry has been adding a lot of new records from Scotland, so when I wet back to her line this month, I was able to push much farther back, and tada! Robert the Bruce! Now mum is happy :D And I'll never watch Braveheart the same way again. And I've found the same Scots princess on both my father and mother's side. I haven't even figured out how to chart that on Ancestry. Apparently there's a way to merge occurrences, but I'm afraid I'll blow up my tree. I probably need to buy the actual tree creator software they have. I think it would be easier to keep track of.
So that's some of how I've been spending my time. I told Nin it's like playing a video game--you never know what's around the corner. I'm also trying to match my tree with the people Ancestry says are DNA match cousins, but haven't had a whole lot of luck. I've been in contact with a few of the people I'm cousins with, and we're going to try and see if we can meet in the middle somewhere.
Look, a real post!
So through all this, my mum keeps asking, what about my side of the family? Unfortunately, her parents died when she was a child, and she was adopted. So her side of the family was a bitch to even get back a few generations. However, Ancestry has been adding a lot of new records from Scotland, so when I wet back to her line this month, I was able to push much farther back, and tada! Robert the Bruce! Now mum is happy :D And I'll never watch Braveheart the same way again. And I've found the same Scots princess on both my father and mother's side. I haven't even figured out how to chart that on Ancestry. Apparently there's a way to merge occurrences, but I'm afraid I'll blow up my tree. I probably need to buy the actual tree creator software they have. I think it would be easier to keep track of.
So that's some of how I've been spending my time. I told Nin it's like playing a video game--you never know what's around the corner. I'm also trying to match my tree with the people Ancestry says are DNA match cousins, but haven't had a whole lot of luck. I've been in contact with a few of the people I'm cousins with, and we're going to try and see if we can meet in the middle somewhere.
Look, a real post!
