Mastodawn

What a wonderful evening I’ve had. Miss 18 (almost 19) granddaughter that I very rarely see nowadays due to she’s now working & has a boyfriend, got in touch. “Hey Grandma, long time no see, can I come round”. I said of course & checked to see if there was a blue moon due.
She arrived around 4pm, purpose of visit was because she is doing a family tree & wanted to do the maternal side of her Dads (my son) family. I was thinking I wouldn’t be a great help as I thought my memory would betray me once we got past my grandparents as my recollections were hazy. It was fabulous, we did my maternal & paternal side & a name would crop up that sparked a memory & we’d go from there. I can’t believe how far back we got. Got stuck in the 1700’s on my Mums side, but the last we found on my Dads side who I must admit was an only child, went back to 1605 😃. My goodness they kept fabulous records in the UK.
We had dinner together & talked about family & issues on all sides & it was just the most amazing few hours with this lovely young woman. #Ancestry #Family #History

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John Smith 2d ago

@feather1952 I've had the family history bug for many years but haven't managed to get the kids or grandkids all that excited in it. Yet. It's so good that your granddaughter has become interested and has you as a valuable source. You'll have to try and keep her interest going.
My most recent discovery was my grandmother's older sister who had disappeared from the records when their family was hit by hard times in the 1890s. My gran went into an orphanage when she was about 5 but this sister just stopped showing up in the records. Then I got a DNA match with someone in Portland and in tracking back I found a woman who seemed to match my grandmother's sister. It turned out that she had moved in with her aunt in London and took on her aunt's family name. The final piece of the puzzle was her marriage certificate where she named her parents correctly. She was married in Sydney in 1913 and, shortly after, settled in Portland, Oregon.

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Heather Evans 2d ago

@smitjo
Exciting find. I was amazed at how much I did eventually remember & where it lead to. My granddaughter also had her DNA profile done & hers is a doozy as she not only has my British & Nordic roots there, but her grandfather on her Mums side is Laotian, very interesting mix.

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John Smith

@feather1952 yes, the DNA turns up some interesting stuff. My grandkids have English, Irish, German and Russian roots with a bit of Scot, Welsh, Dutch and Scandinavian in the mix too. The journeys that their ancestors took that ended up with my Grandkids in Australia are interesting. Some of the English genes moved to America in the 1630s - not quite Mayflower but soon after. They came to Australia for the Gold rush around Hill End. The Russians came via Poland and Ukraine, over the course of a hundred years or so, and came to Australia to work on the Snowy project after WW2. The Irish and some of the English arrived in Australia as convicts in the early 1800s.