Beginners and Beyond

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Sometimes running leads to totally unexpected avenues.... (Read 162 times)

Jen16226


    I love this thread!!!!!!

     

    I love genealogy!  My branch of family tree is hard to research as I am only 2nd generation in the US (please read into it that I am too cheap to buy the international version of ancestry.com) but my husband's tree.....OMG I am astonished by his on both sides of his family.

     

    Enjoy your trip and marathon.  I hope somehow you can visit the area your family is from.

    Goals for 2013:

    Run 10K Race- ACCOMPLISHED!!!!

    Run HM

     

    RACES:

    2-9 Kittanning Rotary Club 5K 44:38 on ice UGH

    3-9 New Port Richey, Fl Pasco Challenge 10K- 1:22:55

    5-12 Komen Pittsburgh Race for the Cure 5K

    7-6 Ford City Heritage Days 5K

    8-4 Pittsburgh Rock n Roll 1/2 Marathon

    9-29 Richard S.Caliguri City of Pittsburgh Great Race 5K

     


    Anomalous

      So cool!

      Half Fanatic  #3091  ~   Marathon debut: 11/16/13 Anthem Richmond Marathon

      "Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious." - Rumi

      Sharz96


        I had a somewhat similar experience in August, except it was with my husband’s family, not mine. One of his distant cousins had done some research and we knew his Dad’s paternal family was Brethren who emigrated from the Rhineland area of Germany in 1753, settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for 100 years or so, and then moved “west” to Illinois.  I knew his parents and two sisters live across the street from the house where his Dad’s maternal grandmother had lived for all of his mother’s life.

         

        When his Dad (Doug) died in August, we discovered that his (Doug’s) maternal great grandparents had purchased eight grave plots in the 1940s when their only son was killed in WWII. At that time, their family was seven—themselves, their son (no wife or descendants) their daughter and son-in-law, and two toddler grandsons (my husband’s dad and his uncle).   And we started digging in the cemetery records, and learned that Doug’s maternal AND paternal families have lived in the same little town (15,000) for at least 130 years.   The great-grandmother’s house was actually where she’d lived her entire life, not just her married life, as I had assumed.  Her father built the house before she was born, and when she married, they lived there.  Their daughter (my husband’s grandmother) married a local boy whose family had been in that town for just as long.

         

        This was very strange and fascinating to me.  Both of my grandfathers were born on “old family farms”, but both moved all over the country throughout their lives.  My mom lived in three or four states, back and forth across the country growing up, and then added a couple more after she married.  My Dad grew up in the same region as the old family farm, but he lit out after high school.  I’ve lived in four states, two growing up, and two since I married.  And we are planning to move out-of-state again as soon as we can do so without committing financial suicide.

         

        It was hard for me to fathom family roots in the same rural town for (at least) five generations.

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