Question of the Week: What is something surprising you have found in your research? [closed]

Question

What is something surprising you've found while researching your family history?

Comments

I learned that though my immediate family is from the southern and central part of the United States, that I have cousins from BOTH sides (mother and father) of the family in Washington State and they live about 40 miles from each other.

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I found that two of my grandfathers, many generations back of course, were brothers and that their grandchildren married each other. Also their grandfather's sister was one brother's grandmother-in-law. Now how to a create a tree showing that????

Answer 1

That my 5x great grandfather left Wisconsin in the midst of darkness and served with the Confederacy against his three fully grown sons who would go to fight with the Union.

Answer 2

Doing a random search on my gt grandfather Richard Simmonds b 1854 Shrewsbury I found out that his Sister Fanny (Woods) died on the Empress of India when it sunk in 1914. It was quite a shock. My great aunt had given me some details of her marriage and the cousins but never mentioned her death. Nearly as many people drowned as on the Titanic but happening just before the outbreak of WW1 it didn't receive as much publicity. Aunt Fanny was born in Shrewsbury, married a George Wood in the South of England and had been over in Canada. It appears she was going back to visit her daughter "Cissie" (who is a whole interesting story in her own right) in Liverpool when she boarded the Empress. Her body has never been found.

Answer 3

As part of my research I submitted to the FamilytreeDNA site. Well come to find out we connected with a completely unknown Hooper family in Ohio. Thing is our family line only goes back 8 generations to our brick wall in Quebec. But the dna site says our mutual ancestor can be back 12 generations. So really trying to dig past that brick wall. By chasing down source documents I am standing At the wall but just can't.....seem.....to....break....it....down!!!