Who's Your Coolest Ancestor?

[Chemical Alia]

I heard my grandfather was a really good accountant, but he died before I was born v:

I'd love to know more about my family's past, but I don't even know my dad's real family name. I think some research was done on my mom's side, but nothing interesting that I know of.

 

[Grimfolse]

Mine is probably the guy that invented the sandwich.

You're welcome.

 

[chromewarriorXIII]

Not sure what the exact relationship is but I know that someone on my dad's side of the family essentially built a lot of what is now Pine Orchard in Connecticut, which is where a lot of rich families, some of which I am related to, live. Unfortunately, my family doesn't inherit any of that money.

 

[Leadfinger]

Turlough O'Carolan was one of my ancestor's. He is considered by many to be Ireland's national composer. Family lore has it that he wrote the tune that was later used for the U.S. national anthem The Star Spangled Banner.

 

[El Poncho]

I've not looked into anything to see if I have any famous ancestors. All I know is that my mums family has a family tree going way back but i've not had a look at it yet, all I know is that one of my ancestors was a Portuguese sailor who came to Scotland. I wouldn't believe this but his genes still appear every now and then to say hello. My mum and 2 of her sisters are pale and ginger while one of them has dark hair, a tanned complexion etc.

 

[templeg]

Florence Nightingale is a distant cousin of mine. Plus a really cool early feminist called Barbara Bodichon who knew people like T.S. Eliot and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and a Celtic king called Oliul Ollum who raped a fairy called Aine, she subsequently chewed off his ear and thus his name means 'bare ear'.

 

[Lord Kloo]

One of my great-great-great-great (i can't remember how many it actually is..) uncles was General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy (Southern States at the time of the civil war).. the Lee family has had some good times..

 

[stephen96]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_German
A sir....yeah

 

[Antari]

This is one of my more famous ancestor's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Cyr

 

[DasDestroyer]

Damn that's awesome.
I don't know my family history very far back, but my meternal grandparents were part of the team of engineers that developed the the spacecraft in which Yuri Gagarin(first man in space) became, well, the first man in space. That's about it.

 

[CloakedOne]

I share a bloodline with Charlemagne, that's pretty awesome to me.

 

[micky]

my ancestors were on the mayflower, john and Priscilla. i think thats pretty cool

 

[E-Hybrid]

my grandfather was part of the Sicilian mafia, but I am going to pretend that I am related to old Norman Kings of Sicily just to make myself feel better.

 

[Chefodeath]

I'm related to a whole bunch of Italian mobsters.

 

[Cheesus333]

Apparently, McCoull (my last name) comes from the Scottish clan MacDougal[footnote]Not McCowell, as you might expect, and I don't really get it either.[/footnote]. Their motto was 'victory or death', which I think is pretty badass.

God, this feels like being in primary school XD

 

[CasioCoal]

my grand dad's dad was an Aussie digger in world war 1. He ended up getting put in a German POW camp later in the war. He was an orphan who had been brought up by two german settlers in Australia and thus knew German, allowing him to become mates with one of the German guards. He used this closeness to kill this guy with a broken bottle to escape (something that he apparently had to do given the situation, but was very sad about).

Apparently one of my Scottish ancestors was a convict sent to Australia for saboutaging farming equipment.

 

[Smokej]

Well in my case, I have the ruins of a castle in my family's name, as well as a few Mausoleums that bear the family name in the surrounding area as well, so I have some pretty strong evidence of my lineage.

i don't want to be iterating or the bearer of bad news, but a lot of you seem to have a wrong perception of how this works. If you're really intrested in your family history try to go to an archive when they have an open day to get some first impressions.

I don't know if this is the case in the US but here in Germany you can also visit a church archive (of course your ancestors should have lived somewhere there in the community) when you fill out an application. This is a good place to start a research because the sources there cover a wide range of biographical data. You should bring some help with you if you don't have knowlegde in old languages and in deciphering handwriting. But if you have a trail there you can follow it to more specific archives (court archives, municipal archives, party archives and so on...) Takes some time, but this is the best way to do it if you're not affiliated with a scientific institution that can help you

 

[Reed Spacer]

Tim Horton.

That's right; that Tim Horton.

 

[Prof. Monkeypox]

Well in my case, I have the ruins of a castle in my family's name, as well as a few Mausoleums that bear the family name in the surrounding area as well, so I have some pretty strong evidence of my lineage.

i don't want to be iterating or the bearer of bad news, but a lot of you seem to have a wrong perception of how this works. If you're really intrested in your family history try to go an archive when they have an open day to get some first impressions.

I don't know if this is the case in the US but here in Germany you can also visit a church archive (of course your ancestors should have lived somewhere there in the community) when you fill out an application. This is a good place to start a research because the sources there cover a wide range of biographical data. You should bring some help with you if you don't have knowlegde in old languages and in deciphering handwriting. But if you have a trail there you can follow it to more specific archives (court archives, municipal archives, party archives and so on...) Takes some time, but this is the best way to do it if you're not affiliated with a scientific institution that can help you

Yeah, yeah we did all that too. That's how I first found out about it. I mean, I didn't personally do the research or anything, but family did, and through the proper channels.

Also: did my post make me sound like a dick? Reading it makes me think I did. If so, sorry. Didn't mean to accuse you or anything.

 

[tahrey]

I don't know of any really significant ones, but I can say that one of my still-surviving ancestors - my grandmother - worked in a factory bolting Spitfires and troop-carrier gliders together during WW2 (amongst plenty of other pretty hardcore stories she can tell of her youth), and my grandad was a union leader who helped get immigrant workers in his factory on an equal footing.

I doubt anything I'll ever do will match up that kind of epic behaviour.

Oh and there's a castle in Wales that bears my family name, but apparently we have no claim to it as it's probably just a case of convergent surname evolution, never mind that it's such a goddamn rare one I know of about FIVE PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE WORLD with it outside of my family. So there's a chance that someone deep in my ancestry built an ACTUAL GODDAMN CASTLE (none of this Minecraft bullshit )... or maybe they didn't.

Meh, I'm happy to say "at least one of them had a hand in us winning the war, and another was a very minor civil rights campaigner".
Oh and that's not forgetting the great grandfather who was one of the many millions on the "good" side of the trenches in WW1...