I'm messing with family trees now, which can be pretty dangerous: I am hopeful of doing a family tree for my husband, as well as getting my own family tree done. On my mother's side, my cousin Pauline has done an excellent job of investigating and has us going far, far back. Thanks to WikiTree, I've found more information about my father's geneology than I've had before.
I know Cliff's mother's line (Silvey) goes back a long way, thanks to the fact I once saw a huge chart at a reunion in the Ozarks once. The Silvey tree goes back to Charlemagne. That impressed me greatly at the time, and I announced, "Hey, look at that! Charlemagne is on there!"
Whereupon a distant relative made a racist comment insinuating ole Charlemagne might have been from Africa. But I digress.
I somehow have created a daughter that never existed, and here's what happened: I listed my daughter on my family tree, then also added her to my husband's family tree. Suddenly I had two daughters named Rachel, born on the same day. There is a merge feature, and I will eventually find out how to use it.
The reason I've never tried to do all this stuff is because it takes time to learn things, and I never want to take the time. I was very happy to see a lot of relatives added to my dad's family tree immediately, simply because a second cousin has done one. That is encouraging.
Cliff doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why anybody cares about the people who "made" us. I had to force him to do his DNA, and he still doesn't understand why I'm so fascinated with it. He has many, many second cousins and beyond that have shown up on 23 and Me.
I did my DNA with Ancestry.com. We are both about as white as people can be. All these years I wanted to think I got my curly hair from Africa.
Here's what my DNA says about me:
Here's Cliff:
Wish me luck, and let's hope I get rid of my daughter's non-existent twin before long.
I always wanted a twin, but why did you give us the same name???
ReplyDeleteI know! That's why I never mess with this stuff, but I have put in a request for some help. This Wikitree seems easier to me than anything else I've tried, and I can do a lot of stuff without paying hundreds of dollars a year. I'll try to get rid of your irritating twin sister.
DeleteI have a distant cousin who's into tracing roots and things... but I'm not. I think maybe if I had children who cared about it I might go to the trouble to research more but I don't. Heck, my kids aren't much into family heirlooms like linens, furniture & pictures either so... I don't bother with any of it... for the most part. I went through my Lane hope chest a couple years ago & reminisced about everything found in there... and then tossed it all into the garbage. One less thing my kids will have to do when I'm gone. :-) Enjoy your sleuthing into the past. A lot of people certainly are in your camp, with the fascination. ~Andrea xoxo
ReplyDeleteIt is too easy to muck up a family tree. I tried to put both my mother-in-law's adoptive family and her biological one (that I discovered) on the family tree, and it was a disaster. What is WikiTree? Perhaps that would help me with some of my brick walls.
ReplyDeleteI use Family Search and Ancestry. I have tried Wiki but have not gotten very far. My tree is public on Ancestry
ReplyDeleteAncestry is way too expensive for me, although I can access some of its features through the library.
DeleteWe are blended darn near identical. I'm 52%, 38%, 5% and 5% respectively. My own dad is one of those who doesn't give a hoot about family history and is thus directly responsible for me getting interested. A husband of my fathers aunt, was a genealogist and did my great aunt's family tree. He printed it all out nicely and mounted it and gave it to my father as a gift. My father was going to throw it away and asked if I wanted it and I said sure. Since he isn't blood to me, it got me thinking about my own family tree and the rest is history now 40 odd years later.
ReplyDeleteMy dad thought he had some uncle that was German, but there is no German showing up in my DNA.
DeleteIf you look closely at the Ancestry charts, Northwestern Europe includes a thin slice of western Germany. In fact, before this prior update, it used to contain a good chunk of northern Germany too but for some reason it faded out with the last "update". I have traced two of my third great grandfathers to NW Germany and have documents to prove it making me at least 1/8th German. I'm guessing you could very well have German in you even if the Ancestry chart doesn't show it at this point.
DeleteI had my husband try Ancestry.com and the saliva test merely showed 100% Asian. That didn't help at all so we just gave up. Then a friend told me we should have done 23 and Me because they do Asian a whole lot better. However, at that point, we lost steam.
ReplyDeleteI like the 23 and Me a little better.
DeleteThe Sisters are pearly white too. No African and no native. Makes us very boring. Lol
ReplyDelete