A few months back, a friend of mine traced my lineage back to Pierre Richer dit Lafleche who came to New France in 1665 with the Carrigan Salieres regiment, assigned to fight the Iroquois.

Along the way he found I am a direct descendent of Martha French, one of about 150 people taken prisoner in the Deerfield, Massachusetts raid of 1704. She chose to stay in New France/Canada. He also found another grandmother who was taken from York, Maine and also chose to stay. Her father founded Derry, New Hampshire and was a friend of Oliver Cromwell.

Jean Baptiste Hertel de Rouville the French leader of the Deerfield raid was a first cousin, 10 generations removed.

Anyone else ever do/have this done? Any initeresting finds?

 

Nothing as exciting as that. My great, great, great grandfather was the first to come over from Ireland. He worked his way to western PA and was engaged as a cattle drover, taking stock to the eastern counties, where he fattening them for the market. On my mother's side they became oil rich in southern NY and by time it trickled down to my grandmother, she blew the last of it and my mother never saw a penny of it.

 

Yes and we can trace my dad's genealogy back to the 1500s. One of my dad's forebears was a magistrate under George Washington's presidency and correspondence from him to Washington are on record in the Library of Congress. I find the history to be quite interesting. I suppose if we all dug far enough we'd find that we're all related. My frustration is in tracing the Native American roots on my mother's side of the family.

 

We found the same woman in two branches of the family tree. At some point one of her great-great grandsons from her first husband married one of her great-great-great granddaughters from her second husband. I'd guess that when your family has been in a small village for 300 years it's hard to find anyone who you're not distantly related to.

We also found that some families hold a grudge for a VERY long time. My maternal grandmother's father was a catholic. He married a lutheran. The story that came down through my family was that his family was very upset that he had married outside the faith, and they cut off all contact with him. When my aunt was bit by the genealogy bug she tried to track down the descendants of his brothers and sisters in Quebec. She found some of them. They knew the same story, and still considered him an outcast. Other than acknowledging that he was a member of their family they didn't want to talk to my aunt or hear anything about what had happened to the long lost brother.

 

I found that I am from the wrong side of the sheets to the Royal Family.

To make matters worse I am a direct descendent of Robert the Bruce.

Talk about mixing oil with water!

 

I quit when I found out that my great grandfather's brother was hanged in Germany for stealing a horse.

 

My wife has been doing this stuff for years and was a volunteer librarian at the Mormon Church Genealogy Library in East Brunswick, NJ for over 20 years.

She hasn't done too well on my side of the family .... only back to France, England and Germany in the 1800 and 1700's.

The only thing of note on my side is that I'm directly related to the brother of Rebecca Towne Nurse who was hung in Salem, MA during the witch trials. She and her family were "set up" by people who wanted the land they owned.

On her side she says she's back to about 800 AD from a line of Irish royalty......And don't think it's easy living with an Irish princess.... with NO money or a castle...

 

I don't do this. I'm afraid I'll find people who want to borrow money from me.

 

I don't do so either;I,m afraid I'll find people to whom,I OWE Money...

 

I did a genealogy project way back in high school. I limited it to my family's history to their presence in North America and I managed to trace my family back to 1605 in Maine. It took me almost a year as I recall and I did it by going through old records and some of the old, local literature. But I also got some of the info from oral histories that had been passed down through the years. I spent some very interesting evenings listening to stories of my ancestors told by some of the local old timers who were amateur historians.

Two of the more interesting characters (I forget how many greats, grandfathers of mine) were some of the first settlers in the area. One of them, in typical Scot fashion, evidently did not care for the British all that much. The Brits used to bring their ships up the river, come ashore, and mark the strongest, most straight trees they could find for use as masts for their ships. When they returned to harvest the trees the following spring, the trees would be gone and this ancestor of mine would have a new shed or barn.
The other one was a former sea captain and privateer who came ashore to help organize the few settlements in the area at the time and he built several forts along the coast of Maine as protection against several of the local, aggressive native tribes. He was eventually captured during a skirmish with the natives who then cut out his tongue and burned him at the stake.