Genealogy - Our immigrant history

Okay, here ya go Melinda and Oldone and whoever's interested.  Here's the place to post and share about your ancestors, family history, heritage, etc.

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I have been  putting together my ancestors for about 10 years now. Family can have some surprises ! When you think about the 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grandparents ect the whole things seems endless and includes just about well seems EVERYBODY by the time you get back a couple hundred years. It has been fun though finding rogues and senators, soldiers and farmers, ministers and sinners. Okay, I won't bother you with the story, just the quick version and a surprise story. My family fought in the Revolution, served in the Continental Congress, members of the New Jersey Correspondence Committee, one served in the 1st United States Congress, another a Supreme Court Judge. George Washington's mother was a Ball from Virginia (yep, a relative).  Members of the family fought in every war the United States was involved in back to French and Indian. They steadily moved generation after generation WEST.

And just when I thought I could ademently deny there was not ONE Illegal Immigrant in my family back 350 years, I hit this:

http://www.colonialswedes.org/forefathers/Broer.html

That is an interesting story. March 1656...damn ! He SNUCK IN ! Guess I'll just have to shut up now about illegal aliens. (NOT !)  :)  Thanks, Great-Grandpa.

Oh dear, I guess you're going to be our official "anchor baby" then, huh?  I'm not into the research stuff myself, but my mother does a lot of it.  Found some interesting stories on the Mayflower ancestors, etc.  And one in particular I wish I could take a time machine and go back and meet.  His name was Thomas Huckins (married one of Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins' daughters) and ran packet ships from Barnstable County (Cape Cod) to Boston for the "spirits" to operate his tavern in Barnstable.  Seems the pilgrim fathers put the word out to him to help them get rid of the "Shakers" that had started moving to the cape.  His reaction?  He told them in no uncertain terms to go fly a kite, that the Shakers were good people and good customers and he wasn't having any part of kicking them off the Cape.  He became a founder of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery of Massachusetts.  Sounds like one to sit down and have a brew and some conversation with.

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THANKS PATSY: My dad was adopted, and we've never been able to get past his birth mother's name, but I haven't really tried very hard, yet. My mother's family came from Croatia, but my maternal grandfather was born in Austria before moving to Croatia as a youth. He met and married my maternal grandmother in a little village near Zagreb, probably in the early 1900's. He saved enough money to buy a steerage ticket to the US, leaving his new wife behind in Croatia. He got a job in the coal mines near Pitsburgh and worked several years to save enough to bring his wife, my grandmother Katya, over here. She came in through Ellis Island and took the train to Pittsburg. This was around 1910 or 1911. My grandfather was waiting for her at the station, but they had been apart so long that he didn't recognize her at first when she got off the train. But he eventually did, I guess--my mother was born in 1912, but my grandfather died in the flu epedemic of 1918. Now my wife is related to just about everyone famous (or infamous) in the history of the world, or so it seems. We do genealogy research together. More on her family later--it's amazing!

Illegal Sweds?  ROFL....mine also came from the same area as yours but much later.  You gotta watch those Svensk, they sneak up on you and brain you with a piece of Lutefisk!

Some interesting stuff can be found for sure.  My mother's family came through Ellis Island from Denmark and a few years back she had a brick with their names added to a memorial there.  Last time I was in NY I looked up their names to make sure the stone was there, and it was.  Hubby has some intersting people on his side too....a Quartermaster General in the Union Army, an Indian scout, etc.  I wish I had the patience to do the research, but I don't.

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