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Family history/past explorers?


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After seeing so many people post in the "How did you serve?" thread, and seeing so many have so much in common, I was wondering if anyone out there has found someone famous in their family tree? Maybe we can come up with some common denominators here...

Two of mine are John Alden, who came over on the Mayflower, and Daniel North, who served in the Revolutionary War, enlisting in 1775.

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Henry Clay is the most famous person in my family tree on this side of the pond. I a direct decendant of two of the Sureties of the Magna Charta. Once you link into royalty on the other side of the pond, their genealogy history is well published, so I can actually trace myself all the way back to Mark Antony, which is kind of cool since my middle name is Anthony.

 

--Marky

"All of us get lost in the darkness, dreamers learn to steer with a backlit GPSr"

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I'm lucky enough to have a bunch of French-Canadien trappers and explorers in my tree. One was a mapper for a trapping expedition through MT and Idaho, and he named several rivers and valleys in Idaho as well as having the Bruneau Canyon named after him. Mapping runs in both sides of my family.

-Jennifer

 

************************************

According to his or her personal experience, each person must decide by himself or herself where they have been. Always for me the most important thing is not where the others have gone but the experience lived through.-Reinhold Messner

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Mauno Koivisto, former president of Finland is the second cousin of my grandmother.

 

Vihtori Kosola, one of the white side leaders of the Finnish civil war is, as far as is known, some relation to the same grandmom.

 

Martta Koskinen, the last executed woman in Finland (suspected espionage) was my father's great aunt, if I recall it right.

 

- All you need is a sick mind and a healthy body. -

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Remember that "Win Lose or Draw" game show in the 80s? Remember the one with Ed Begley, Jr? Remember the female contestant on that one? That was my dad's cousin. No kidding!

 

My mom is really into geneology. I don't know the exact connections, but she's traced us back to General Lee and either the Hatfields or the McCoys (I forget which). She also acquired a certificate for my daughter that lists her name and the name of a French-Canadien voyageur ancestor from 300 years ago (we've had family in the Detroit area since it was founded).

 

I have a travel bug that's supposed to go to an ancestral city in Switzerland.

 

Flat_MiGeo_B88.gif

"Winter's just the curtain. Spring will take the bow"

-- Richard Shindell, Spring

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Hmm, no one like that in my family tree. One thing I do notice however, is that everyone who researches their family history usually goes right back to someone like 'Alexander the Great' or something like that.

 

You never hear..

'Yeah my great great great great great grandfather was 'Wilfred the Goat boy from Sussex'. icon_smile.gif

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I go back to Adam and Eve. They were pretty famous.

 

I was also Vasco Da Gama in a previous life.

 

Actually, we haven't found anybody famous in my family tree, but my great-grandfather was a close personal friend of Eamon DeValera, the IRA revolutionary and later, the first president of Ireland. Pops used to smuggle weapons and money to DeValera and DeValera stayed in his home when he visited the US.

 

"You can only protect your liberties in this world, by protecting the other man's freedom. "You can only be free if I am" -Clarence Darrow

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Nobody famous in my family tree either, so far, though there's a persistent family rumor, backed up (so far) by only circumstantial evidence, that Carole Lombard is related to us somehow. I guess that would help explain why we're all screwballs.

 

On the Parker side (come on, you all knew that was my last name) we've managed to find an ancestor who lived in Parkersburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) in the early 19th century, but we haven't discovered any relation between him and the city's namesake, either.

 

On the other hand, that guy and his wife, sons, daughters, and sons- and daughters-in-law set off across Ohio in the mid-1830s in search of a better life in Indiana (yeah, poor deluded saps) and if that's not adventurous, I don't know what is.

 

warm.gif

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When thinking of Daddy Leprechaun and a certain ancestor of his, one thing that begs to be explained - - and which has been debated in a thousand venues from Dublin pubs filled with amateur literati to college classrooms headed by bespectacled liberal English professors with tweed jackets (the kind with patches on the elbows) - - is a certain propensity (some say an illness) for verbosity for runon sentences for stream of consciousness writing style: be it in forum posts or cache page descriptions or logs (in the case of Daddy Leprechaun), or in novels like Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake (in the case of that certain ancestor), and upon pondering this question it is answerable easily in respect of the former by excusing him as being an ancestor of the latter, and thus endowed with certain of the unfortunate habits which one inherits from generation to generation, but in respect of the latter the question is simply not answerable except perhaps to note that he is Irish and thus prone to tip the bottle at times, leading one to hypothesize that all his novels were written whilst tipsy.

 

I'm a descendant of James Joyce.

 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I was formerly employed by the Department of Redundancy Department, but I don't work there anymore.

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I have a horse thief that was hung, a convicted moonshiner, a Nazi sympathizer, and possibly a Civil War deserter.

 

I have some historically famous people too but the skeletons in the family closet are much more interesting and colorful.

 

========================================

Friends don't let Friends geocache drunk.

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I haven't a clue about my family's past. As far back as anyone goes we're all born in the USA and we aren't Native American.

 

My last name is of Welsh origin but thats all I know.

 

Someday, I'd like to pay someone to do a proper search. I tried it myself but didn't have much luck.

 

Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

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quote:
except perhaps to note that he is Irish and thus prone to tip the bottle at times, leading one to hypothesize that all his novels were written whilst tipsy.


 

LOL. Seems possible doesn't it?

 

My father is a famous entomologist. Well, ok maybe not (not famous that is, he is an entomologist). My mother is a birdwtcher and feeds many birds. So I guess my mother is famous in birdland.

 

pokeanim3.gif

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quote:
Originally posted by Zartimus:

 

You never hear..

'Yeah my great great great great great grandfather was 'Wilfred the Goat boy from Sussex'. icon_smile.gif


 

A lot less got written about old Willie, there. It's easier to trace roots back to a famous person. (Then stop looking further...)

 

Ron/yumitori

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I'm descended from William Brewster, printer and passenger on the Mayflower. Also King Edward the 1st and through him-Charlemagne. My husband is descended from the brother of General Worth (as in Ft. Worth, Texas) and rumor has it, Pat Garrett, who allegedly shot Billy the Kid.

 

There are also lots of farmers, goat herders, laborers and tradesmen. One of my many times great-grandmother's smuggled food to her father in the tollbooth prison in Edinburgh, and later stole his execution orders from the letter carrier by disguising herself as a boy and ambushing and beating him up on the side of a dark country road. He (her father) was later released with a pardon.

 

I have tons of family history information and love the history if it all.

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According to research that my brother did a few years ago:

My many-times-great grandfather came to 'The Colonies' in 1682 with William Penn (as in Pennsylvania.)

My 4X great grandmother was Lucy Clark, sister of George Rogers Clark (conqueror of the Nortwest Territory) and William Rogers Clark (of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.) This claim hasn't been validated yet, but it seems to fit the other information in the family tree.

 

RichardMoore

 

www.geocities.com/richardsrunaway

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There are no famous people in my family.

 

On the other hand: Vinny was my grand dad's brother

 

and my other grandad's brother California Joe got around to founding the town of Fouts Springs in California.

 

Oh, and somewhere along the line, my Nez Perce relatives made the mistake of giving aid and shelter to some dumb white guys who were looking for a northwest passage, but you've probably never heard of thos white guys.

 

Unlike nearly ever other irishman, I am not related to brian baru.

 

My granddad was a moonshiner during prohibition and the great depression.

 

And I was responsible for five of the first six things on thislist.

 

So, as I say, nobody famous in my family.

 

Marty Fouts

ae6ip

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I just started researching my family tree a few weeks ago. I'm a direct descendant of Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin. Well, ok, Andrew Jackson Keathley and Benjamin Franklin Brewer icon_cool.gif

 

One of my great-uncles was shot and killed in a poker game over a quarter. Another had a car door fly open, tried to close it, fell out and was run over by his own car. Neat, huh?

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