Anybody do genealogy?

[UKFlounder]

I've enjoyed it for years but lately decided to try ancestry.com for a month or two and grave found a few neat tidbits.

I'm apparently a second cousin, eight times removed from some guy named George Washington. (My ten-time great-grandfather was his great-grandfather William Ball.)

Today I found that a second cousin twice removed was in the Marines snd died in action at Okinawa. One of my great uncles, from my mom's side was on a tank landing ship that was at Okinawa, but he survived.

A five-time great grandfather apparently was at the Battle of Fallen Timbers against Blue Jacket and his men in 1794. He got paid $1 per day and was in the service for 116 days.

I have found a couple if slave-holders including two here in Campbell County, where I have spent my whole life.

I haven't done the DNA test yet, but it seems like I'm mostly German snd English, at least according to paper records.

[blueboss]

Uh oh... We might be related, my mother's mother's (my grandmother) side of the family also goes back to the Ball family.

I'll have to ask my dad to find the document with the info.


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[UKFlounder]

If so, sorry about your luck :)

[KentuckyWildcat]

I do not, but my boss is big into it. He spends several hundred a year on different subscriptions. He even found my family back to my great great grandparents for me. At this time, that is as far as I desire to go. He has done the DNA test and it lined up with his records.

I've been wanting to do the DNA test. Everyone claims we have a good amount of Native American in our family, but I don't see any real proof. We do all have reddish brown complexions so maybe?

[KSRBEvans]

I started about 5 years ago, after I started watching "Who Do You Think You Are?" My biggest regret is that I didn't do it sooner when I still had my Dad around. One of my mother's brothers is into genealogy and so I have a lot more on that side of the family than I do on Dad's. He moved away from his home in southern WV when he was 18 and only took us back there a few times--and he talked about his relatives even less. Must've been an unhappy home life, but I'd still like to know as much as possible, for better or worse. I met a cousin on that side of my tree through Ancestry, then we became Facebook friends and I've met more that way.

I did 23andme.com after watching the "Finding Your Roots" series on PBS and seeing it there. As I expected, I'm 98.8% European (60% English/Irish, 6% French/German, the rest "broadly Northwestern European"), but was surprised to see 1.1% West African, which I still can't figure out. They now can provide a lot of the genetic trait info the FDA prohibited them from providing for a couple of years. (Mine wasn't especially interesting.) Through 23andme I found a 4th cousin who gave me some info on a great grandfather who'd disappeared under suspicious circumstances in the 1870s.

My immediate project is to finish an application for the Sons of the American Revolution. I need one more document that will prove up the last connection to whom I believe is my Revolutionary War ancestor. I need to get to Morgan County and look through some old probate and real estate records. May also need to get to Tazewell County VA to look through their records there. After that I want to work back to as many ancestors who came from Ireland and England as possible. We're probably going there in a couple of years and I'd like to see where they came from so we can visit as many as possible.