Saturday, July 12, 2008

Family Tree

Yesterday I started messing around a little bit on ancestry.com and start a family tree. A lot of people talk about their heritage and famous people that they are descended from. When I started, I only knew as far as my grandparents. I only remember one great grandma, and she died when I was young. I didn't know any of their names or anything about them, like where they were from. So, it was hard to get past my grandparents. Plus, a lot of the resources that they had weren't very accurate. For example, my great grandpa on my dad's side's name was Burnie. In the 1930 census, they had his name as Barbara, and my grandpa Mark's name as Maxene. I think it was just super-bad penmanship.

But eventually, after a call to my dad to confirm a couple of things, I began to find a few more. And once I got to one, that opened up a bunch more from research that other people did. So I got all the way back until about 1642. I already knew Campbell came from Scotland. My ancestors came from Scotland and Ireland somewhere in the 1720's and 30's. I haven't gotten very far on my mom's side. I need to talk to my grandma about it sometime.

So far, I haven't found any famous ancestors. It would be cool to be related to Patrick Henry or Adam Sandler. My luck it'll show that I'm somehow related to Brittany Spears. I would rather find out that somewhere in the 1800's I had a relative who was a mad scientist and he decided to try to mate his daughter with a walrus, and somehow he made it work. So in my DNA I am part walrus. In my old age, my whiskers are going to get super long and teeth are going to grow out of my nose. I would rather find out something like that rather than find out that I'm related to Brittany Spears.

No comments: