52 Ancestors Week 1: First

Question

Ready for another year of the 52 Ancestors challenge?

First off, a BIG, BIG thank you to Robynne Lozier for not only bringing the idea to do this challenge in 2018 but also for keeping it going the whole year so people could participate. She did such a great job and participants seemed to enjoy it so we've decided to continue it in 2019!

This will work the same as last year. Each week there will be a prompt for which you'll find an ancestor or relative who matches that prompt and post about them in that week's thread. For examples, check out last year's challenge. See more details for 2019 here and check out the new sister challenge: 52 Photos.

Ready for the week one prompt?

It's ... FIRST.  

Maybe the first born in a family? Or the first one in the family to graduate from college? The first to move to a new country? Or the first to have a business? The first black sheep you found?

Share below!

Comments

If you participated in last year and fell behind a lot because of real life roared it ugly head can you pick up with that and finish that and get a badge for last year and also start with this year and get a badge for this year. Will we get a badge for this year if we do all 52 weeks for the year.

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Hi Linda, you'll have to ask Robynne about last year's challenge as she ran that one.

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That’s a good question Linda. I don’t even remember how many I missed. Yikes. I better double up or even triple up on my weeks.

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In response to Linda's original question, I am sorry, but the judges decision is final. Any new prompts being added to the 2018 challenge that are dated in January 2019 will NOT be counted.

The deadline was 31 December 2018 and that was announced right at the beginning and several times during the year. If you were unable to complete the challenge within that time, then you were unable to complete the challenge.

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2018 is the 'first' year I was able to find the names of my birth parents, hoping that the names on my original BC are correct.

I know I am not the 'first' child of my birth mother based on the original birth certificate, but maybe I am the first to search for her and my siblings. Thanks for organizing the threads so I can follow others through the year, this will push me to be more active in my research.

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Thank you, Robynne, for your persistence in this project.

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Thank you to Robynne for her leadership on this last year! Here is a new help page with more details on the new challenge, and one for the new photo sharing challenge inspired by it:

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:52_Ancestors
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:52_Photos

Regarding the badges, we're doing them a bit differently now. It's up to Robynne to decide who earned the "52 IN 52" badges for last year. But if you participated last year and want to continue participating, you could still earn the 52 in 52 badge, and/or the easier-to-obtain 13 in 13 and 26 in 26 badges. The way we are doing them now, they just have to be 13, 26, or 52 consecutive weeks. They don't have to match the calendar year. Therefore, if you started in, say, March 2018, you can earn the 52 in 52 badge in February 2019 if you haven't missed any weeks.

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It is said that my 4th Great Grandmother, Matilda Van Bibber Estill, Van Bibber-141, was the first white child born in Missouri.  She was the great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone and her family moved from Kentuck to Missouri with the Boone contingent.

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I found the "first" (and hoping the last!) bow in my family tree. Jonathan Day [Day-1391] and Elizabeth Adams [Adams-30911] are the parents of Jonathan Day [Day-9037] and David Day [Day-1382] who are both my 4th great-grandparents.

Jonathan Jefferson had Clarissa Ann Victoria Day who had Henry Clay King (my great-grandfather).

David had Bythral Day who had Ethel Corrine Day (my great-grandmother) who married the above Henry Clay King.

Answer 1

My wonderful mother was the first woman, and possibly the first person, in my lineage, to have not only one, but two Master's degrees.  She was born in 1914, graduated from high school at 16.  She went on to college, U Nebraska, and got her bachelor's degree in Home Economics, then she went to the U of Vermont and received her Master's in Home Ec.  When I went to college in 1970 she returned to graduate school and the State of Maine paid for her to get her Master's in Social Work, which she did in two years, then returned to Maine to work for the state for the rest of her working life. She was my education role model!

Answer 2

so I am back-tracking, since I just joined Wikitree recently...my  'first" would be the first discovery I made of an ancestor who migrated to America..well, technically it wasn't MY discovery...someone had done a whole line of my Eslinger surname (we later found out we were like 4th cousins, so yes, I credited her and thanked her) and also verified and saw the online documents and historical stories recorded, myself...but it was MY first clear vision of an ancestor and their homeland and proof and that was exciting!!! Confirmed our German suspicions. Christian Eslinger immigrated on the ship "Patience" in 1749 with his wife Barbara and several children, landing in Philadelphia.

Answer 3

It is said that my 4th Great Grandmother, Matilda Van Bibber Estill, Van Bibber-141, was the first white child born in Missouri.  She was the great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone and her family moved from Kentuck to Missouri with the Boone contingent.  This is my first week to participate.  I would like to try for the 52 Week Challenge, but let's first go for the 13 Week Challenge!

Answer 4

The first Black Sheep is my brother: Brown-66308 As I was growing up he came home beat up by a gang of boys with brass knuckles about a girl . He ran away from cops, hide in the house cops swarming all around .

Answer 5

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lovelace-587This is my first comment on the 2019 Ancestors Challenge, and I want to honor my wonderful mother, Clarice Marvin Lovelace, Marvin-895. Clarice came from an Oklahoma Land Run Family, and she was the first to go to college, and she graduated with honors. She was a young widow, and she put aside going to medical school to raise me.

Answer 6

My grandfather [https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sears-2479 | Leslie R Sears] fought in the First World War.  "I, Leslie Sears, do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States. I do solemnly swear to bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully, against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and to observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States of America, and the orders of the officers appointed over me."

 I took that oath on the 7th of July, 1918 just before my 26th birthday. President Wilson declared war on Germany just a year before that and we all registered for the draft. They said this would be the war to end all wars.  My reward for repeating this oath of enlistment was a set of two small aluminum disks, dog tags, virtually indestructible and hand stamped with my name, the letters USA and my service serial number- 398632.  They only started issuing serial numbers that year I enlisted. The news people say a fellow named Arthur Crane of Chicago got serial number 1. By March of 1918, we read that there are 250,000 doughboys in Europe so my serial number is in the right ballpark. It seems like giving everyone a number is a little impersonal.  Makes one feel like a piece of machinery. But millions of us are scheduled to go into the Army to finish off this war.  The Army has not had to keep track of so many soldiers since the Civil War when they first started using dog tags.

Comments

You are certainly part of a fabulous military family.

Answer 7

I'm a few weeks late getting started on this, but here goes. I recently discovered my first ancestor to have been born in what is now the Netherlands. I knew his name (Joannes Gres) and children for quite some time, but only recently decided to follow up on the "ex Boekolz" found describing him in a number of the church records. Turns out "ex Boekolz" is "from Boekel," a town in North Brabant, Netherlands.

Wrote a short blog post about it.

Answer 8

Being only relatively new to Wikitree this is the first challenge I have elected to participate in.  I recently found of that one of my g-g-g-g-grandfathers on the maternal side of the family was something of an Art lover. Around 1854, he opened a tea--house in a cottage in Main Rd, Ballarat East and displayed a selection of Art works inside it, including tapestries that he had created himself. One of these tapestries still exists and is part of the collection held by the Soveriegn Hill Gold Musuem. Pantheon Cottage as is was known, was definitely a first for Ballarat, and was thought to be the first (although unofficial) Art Gallery in Victoria.

Answer 9

This will be my "first" week of participating in the challenge, so I hope I get it right. My 4x great-grandfather, Charles Hanks, was the "first" Hanks to come to Louisiana, c.1791. Charles Hanks-242 was also the great uncle of President Abraham Lincoln. 

Since this was the 1st week's challenge, and I am posting my profile more than 14 days later, am I correct in my understanding that this will not count towards consecutive weeks of participation?

Answer 10

My daughter, Kennedy-12120 was the first in my family to graduate from University. Some of us went to college but she's the first to go for that higher level of education. She graduated last year from Guelph University in Ontario, Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Animal Biology and a Masters in Dairy Nutrition. So proud.

Answer 11

Holy cats, I had no idea how fraught with drama genealogy and DNA research could be. My first big FIRST was having a stranger contact me after finding my name as the source on profiles on Wikitree, to share very sensitive information about a branch of my family tree. It didn't impact me directly, though I'm still not going to share details. When a stranger knows things that no one outside the family would know--those details that don't make it into any bio--and can validate that they are part of a secret branch of the family--that's a big thing to learn. I had to really sit with what was mine to share and what wasn't.

Then it happened again, with a different branch of the family. Just because ancestry is in the past doesn't mean it doesn't have a huge impact on the living, in deep and unpredictable ways.

This is the second prompt I've responded to for the 52 things. It's really fun to follow along!

Answer 12

In one of my direct family lines, John George Hoffman was the first to come to America. He was my 7th great grandfather. My understanding is that a few generations before him, the family had been wealthy and outwardly Protestant. After refusal to conform with Catholic pressures, the family was stripped of their money and assets. Under the duress of that loss, my great+grandfather and his brothers cut their losses and immigrated to the United States in 1751.

I don't remember how many prompts this makes me for me, but still fun to do and read!

Answer 13

Interesting correlations. My Grandparents were the first in the valley with a flush toilet. Hubby and I were the first in NZ to have a composting toilet inside a permanently inhabited home. Now that is not one many would want :)

Answer 14

Hi, 

This is the first of my ancestors to emigrate to Australia in 1841. He and his young family had their own challenge when there was a mutiny aboard the ship during the voyage. Thomas Mayoh.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mayoh-3

Answer 15

What a wide open question! My first ancestors to come to live in the present territory of Canada appear to have been the Kuhn family. Early in 1750, Jacob and Verena Kuhn left Rikon, Switzerland and went to Rotterdam, sailing from there aboard the Ann to Halifax, Nova Scotia and arriving in September. An infectious fever was brought to the colonies on the Ann. Several people died en route and some did not live long after arriving in Halifax. One of their children, Susannah Kuhn [Kuhn-820] is my 5X great grandmother

Answer 16

My grandfather, Firman Joseph Robinson (1901-1991) was the first child of William Thomas Robinson (1874-1910) and Lucy Jane Boushon (1874-1958). His father died when he was nine years old so he was the man of the house helping his mother with his five little brothers. 

Answer 17

My 6th great-grandfather Peter Abell was the first Catholic settler in Kentucky; he went west from Saint Mary's County, Maryland, in 1783, and patented 2500 acres on Pottinger's Creek in Nelson County that later became the Holy Cross settlement (where the first Catholic Church west of the Allegheny Mountains was built in 1792).

Answer 18

Introducing Dudley Beresford Hoole Fynn (1895 - 1916) who fought and died in the First World War.

Answer 19

First would have to be my great great grandfather Moise Caron (1825-1907).
He was the first 'Caron' to settle in Pain Court, Kent, Ontario from Quebec. 
Even says so on his gravestone. 
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Caron-621

http://geneofun.on.ca/names/photo/2507541

Answer 20

I have a long line of firsts.

I am my mother’s first child.

My grandparents first grandchild.

My Great Grandfathers first Great Grandchild and I gave him his first Great great granddaughter and grandson before he passed away on us.