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JinJer & Felicity 44: The Glossy Veneer is Slipping


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43 minutes ago, Lurky said:

See, I have family examples of the absolute opposite.

My Granny was one of 13 kids, with 2 different fathers.  Her mother has married to husband 1, but had a long-term affair with man 2, and so while she was married, her kids had 2 different fathers, and apparently there was physical resemblances that meant it was quite obvious, especially as she apparently had stopped sleeping with her husband.  After her first husband died, she married man 2, and had more kids with him. 

One of my mum's cousins became Mormon, and got quite high in the hierarchy.  His dad was one of the sons born from the affair, and this was very well known in the family - but because husband 1 had a "better" lineage, that's the person on the family tree. 

I've heard this in other contexts too - that Mormons have a great reputation re genealogy, but if they get to the place where there are 4 different John Smiths (as my dad has got stuck on, lucky up his background) they'll pick the "best" one, so they can make that tree.

(I find genealogy a really odd thing, because it's assuming records show what actually happened, and there's no room for ancestors who were adopted and never told/were the result of an affair or a rape but raised by their mother's husband/were the child of a teenage mother, but brought up as their mother's sister, to avoid scandal/their mother was pregnant, and another man married her and chose to raise her child as his own/the man got another woman pregnant and his wife raised his baby etc etc etc etc.  Of course researching family trees is fun, but no one can hand on heart say they're definitive, or even likely to be right)

That’s a really interesting point. It kind of pulls genealogy into the nature vs nurture category. 

I’m impressed at how far back people have been able to go! I can go back to around 1700 in two branches - but very spotty in some areas , for reasons you mentioned.  Most peopleI talk to MAYBE can state, more or less, maybe their grandparents backstory, and possibly one or two great grandparents. But going back before the 20th century - hardly ever. 

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It's kind of an odd thing too how most people seem to think a genealogical record is wrong if it doesn't account for adoption or mistaken paternity, and that biology is all that matters. I'd hope people wouldn't tell living adopted people that they're wrong for calling the people who raised them their parents, but they'll say it's wrong in a genealogical record.

I do find genealogy kind of interesting, but I don't really get why people care so much about it being perfectly accurate 500 years back. Of course, the further you go back the more likely it is that you really are descended from a particular person!

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@singsingsing,  I understand that bishops did sometimes father children, but not legitimately.  I think my mother-in-law is just full of shit on this, but she's full of it most of the time anyway.  There's basically no way this would have shown up on a family tree.  

In my mom's side of the family, her mother's grandmother had first been married to one man who died in the Civil War.  He made his brother promise before he left to fight that if he were killed that the brother would marry his widow which he did.    She had several children with each husband. 

When the LDS records first became available online I found a mistake in my family tree within about 30 minutes. Some family trees have John Sevier's first wife and Davy Crockett's mother as sisters and some do not.  I think they may have been half-sisters.  I do know that John Sevier and Davy Crockett's father both lived in the Watauga Settlement in Tennessee and were part of the Overmountain Men.

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I love genealogy and have traced several branches to across the pond but haven’t spent a lot of time past that. Everyone asks if I am going to tackle my husband’s family, his mom especially. I just looked at her. Her dad was raised by someone other than his biological family and no one knows if his last name is his biological name or his given name.  Hell we don’t even know what my husband’s biological name is. His grandma was pregnant with his dad when she married another man. The man gave the child his name but he was Irish and the child was obviously not Irish. 

I have not done DNA but it is going to be part of our Christmas this year. I am interested in finding out how much family lore is true. I am probably going to be disappointed and be fairly “normal”. 

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3 hours ago, Rachel333 said:

It's kind of an odd thing too how most people seem to think a genealogical record is wrong if it doesn't account for adoption or mistaken paternity, and that biology is all that matters. I'd hope people wouldn't tell living adopted people that they're wrong for calling the people who raised them their parents, but they'll say it's wrong in a genealogical record.

I do find genealogy kind of interesting, but I don't really get why people care so much about it being perfectly accurate 500 years back. Of course, the further you go back the more likely it is that you really are descended from a particular person!

It is odd. But then my family tree is already going to be technically "wrong" I've included my great-grandfather and his family even though he was my great-grandmother's 2nd husband and not the biological father of her kids. I don't care that he's not blood. He is their father, he's my mother, her brother and cousins grandfather, and he's my great-grandfather. Everything he's done and been to our entire family. That's where he belongs along with his parents and the rest of his family. 

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8 hours ago, Carm_88 said:

Ehhh it depends on the Catholic Church. All my ancestors are Catholic and some of the records are very well kept and some of them are so patchy, it's hard to figure it all out. Census records have been great for me, I take the ancestry hints and combine that with some census records and piece together things as best I can. It's not perfect, but it's alright so far.

The church I was baptized in burnt down in like 1994, a little tiny church on Kaua'i. When I went to get Confirmed in high school in Colorado it was a big mess because the Diocese of Honolulu/ Archdiocese of San Francisco didn't have my baptismal records on file. My dad found a copy of it and the amazing office manager at our Parish worked magic and I was able to get Confirmed with my group of 4 senior girls since everyone else was younger (huge parish in Littleton, CO it's right next to Columbine High School and still has that evangelical fervor going back to the shootings and before) 

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I love genealogy its been so much fun researching my father's and mother's sides. According to Ancestry.com Mom has several branches that go back for centuries even to royalty! Or according to the website Mom's maiden name goes back to like the 900s in Wales. But the fun parts is the surprises like learning my 3 times great-grandmother is named Cinderella. Or when another branch of Mom's ended up going back into Canada and then after a few generations to France! Another surprise was my mother is named after her grandmother but its an unusual name so I was surprised to find that it was the second name of my great-grandmother's aunt. She was named after her? I assume my great-grandmother knew but never told anyone because apparently she did not like her aunt.

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@grandmadugger, when you submit your DNA test(s), it may take longer to process and get the results back than it usually does.  it's just that the testing labs get swamped from holiday testing.  The same thing happens after sales.  I heard this from my sister-in-la's husband and he works in a lab that runs some of the tests.

@JordynDarby5,  I have the same middle name as my paternal grandmother which is the same middle name as her third great-grandfather's first wife.  We're descended from the second wife whom he married after he was widowed.  I don't know how we got the rather unusual middle name.  

 

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On 10/12/2018 at 8:01 PM, CaricatureQualities said:

Wow, that must be exasperating. I would have never imagined that the distinction between "from (the state of) Hawai'i" and "Native Hawai'ian" was that difficult to grasp...or get across to those who aren't grasping it.

I honestly think it's because Americans aren't taught anything about kanaka maoli. I grew up in Colorado and went to school K12 here and we learned NOTHING about hte Native Hawai'ians. Not even Queen Liliʻuokalani the last reigning monarch of Hawai'i who stepped down from the throne to save her people. I grew up on stories about King Kamehameha who united the Islands, of the BAMF kanaka Queens. But then the missionaries came, mostly LDS (which is a whole other issue, they converted all the Natives/Polynesians- Hawai'i, Samoa, Tonga, etc. although their doctrine was about how our culture was uncivilized and hellbound though today they profit off running the Polynesian Cultural Center on O'ahy and have a doctrine that us brown skinned folks are marked as traitors from an intergalactic battle). But anyway after the missionaries their next generation became business owners. They monopolized all of our land and all of of our products and labor. Five haole (white) businessmen are responsible for getting the US Government to illegally depose our monarch to protect their business interests.

Texas is super proud of becoming a state, the white people who moved there were allowed to vote. They didn't have the Hawai'ians vote. My dad was born before statehood and kanakas weren't allowed to vote at all. For generations we mostly had to work on the plantations of haole owners. There were separate camps for the different ethnicities, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, etc. which is how Pidgin, what most Hawai'ians speak these days evolved.

There's just so smuch incredible history of the Hawai'ian people but almost no one is taught it outside Hawai'i. It's really sad. I think a lot of mainlanders don't realize there were indigenous people on Hawai'i before they showed up. I've had haoles say that they know a person in Hawai'i and they say that if the US wasn't there we'd be a backwoods third world country, as if that makes up for the illegal occupation. It's really disgusting.We have so many of the same issues as Native American tribes. THey are trying to recognize kanakas as a tribe but what that would do is retroactively apply all the treaties with Native Americans to us eve though we weren't involved at all. 

I could go on and on,but yeah it's definitely something that needs to be taught IMO. 

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5 minutes ago, PennySycamore said:

@grandmadugger, when you submit your DNA test(s), it may take longer to process and get the results back than it usually does.  it's just that the testing labs get swamped from holiday testing.  The same thing happens after sales.  I heard this from my sister-in-la's husband and he works in a lab that runs some of the tests.

@JordynDarby5

 

Thanks for the heads up!  Any ideas for which test is best for Native Americans?

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I may have shared this before. I was really into genealogy for a while. Partly I got busier and didn’t time for it, and partly this happened. I was working on an aristocratic medieval line, and I found a relevant line on Ancestry. It went back to the Roman-British upper class. Okay, cool, they had written records. Hey, Joseph of Aramathea. He was famous. Biblical genealogies. Um...those have strong traditions. LITERALLY Adam and Eve!! I’m getting off this train. But...where did I miss my stop? It’s ultimately not believable, but some of it is likely true, though not necessarily for me. So what should I believe?

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2 minutes ago, zee_four said:

The church I was baptized in burnt down in like 1994, a little tiny church on Kaua'i. When I went to get Confirmed in high school in Colorado it was a big mess because the Diocese of Honolulu/ Archdiocese of San Francisco didn't have my baptismal records on file. My dad found a copy of it and the amazing office manager at our Parish worked magic and I was able to get Confirmed with my group of 4 senior girls since everyone else was younger (huge parish in Littleton, CO it's right next to Columbine High School and still has that evangelical fervor going back to the shootings and before) 

My great-grandmother had a similar problem her birth certificate was lost at some point and the place of records in Kansas burned down. Luckily she was born before it would have been a serious problem. When she went to work for the government during WWII she had to have witnesses vouch that she was born in the US. Her mother and brothers vouched for her. Her father refused because he was convinced his wife had an affair which resulted in her which he's the only one who's ever believed that no one else ever has (given what an ass he was to his wife, kids and everyone else, we'd hardly be disappointed if it ever did get proven we weren't from his gene pool).  

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Another cool moment was learning where a middle name came from. There's been a middle name that's popped a lot in on my mom's father's side. No one knew where it came from. The first born son always got it although if his brothers or sisters had sons at least one would end up with it as middle name. Through Ancestry.com I finally found its source. Its the maiden name of my 3rd times great-grandmother who died giving birth to her son. It was so cool to finally know where that came from! 

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@grandmadugger, I have no idea if one is better than the other when it comes to detecting Native American ancestry.  According to a youtube video from Family History Fanatics,  since there was so much intermarriage between the indigenous population and settlers, the pool of samples from Native Americans is too small and too mixed with settlers to be useful for determining Native ancestry.  (I think I got that right.)  I'm pretty sure that I have Native American ancestry not too far back, but the Ancestry DNA test did not show it.  My aunt has a photo of the ancestor in question and yep, she Native American.

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13 minutes ago, QuiverFullofBooks said:

I may have shared this before. I was really into genealogy for a while. Partly I got busier and didn’t time for it, and partly this happened. I was working on an aristocratic medieval line, and I found a relevant line on Ancestry. It went back to the Roman-British upper class. Okay, cool, they had written records. Hey, Joseph of Aramathea. He was famous. Biblical genealogies. Um...those have strong traditions. LITERALLY Adam and Eve!! I’m getting off this train. But...where did I miss my stop? It’s ultimately not believable, but some of it is likely true, though not necessarily for me. So what should I believe?

Wow, that's pretty far back! Wow, all the way back to Joseph of Aramathea? I don't know. I'm not sure what to believe either when it gets back to a certain point either and that's "later" in the 1100s or 900s or royalty let alone as far back as Joseph! Although that would be fun to brag about. 

22 minutes ago, zee_four said:

I honestly think it's because Americans aren't taught anything about kanaka maoli. I grew up in Colorado and went to school K12 here and we learned NOTHING about hte Native Hawai'ians. Not even Queen Liliʻuokalani the last reigning monarch of Hawai'i who stepped down from the throne to save her people. I grew up on stories about King Kamehameha who united the Islands, of the BAMF kanaka Queens. But then the missionaries came, mostly LDS (which is a whole other issue, they converted all the Natives/Polynesians- Hawai'i, Samoa, Tonga, etc. although their doctrine was about how our culture was uncivilized and hellbound though today they profit off running the Polynesian Cultural Center on O'ahy and have a doctrine that us brown skinned folks are marked as traitors from an intergalactic battle). But anyway after the missionaries their next generation became business owners. They monopolized all of our land and all of of our products and labor. Five haole (white) businessmen are responsible for getting the US Government to illegally depose our monarch to protect their business interests.

Texas is super proud of becoming a state, the white people who moved there were allowed to vote. They didn't have the Hawai'ians vote. My dad was born before statehood and kanakas weren't allowed to vote at all. For generations we mostly had to work on the plantations of haole owners. There were separate camps for the different ethnicities, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, etc. which is how Pidgin, what most Hawai'ians speak these days evolved.

There's just so smuch incredible history of the Hawai'ian people but almost no one is taught it outside Hawai'i. It's really sad. I think a lot of mainlanders don't realize there were indigenous people on Hawai'i before they showed up. I've had haoles say that they know a person in Hawai'i and they say that if the US wasn't there we'd be a backwoods third world country, as if that makes up for the illegal occupation. It's really disgusting.We have so many of the same issues as Native American tribes. THey are trying to recognize kanakas as a tribe but what that would do is retroactively apply all the treaties with Native Americans to us eve though we weren't involved at all. 

I could go on and on,but yeah it's definitely something that needs to be taught IMO. 

Oh, it really does! I knew nothing about Hawai'ian history until I read Royal Diaries: Kaiulani which inspired me to look up more on Hawai'ian history. It really is amazing and it really should be taught in classes.  

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7 minutes ago, JordynDarby5 said:

Oh, it really does! I knew nothing about Hawai'ian history until I read Royal Diaries: Kaiulani which inspired me to look up more on Hawai'ian history. It really is amazing and it really should be taught in classes.  

That's the book that made me read more about the history too!

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@JordynDarby5,  Ming Tsai was on an episode of Finding Your Roots with Louis Henry Gates is a descendant of the first Chinese emperor Ch'in Shih Huang Ti who lived in the Third Century BCE (died 210 BCE).  (Yep, I wrote the name in Wade-Gilles.  I've never gotten used to pinyin romanization.)  Of course, the Chinese may keep very meticulous records because ancestry is so important in their culture.  I have to admit that tracing someone back to Joseph of Arimathea sounds kinda sketchy.  

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@PennySycamore thanks. My husband is obviously Native American. He is finally curious enough to learn more about his ancestors and I want to buy him the test that will give him the most information. We live near a reservation that does a huge multi tribal pow wow. Last year he said he should go and see if anyone would claim him. 

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Any of the tests will show any substantial amount of Native American DNA if you have it. My stepmother is about 15% Native American and the test shows it just fine. Her daughter tested and unsurprisingly shows about half that amount. If you’re in the trace amounts range it might be missed - in that case I’ve heard 23&Me is the best to test with. 23&Me does show trace amounts of Native American DNA (less than 1%) in myself and other family members who have tested. I haven’t been able to validate this via paper trail so I have no idea if it’s accurate.

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I'm first generation born here in the US on one side and second generation on the other. Where I grew up all that DAR/Daughters of the confederacy shit was/is HUGE. I never gave a shit over the bitches who thought they were so, so special b/c they were descended from the Mayflower, Jamestown or whatfucking ever. Every year there was some stupid DAR essay contest and it was a requirement for English class in high school. I refused to participate because I wasn't welcome in their little club. 

I'm Cuban and German. I reserve the right to describe myself however the fuck I please. I prefer "Cuban/Kraut" or "Crazy ass Cuban". Unfortunately, when the mother came here, she chose to ditch any and all of her Cuban heritage in an effort to "pass" for white. My father's family kept more of their heritage but by my generation, nobody speaks German. I think it was the idea of assimilating when my grandparents came in the 1920's. They saw assimilation into the greater culture/language as a ticket to success...I think the mother's desire to assimilate was due to her immigration status. 

I also describe myself as a redneck...I grew up in Virginia. In the part of VA that I am from, being the slightest bit "ethnic" was immediately seen as being an outsider. My maiden name was VERY ethnic. So, my solution was to be as much as a southern redneck as I could be. Some of it has stayed with me, some of it was unloaded. 

My kids are multi-ethnic mutts, my grandchildren even more so. Eventually there won't be "races" as such, I believe. Lots of intermarrying and having kids...it all gets muddied up. Not that I necessarily think it's a bad thing...maybe it'd reduce the stupid racism that still seems so prevalent in today's US society. 

PS...I detest this whole "American" thing being stolen by people who live in the US like they have some fucking exclusive right to that term. I find it quite racist. Canadians are Americans, Mexicans are Americans, Salvadorans are Americans, Argentinians are American, Brazilians are American, etc. Typical US arrogance and "exceptionalism" again...which I think is beyond fucking stupid. 

 

 

 

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49 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

Any of the tests will show any substantial amount of Native American DNA if you have it. My stepmother is about 15% Native American and the test shows it just fine. Her daughter tested and unsurprisingly shows about half that amount. If you’re in the trace amounts range it might be missed - in that case I’ve heard 23&Me is the best to test with. 23&Me does show trace amounts of Native American DNA (less than 1%) in myself and other family members who have tested. I haven’t been able to validate this via paper trail so I have no idea if it’s accurate.

It is rumored that my husband’s grandfather was full blooded so hubby would be 25% but I suspect his mom’s side has some native as well. It could just be that those genes are stronger than the white man genes. He jokes that he is 50% because from the waist up he is very red skinned tone but from the waist down he is so bright white he glows in the dark. 

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11 hours ago, Casserole said:

Unless you're trying to trace an infant given up for adoption, born in a "home" for unwed mothers built by the Catholic Church in Ireland... 

My father's mother was adopted in Ireland and brought to America, and due to the secrecy, unfortunately that is one family line of ours that dies when trying to trace lineage. 

I've also run into issues during the Penal Code in Ireland when it was illegal to be Catholic so births weren't recorded. My ancestor stowed away on a ship out of Dublin at the age of 10. He never spoke of Ireland again.

10 hours ago, TheOneAndOnly said:

Same. Some of mine can be traced back to the original Virginia colonies (the starving time at Jamestown? That was us) but I can't imagine thinking of those ancestors as native. 

One branch of my family tree had what is called a "non paternity event" turn up back in 1730something where the second son of a couple didn't match the family DNA. To hear the descendants try to rationalize how that happened while ignoring the obvious actually makes me laugh out loud. Anyone with Virginia/Tennessee/Kentucky roots might be interested -

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/owsley/about/news 

http://owsleyfamily.tripod.com/the-two-wives-of-thomas-owsley-ii.html

For what it's worth, I'm descended from both the one that didn't match and one that did. Great great great grandma and grandpa were 3rd cousins. It makes a nice excuse to have handy when I do weird things. ;) 

Mine were in the second batch in Jamestown (1637). There was a lot of inbreeding there. I've got an Talliaferro ancestor who's second wife was also a Talliaferro. I've also traced both my parents back to 2 different Van Zandt women in the early 1700s in New Amsterdam. Genealogy has taught me that we're all related, one way or another.

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1 minute ago, DaisyD said:

Genealogy has taught me that we're all related, one way or another.

Yep.  There aren't enough people who have ever been on earth for us to have completely separate ancestors...our family trees are very tangled.

Reddit sub thedidthemath shows the math for how everyone of European descent is related to Charlemange as well as Bob the Beetfarmer who lived in Charlemange's time.  It was a cool thread.

 

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32 minutes ago, DaisyD said:

There was a lot of inbreeding there.

Actually, inbreeding was everywhere because, historically, marriage for people who had any property (land & money) was all about keeping that property in the family's control. 

When your family spends a few generations building up a land base, who better to marry than a cousin, once or twice removed (or not)?

 

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7 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Actually, inbreeding was everywhere because, historically, marriage for people who had any property (land & money) was all about keeping that property in the family's control. 

When your family spends a few generations building up a land base, who better to marry than a cousin, once or twice removed (or not)?

And poorer people usually stayed close to wherever they were born and had neither the means or motivation to travel much to meet potential spouses, so they also tended to marry cousins of various degrees of separation. 

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