More fun with ancestry.com.
Posted by
CovingtonCat
Jun 24 '12, 13:41
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So last week I told you how I traced my father's line back to my 5 times great-grandfather (born 1620) coming to Massachusetts in 1640 and his wife's family back to 1545. I paid for the international search function and got back another generation in the direct paternal line. But names start getting spelled differently and it's difficult to read old English documents. However, I may have found a picture of the old homestead in the 1500's.
I tried searching on my mother's side but, as I kind of expected, there aren't many records for Germany. I did find some of my mother's father's WWI info which gave me his birthdate and birthplace. I tracked down 2 of her sisters info from their entry into the US.
Then I started looking at my father's mother's info. Not much there - only as far back as 1833. I skipped a couple generations and hit paydirt. I can trace my great-great-granmother's family back to 1384 England on her father's side. Some of that family lived in Boston, England.
However, the real payoff came when I traced a line off that branch on the maternal side, starting in 1543. 2 generations on the maternal side I hit the family name, Throckmorton. Following the paternal side of that line I found a castle - Coughton Court (http://www.coughtoncourt.co.uk/). After a while "de" appears in front of the name and before I know it I've jumped the English Channel with the Norman Conquest. Then things got freaky.
(I suppose if you're going to trace ancestors it helps that there's written history about them and the best way to have history is to be in a line of rulers.)
Before the move to England, the Throckmortons were know as... Well, they didn't have last names - they were du Loire's then au D Alençon and du Maine. Following the latter, I get to Charles the Bald. Who the what? I googled him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_the_Bald). Guess who Charles' grandfather was? Charlemagne. And it got freakier after that.
There's a bishop, 2 or 3 saints, a Roman emperor (Flavius Valentinianus I), then the path leads back to Britain. I'm at 25BC and I'm taking a break. There are so many leaf hints on my tree that it will take a long while for me to follow up on them. When I started this I was just hoping to find when my father's family came over. It's cool that I can trace family back to the Norman Conquest. (However, it's not so cool to learn that I probably don't have much, if any, Irish in me. All my life I thought I had more Irish in me than English.) Before the Conquest it's all names that I can't relate to. And knowing a couple ancestors on my father's side came from Bavaria, where my mother is from, was weird.
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