Family History

[Lee]

Mine is a bit boring really. I looked into doing a family tree a couple of years back and wouldn't mind another crack at some point. I got back as far as the 1790s I seem to remember.

There's nothing exotic in my heritage. My maternal grandad's lot were all from Belfast and my dad's mum's side are of Irish stock, although you need to go back a couple of generations from my nan for that. My dad's biological father's lot just did farm labouring around north Warwickshire and west Leicestershire, as did my maternal grandmother's mother's gang.

The only things of even remote interest are my mum's maternal grandad participating in the Jarrow March and her paternal grandad serving in Germany immediately post-WW2. There are hints of more interesting stuff; apparently my maternal grandma's family originate from some horse trading people in Jamaica. That's according to a family tree which I'm told was done by a great uncle when I was a kid. He's dead and his wife's brain has melted so I'll never know unless I put loads of time in myself, which I won't. Grandma doesn't like the idea of being Jamaican. Can't think why.

Dull as fuck. But we're a diverse bunch on here so you lot must have something interesting going on?

[Disco]

I take great pleasure in telling my dad we have a Norman surname and are therefore immigrants too, does that count?

[Giggles]

My Fathers side is all Irish as far back as I looked (well British but, you know what I mean). The Mothers was German if you go way back (around 6 generations) but Irish since too. Prods until my great Grandfather. What could have been...

[phonics]

My Dads dad was the chief engineer who designed the bridges next to the Jag factory in Birmingham is our closest claim to fame. Both Grandparents on my Mums side are adopted. (I say adopted, my Granddad was sold to a hotel as a baby and my Nan was left on a doorstep. Newcastle.)

I did used live a few doors down from this lady though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Knight

Under the code name "Nicole," Knight worked as a courier for the SOE's Donkeyman network.[2] Following the Allied invasion of France at Normandy of June and July 1944, Knight crossed back and forth between battle lines several times, carrying intelligence messages and information.[3] Knight also participated directly in an attack by the French resistance upon a German military convoy, firing her Sten submachine gun during the course of the operation.[3]

Knight narrowly escaped capture and execution later in 1944 when she and a group of resistance fighters were betrayed by one of their number to the Nazis.[3] Knight was one of about 30 fighters who managed to fight through a German encirclement.[3] The man responsible for the betrayal, Roger Bardet, was later arrested, tried, and sentenced to death as a collaborator after the war.[4] This sentence was commuted, however, and Bardet was ultimately released from prison in 1955.[5]

Had an absolutely pristine fluffy poodle, a massie Mercedes and dressed like she was out of Dallas. One of those people you wish you'd met when you were older. The stories she must have had.

[Jimmy Floyd]

My mum's family were Huguenot immigrants in the 1700s. My dad's were westcountry bumpkin farmer types.

I have a couple of interesting forebears but the one I've become more interested in of late is my maternal grandfather, who died in 1999 so I knew him a little bit as a kid. He flew a glider at the Invasion of Sicily on a day when a stupid proportion of his comrades died, and we also have a Japanese general's sword hanging on our wall which he must have nabbed, but he never talked about the war until the day he died and just went back to being a Sussex stockbroker. That generation were something.

I also recently found out that my dad's mum - who, the story goes, worked at Bletchley Park, although personally I've not seen any decent evidence of that - killed herself. My old man doesn't know that I know, either, which is a bit weird, but it's not a conversation either of us would relish having so I imagine it will stay that way. It's strange because obviously I never met her and was aware that she'd died long before I was born, but had never really wondered or asked how.

[Disco]

Hey!

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Yeah, ok.

[Reg]

Good idea for a thread.

Probably the most interesting bit of mine is that during World War II, my granddad poked a (rather luckily) inactive mine with a shovel.

Very smart bloke as well.

[Lewis]

My great-grandad was wounded at Crete, but before the Germans could get him some partisans did. Unfortunately those useless cunts didn't have the ability/time to fix him up, so they had to take him back after a few days and the Germans ended up saving his life. He never slagged the Germans off when he came home apparently, although he claimed to have seen the SS in action and said they were bastards.

My grandad did National Service, and when he came out he decided that he was done with calling people 'Sir', so the dock authorities (including his old man, great-grandad) thought he was a militant communist because he refused to suck up to the senior dockers. Fortunately he was still able to get work by getting on the Catholic gangs using his mother's name and the Protestant ones with his actual name. He got years out of that until somebody asked my nan why her husband wasn't doing some Catholic shit or other and she let the abused child out of the bag.

[Ian]

I'd really like to delve into my family tree but what stuff I've done has proven to be seriously hard work for little of actual interest so far.

From what I do know, though, there's not a huge amount of interest. I've got a great uncle who was a Member of the House of Keys in the Manx government and I know I've got some Scottish heritage in there somewhere as well but nothing more exotic than that to my knowledge. I need to try and find out more about my mum's dad's WW2 service because he never spoke about it and never sent off for his medals either.

[igor_balis]

My maternal grandfather fled Poland during WWII. Gambled away all his savings on the boat, and turned up with no money or grasp of the English language. Dad was adopted, his adoptive parents were pretty much wankers from what I hear so I don't know them, and he has no interest in researching his biological family. I'm fascinated by them, especially as his mother was apparently a German gypsy, but I'll wait until he dies out of respect.

[Ian]

Actually it occurs to me that that great uncle was also a wing commander in the RAF. He probably had a reasonably interesting life.

[Cord]

I did this a little while back. It was generally fairly dull, mine are pretty much all farm workers from Suffolk or Wiltshire, who at a certain point end up coming to London to do properly plebby trades like cork cutting.

There's a little spike of interest around WW1. Had a great great grandfather who ended up with quite a few medals, including oddly a reasonably important Russian one, which I never manage to get to the bottom of. His brother was less fortunate, as he got blown up in one of the very early U-boat attacks (this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Aboukir_(1900).

The highlight really was finding out that one of my direct ancestors was called Ethelbert. I imagine he was a beast.

[Ian]

There's another thing, I believe there's an.... I dunno, aunt of some great-great- variety or something along those lines who died who people in the family reckoned was poisoned by her husband. Though I imagine if it was a family rumour and nothing actually happened about it there's be no way of finding out about that. Unless you found out that he'd been up to no good, I suppose.

[Spoonsky]

This is more fun for Americans I'll bet (though a big fuck you to my friend who rolls around saying "I'm Italian" when her grandmother was half-Italian). I'm a quarter Italian-Sicilian and a quarter Swedish on my mum's side, I'll ask her more about her relatives when she comes home. I do know that my great-grandfather was a big anarchist in Boston, and that perhaps his brother was a Sicilian composer named Spartago Manelli, which always struck me as pretty cool.

My dad's side goes back further. The story goes that the original Stillinger was a middle-class German man in the 1800s, whose town was run by some corrupt local official. One day old Stillinger was given a sealed letter to take to the local court, but he opened it, Hamlet-style, and it apparently read: "This is a fat goose; pluck him well." So he took his family and they shipped out that night, eventually ending up in Ohio

[Spoonsky]

A cousin of mine, I think my mother's uncle, was Patton's right-hand man in World War II. Never met him though. I think he was Spanish.

The father of my mom's oldest friend was a Serbian Partisan in World War II (leading some squad of men at the age of 17, a year younger than me - bloody hell) and later became a pretty high-ranking minister for Tito until fleeing Yugoslavia in the 60s and moving to California. I want to ask him about Tito but it's never seemed appropriate.

[Serj]

I don't know a lot about my family really. My paternal grandmother came from what is now Croatia after all the so-called "Danube Swabians" were expelled from there. Beyond her I don't know about anything. Married my grandfather in Upper Austria whose family were locals.

On the paternal side it's a bit more interesting. My granddad was one of the young guys they threw to the front in 1944 to fight the Russians - he wasn't even 16 at the time. Though by the way he always kept silent about the war I think he was a pretty convinced Nazi in his youth who saw/did some terrible things. Managed to escape some shoddily set up Russian camp, walked all through Czechoslovakia to find the house in Vienna he'd grown up in bombed to the ground. Family had survived though.
He met my grandmother shortly afterwards while doing an exchange semester for uni in Denmark. She was from Copenhagen, and apparently they had a huge documented family tree full of Swedes and Germans going back to the 17th century, but somebody lost the thing. Her dad was a track-and-field athlete, we have a lot of cups and trophies standing around, and I think he even competed in the Olympics sometime in the 1920s or so. Might have to look that up.

[Lewis]

Them Serbian partisans were hardcore. Balls to 'appropriate'. Question him whilst he's still alive.

[Spoonsky]

I will when I'm there in a couple weeks. I'm encouraged by the fact that he's just about the only WW2 vet we know that's actually talked at all about fighting in it. There does seem to be a sort of eery, generation-wide silence repression of the thing. Which I suppose is understandable.

[Sam]

Mothers side is Romani Gypsy (on her mothers side) in descent albeit we only can go far back as my great-nan simply because there is a total lack of last name. Mother's father was from Whitley Bay way up north however, don't know anyone else from up there however. Not sure on the Fathers, last name is Scottish but not much else is known. though my Granddad was over in India in the time of the empire and had quite a few medals, though I've no idea about him other then that.

Come to think of it, I haven't a clue what my granddad's on both sides looked like, both were dead before I was born.

[igor_balis]

Mothers side is Romani Gypsy (on her mothers side) in descent albeit we only can go far back as my great-nan simply because there is a total lack of last name. Mother's father was from Whitley Bay way up north however, don't know anyone else from up there however. Not sure on the Fathers, last name is Scottish but not much else is known. though my Granddad was over in India in the time of the empire and had quite a few medals, though I've no idea about him other then that.

Come to think of it, I haven't a clue what my granddad's on both sides looked like, both were dead before I was born.

We can transcend the bitterness of the black country derby through our shared gypsy heritage.

[Sam]

We can transcend the bitterness of the black country derby through our shared gypsy heritage.

A blessing in disguise.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I don't know much other than Mother's side is Polish with Dad's Cypriot.

I really should do a tree/look into the history though as I imagine we'll have some interesting characters and/or nutjobs along the way.

[ItalAussie]

I found out that my nonna hid in the mountains outside of Napoli during WW2, and they used to start cooking fires by stealing Nazi bullets from stockpiles and hitting them with hammers. She still has a scar on her hand from when she got caught by the bullet explosion.

My nonna is badass.

[Pavel]

My great grandfather was the head of some organisation years ago, really efficient at finding solutions to big issues at the time. Problem-solving/trouble-shooting I suppose is a better description.

I've a picture of him, must hoke out a bit more info'.

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[Charlie]

I know some of my ancestory all the way back to the year 700. It's something my brother has been working on for the past 4 years. We must have around 50 books focussing on different families during this time as we work to find evidence of heritage between people.

On my dad's side you are just left with Gore's which basically means there is a mayor of London and a load of northerners.

It's only through my mum's mum's side where anything interesting happens and this is the route that my brother, mainly, has been looking at. It includes the likes of William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great, Mary Queen of Scots, Edmund Ironside, and millions of Scottish kings.

It's pretty awesome really, apart from the knowledge that I have a shit ton of Scottish blood in me.

[John Arne]

My granddad was hired by Ken Bates in the 60's to go out to the Virgin Islands and help build some houses for him. They then had a massive falling out after my granddad accused him of treating the locals like slaves, so my granddad worked for himself for a while, then returned to Moss Side.

In his later years he pissed of Manchester council by trying to tunnel through all the underground tunnels under the city, much to the chagrin of the council. Legend.

My dad still maintains that in Northern Ireland he had Gerry Adams by the scruff of the neck, pistol in hand, but was told to let him go. I don't believe him.

[John Arne]

I know some of my ancestory all the way back to the year 700.
.

That, in itself, is pretty mental.

Quality admin.

[Lewis]

If things are going back that far chances are somebody made it all up hundreds of years later to claim legitimacy for something.

[Spammer]

I'm distantly related to Barry Hines, who wrote Kes and Threads.

[Spammer]

My mum looked into our tree massively and has gone back to the 17th century which is barmy. She went back as far as she could so started going sideways - cousins of cousins on the other side, that kind of thing. She met up with some woman somewhere in Sheffield who she reckons is her third cousin or some bollocks. She loves it.

[Pepe]

My bit on Wikipedia is finally gone.

[Mellberg]

Relative did this a few years back. My nan was half Indian and lived in Calcutta until she was 18. My grandad has a typical paddy background. Then when you go further back there's French-Portuguese (whatever that is) and German. On my dad's side there's Italian and, I think, Polish. An absolute runt, basically.

[Charlie]

If things are going back that far chances are somebody made it all up hundreds of years later to claim legitimacy for something.

Possibly. Most of it is done from reading biography's on families, as you are pretty limited with how far back you can get from public archives. If this was something done by referring to other people's past family tree work then I probably wouldn't believe it, but as I've read the books myself, and most links have been confirmed in multiple sources I'm happy to go with it.

I'm not quite as sceptical as you because there is obviously going to be a great deal of people who have exactly the same lineage as I do. There are people who are legitimately descended from past nobility.

You cunt.

[Lewis]

There are people who are legitimately descended from past nobility, but those past nobles used to claim all sorts of pretend lineage and connection to old Anglo-Saxon kings to bolster their credibility. I really don't see how you can claim any sort of reliable connection to people in the year 700, when England as we know it, let alone its recognised titles, were still centuries away.

Did you ever see Matthew Pinsent on Who Do You Think You Are? They were able to trace his posh boy roots back to William the Bastard, from where they were able to trace his family tree back to God. It's like that.

[Charlie]

There are people who are legitimately descended from past nobility, but those past nobles used to claim all sorts of pretend lineage and connection to old Anglo-Saxon kings to bolster their credibility. I really don't see how you can claim any sort of reliable connection to people in the year 700, when England as we know it, let alone its recognised titles, were still centuries away.

Did you ever see Matthew Pinsent on Who Do You Think You Are? They were able to trace his posh boy roots back to William the Bastard, from where they were able to trace his family tree back to God. It's like that.

I do understand what you are saying and it's definitely possible.

Getting to the year 700 is a result of following king's parents beginning around the year 1500 when the first king pops up, so any lying seems as though it would have to be done around that time or later, especially given that the same kings, queens, empresses and whatever the fuck come up multiple times along different lines. A result of the royal inbreeding no doubt. If it is in fact some false claim, it's been done by the Erskine's. As a fairly prominent family though there is plenty written about them, so I am happy to go with it due to the number of sources suggesting the same things. Hopefully there wasn't some scrote claiming to be an Erskine when they weren't one, but as I said before, none of this is the result of internet searches or dodgy archives, it's work strung together by reading books from historians and from the time.