A silly phrase really but one which fancinated me for many years and now, to a great extent, I know where I came from, and I dont mean where I was born but where my ancestors came from.
Its a funny thing doing your family history as few people really know, they just dont give it much thought, but with todays online records, its very easy and ive found rewarding, to find out.
I have a fair idea now of 400 years of family history and while it doesnt mean much in terms of my life, theres a long list of people who came together which culminated in my birth and THAT does matter because without them there aint no me.
I found out that Im far from english and not alltogether white english either.
My fathers family were in the main poor fishermen/ag labs but not all the family were from Kent where my fathers family genereally can be found, infact some were Londoners and a large part were Irish.
My mothers side threw up some far wilder stuff though that we could never have guessed.
My nans great-great grandmother was mixed race, the result of a free black woman and a Jewish merchant. She was also very wealthy as were many of her relatives and children and owned a house in a street in London where houses are changing hands for £4 million today.
My grandmothers father decended from scottish ministers of which quite a bit was written about.
A relative on that side of the family was responsible for Paramatta Drive in Sydney, himself decending from a very old Scottish family which we were lucky enough to find a book written about.
It doesnt change anything knowing these things, but each one of these people, be it a man in rags or one in riches, contributed directly to my existance which does make them matter, infact they are vital.
Anyone else here done their family history? Anyone found out things they didnt know?
I recommend it to anyone, its amazing what you find out. I dont think theres any such thing as a normal family.
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the serfs, the likes of you and me, are mongrels to the core.
The aristo's are like Crufts best of breed champions, safe known bloodlines, and far too many genetic problems due to too much inbreeding.
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If you ever watched that fascinating program on BBC2 last year all about our ancestors (Dr Alice Roberts, phwoar!) coming from Africa, it made me realise how similar we all are and how we ALL come from the same small genetic pool.
Alternatively you could choose to believe the religious version, in which case our genetic pool started off even smaller!
On that note I've never understood how the population managed to expand beyond Adam & Eve's first two male children...anyone?
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We are all descended from a single female who lived in Africa 10,000 years ago.
In the religious sense, the priests of Judaism (usually but not exclusively identified by the name Cohen) have been shown to have DNA markers that are different to other Jews. My mother's father was a Cohen, but I am not and I do not have the marker.
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>> 10,000 years ago.
Bit longer ago than that if archaeologists and anthropologists are to be believed Espada. That's almost within recorded history.
The interesting moment, in my opinion, is the one when the opposed-thumb, tool-using, language-developing not-quite-human becomes human. It must have been a very long moment and different bits of it may have happened in different places. Anyway that's the interesting question as I see it, and it is one whose answer must predate anything resembling a monotheistic or even highly developed polytheistic belief system.
It is often a mistake to entangle belief systems with their symbolic grasp on truth with scientific historical research which tries to have a literal understanding of what has happened in our history as a species. Of course I don't suggest you are doing that, but people often do.
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>> >> 10,000 years ago.
>>
>> Bit longer ago than that if archaeologists and anthropologists are to be believed Espada.
200,000?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
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>> 200,000?
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
...although some other stuff here about the 'most recent common ancestor' or MCRA:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor
which includes "...estimated that the MRCA of all living humans may have lived within historical times (3rd millennium BC to 1st millennium AD)"
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Doesn't sound right to me. An extreme theoretical possibility one might think, but what about lost tribes in New Guinea and so on...
Still, someone once told me that we were all the Queen's 14th cousins. I should hope so too.
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anyone believe in the 7 connections rubbish, ie we are all connected to someone else on the planet by only 7 links.
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There is apparently some science behind it. (Link to Wikipedia, so it must be true...)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
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I posted this elsewhere so apologies to the three or four folks who've read it.
Any famous ancestors in the family ? Well, neither have I, but we do have one who is fairly well documented. Richard Pickersgill, 1749 to 1779. Who ????.
Well , My mother was a Pickersgill by birth in 1913, the fourth of 6 kids., it's an old North Yorkshire name.
Richard joined the Navy as a boy and worked his way up to become a Leiutenant and Master of his own ship. Being from the North Yorkshire area, he served on the Endeavour with Captain James Cook. He was one of the two Navigating Captains on the voyage that circumnavigated Australia for the first time and also discovered that New Zealand was two islands. Later he commanded his own ship in the attempt to find a North West Passage from the Atlantic and meet up with Cook who was trying from the Pacific. Too much ice, wrong time of year.
He is remembered in the naming of Pickersgill Harbour in NZ and Pickersgill reef off OZ.
RP circumnavigated the globe 3 times.
We always knew about him and the fact that he ended his days, drunk, in the Thames at Wapping.
Why I haven't Googled him, I don't know.
I did this week and found his Will and his Leiutenants Certificate plus paintings of various ships and of Pickersgill Harbour.
What I didn't know was that he was Court-marshalled for drunkenness and dereliction of duty and was dismissed from the mob. It's thought he took command of a privateer and was boarding the ship at Wapping when he died.
The painting is in the Maritime Museum at Greenwich.
He is buried in the churchyard at West Tanfield, back on his home turf.
My last surviving last generation relative, my Uncle, has researched this branch of the family back to about 1700.
Ted
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If you have an interest in family history the BBC "who do you think you are?" are well worth watching.
The episodes in the previous series were all quite different in the techniques and resources they used.
Some of the people they considered had a history which was "too boring" - I think Parky was a case in point.
However, one of them had a "documented" tree back to God... well that's what you get when you hitch a ride on at least one Royalty tree made in the middle ages.
The one on Boris was a hoot, as you'd probably expect.
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Been pretty good that series, it changed my view of John Prescott for instance. Brucie was on it last night, waiting foe me to watch it.
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the brucie one is quite a good one.
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Am I alone in not caring a flying fish about my family history?
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...Am I alone in not caring a flying fish about my family history?...
You're right, landsker, I couldn't care less where your family came from. :)
Flippant remark over, I agree, this type of stuff bores me to tears.
Same as common people at bus stops who only talk about their - or somebody else's - latest ailment.
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>> Same as common people at bus stops who only talk about their - or somebody
>> else's - latest ailment.
>>
You stand at bus stops? Where's the car?
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>> this type of stuff bores me to tears.
I thought I had a low boredom threshold, ifithelps, but yours is far lower. F1, world cup, wimbledon... perhaps golf and snooker float your boat?
It must be purgatory for you logging in here and seeing the same old faces mumbling the same old platitudes. I think it's heroic of you (and jolly interesting of course).
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>> I dont think theres
>> any such thing as a normal family.
>>
>>
My mother's birth wasn't registered. I could be related to the lord of the manor ~ or the village idiot!
Last edited by: L'escargot on Wed 21 Jul 10 at 09:21
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I think we'll draw our own conclusions L'es. ;>)
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Well, my aunt and uncle researched my father's side of the family a little while back and it turns out that I'm descended from Alice Nutter who was one of the famous (in Lancashire, anyway) Pendle witches - www.pendlewitches.co.uk/ This may account for a lot... :-)
On my mother's side, it turns out that I am one-eigth Swiss. So this means that I am 12% on time for anything... My great-granfather came over from Switzerland at the turn of the last century to become a pastry chef at The Savoy in London then moved up to Southport to become the Head Patisserie Chef at Matti & Tissot, a very high-class tea room that was on Lord Street until about fifteen years ago.
I'm actually fascinated by family history and believe very strongly that your ancestors help mould you into who you are today.
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>> Swiss rolls perhaps ?
Well, I do enjoy cake. Perhaps I should protest to Mrs B that it's in my genes and I can't help it!
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>> My nans great-great grandmother was mixed race, the result of a free black woman and a Jewish merchant.
Skin colour can disappear a lot quiker than that - my daughter has fair skin and ginger hair even though she's a quarter Indian!
Last edited by: Chris S on Wed 21 Jul 10 at 12:19
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>> ..........- my daughter has fair skin
>> and ginger hair even though she's a quarter Indian!
>>
Presumably a Red Indian.
;-)
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you cant if your village was the village of the dammed though
can you?
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For TheManWithNoName
>> last year all about our ancestors (Dr Alice Roberts, phwoar!)
I saw this, and thought of you :)
BBC4 Tuesday 3rd August, 9PM - "Wild Swimming"
Alice Roberts dons a wet suit....
... braving an underground lake and discovering the intensity of a skinny dip.
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>> For TheManWithNoName
>>
>> >> last year all about our ancestors (Dr Alice Roberts, phwoar!)
>>
>> I saw this, and thought of you :)
>>
>> BBC4 Tuesday 3rd August, 9PM - "Wild Swimming"
>>
>> Alice Roberts dons a wet suit....
>>
>> ... braving an underground lake and discovering the intensity of a skinny dip.
He's not the only fan :-) She did a great couple of series about the human body (Don't die young). Very informative and easy to understand, she's a great communicator. I shall of course be watching the above with interest :-)
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>anyone believe in the 7 connections rubbish, ie we are all connected to someone else on the planet by only 7 links. <
I don't believe it's rubbish. Seven connections is pretty wide - do the maths.
I have an elderly friend whose father was a private in the WW1 Austrian Army platoon whose corporal was one Adolf Shicklegruber.
A couple of weeks ago I was entertained to dinner by the (very elderly) man who supplied the neon lighting for Bernie Ecclestone's motorcycle emporium more than 50 years ago.
I could go on and on.
My friend is near-obsessed with the family history thing. She has discovered an ancestor who was a gangster convicted of murder in Chicago but famously - she has all the newspaper cuttings - was not executed but was eventually released from jail to become a successful straight businessman.
If anyone is interested, she happened to mention to me only this morning she is heading a workshop on the subject on October 5 at this year's Warwick Literary Festival:
www.warwickwords.co.uk/
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Mike's post just reminded me of this photo I had in my pictures.
It's Bernie's emporium in 1951.
Magnificent bullnose Morris tourer. The Jowett in the middle, SMV 3 , is still with us, It may be the oldest still alive but has been black for the 38 yrs I've known it.
tinyurl.com/3x7ya4h
Ted
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When people talk about knowing where their ancestors come from, they almost inevitably refer to their father's family, the direct male line, or else to some particular female line that has either been noteworthy or possibly simply easier to investigate.
Everyone ignores the dozens, hundreds, thousands of other lines, which are unknown and un-traceable.
There are two theories to justify the 7-links claim.
One is simply statistical, based on radiating number of linking possibilities.
The other is more specific and might in many cases be actually traceable:
The starting point is that there is an international linking between the "leaders" in any field in any country. All heads of state know each other. All top sportsmen know each other. The same will be true of scientists, religious leaders, bankers, etc.
So that uses one link to cross from one country to another. So you need 3 links between yourself and any famous British person. Who is the most exalted person you know? Who do you think might be the most exalted person he knows? Is it quite possible that that person in turn knows the queen, the PM, the governor of the B of E, the president of the royal society, the archbishop of Canterbury or someone else at that level?
Then you just need 3 corresponding links in any other country, and QED.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Tue 3 Aug 10 at 08:47
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Well through my research, I have found and am now in contact with the daughter of one of my dads cousins who was a big part of our family for half her life, then when her mum disappeared in teh early 80's, she lost contact aswell. I found her though using a combination of ancestry.com, 192.com and Facebook of all things. And she was happy to be found too.
Its not just about a load of dusty dead people sometimes.
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>> Then you just need 3 corresponding links in any other country, and QED.
Only if you make the links very tenuous. Like I saw the queen pass by in 1973. Is that a link or I am just one of 100 million just because she put herself about a bit.
The 7 steps is all about statistics, but statistically there is a good chance you are not linked to large swathes of the populaton in certain place, but linked to a lot more in others.
Could I Link to a 4 year old child just died in a Pakistani flood? highly unlikely.
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>> >>
>>
>> Only if you make the links very tenuous. Like I saw the queen pass by
>> in 1973. Is that a link or I am just one of 100 million just
>> because she put herself about a bit.
>>
>> >>
I'd define a link as "someone you could phone up and talk to".
Thus: This is the Queen speaking. May I speak to President Clinton please.
This is Fred Blogs speaking. I'm in widgets section. Please may I speak to Mr Smith my manager.
My name's John Smith. We met at the symposium last month.
This is the curate of Nether Wallop. Please may I speak to the bishop.
You get the idea. The curate can't ring the Dalai Lama. But he can speak to his bishop, who knows the Archbishop, who could ring up the DL.
Or a similar chain in lots of other possible fields.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Tue 3 Aug 10 at 10:39
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>> You get the idea. The curate can't ring the Dalai Lama. But he can speak
>> to his bishop, who knows the Archbishop, who could ring up the DL.
>> Or a similar chain in lots of other possible fields.
Then it really falls to pieces big time. Take an african nomadic tribe. Lines of contact with them are fragile at best. Chances of me being linked to a member of an african nomadic tribe? Zero.
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>> Chances of me being linked to a member of an african nomadic tribe? Zero.
I may be though. My mother had an Italian name and Franco-Scottish mother, but came from Malta. So I probably have a good dollop of Berber, perhaps even some Tuareg. Watch out or I may raid your caravan.
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...Could I Link to a 4 year old child just died in a Pakistani flood? highly unlikely...
Are you on speaking terms with the Asian owner of your local corner shop?
If so, I reckon the link could be made.
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>>
>> If so, I reckon the link could be made.
>>
Exactly. That's a very good example because it has the potential to cut across a lot of what might otherwise be barriers. My hierarchies examples are extreme cases, needing the full 7 links. But once you get to Pakistan in 2 links, 5 links to anyone in the country must be easy.
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NO the links get worse once you get to pakistan. Transport is poor, communication is poor, the number of people HUGE, there are people there who have never seen anyone outside the village.
The 7 links is theory, that falls to bits when you actualy look at the reality of humanity.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 3 Aug 10 at 10:48
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>> there are people there who have never seen anyone
>> outside the village.
>>
>>>>
That doesn't matter. They only need to know the one person who HAS been outside the village, whose work takes him once a year to the nearest small town. He in turn will have a range of contacts, one of whom might sometimes go to a larger town. He might know someone who knows the regional governor, ....... etc .. etc.
Every single person in the world has a wide spread of contacts, upwards and sideways. You don't have to make a big direct link, only a series of smaller ones.
Try it amongst your own aquaintances, and image the kind of people a contact of a contact of a contact might mix with.
Look at the way displaced people from all over Europe in 1945 managed to meet up with relatives. Someone knew someone else who had heard about X from Y, who might have been living at Z, where W thought he knew ..... etc. The capacity for human link-making is enormous. I don't see why you don't want to allow that it might happen, at least enough to give the 7-link theory a sporting chance of having some validity.
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>> I don't believe it's rubbish. Seven connections is pretty wide - do the maths.
But not wide enough, the world population is estimated to be 7,000,000,000 by 2011. you have to make the connections very tenuous indeed to get there.
As for fathers of grannies uncles sons stories, the old tell a lot of lies, simply because they cant be disproved.
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>As for fathers of grannies uncles sons stories, the old tell a lot of lies, simply because they cant be disproved.<
Depends what sort of friends you have, I guess...
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well can you disprove it?
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...Chances of me being linked to a member of an african nomadic tribe? Zero...
I agree the chances of Zero being linked to an African nomadic tribe are, er, zero.
And I just hope the nomads realise how lucky they are. :)
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No I can't disprove it but maybe I've just been lucky with my contacts.
Mind you, some years ago I had dealings with a bloke who insisted he was Jesus Christ, who had come back to earth and chosen Salisbury as a sort of trial visit before announcing the main event. I sent him off with a flea in his ear but spent the next week wondering whether I had missed the biggest story in the history of the world.
Then he came back, carrying a stack of library books with bits of paper marking references, which he said proved he was Heinrich Himmler's grandson...
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well look there you go, you have been linked to the nazis and jesus in a BOGOF offer.
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why do you think they keep moving.
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'Go back where you came from' - Zero
