Random info

At one point, we were told that there were 850 people who spelled their name the way we do in America, but I'm pretty sure it's way more than that.

Dad's dad's mother was a Grimm, supposedly related to the Brother's Grimm, which Andy looked up, and it seems one of them never had kids and the other only had a few, and both were dead by the med 1800s, which is only six or ten generations back. Which is probably alot of people, but narrows the range considerably. Unless they had, like, other siblings, or a whole bushel of cousins or something. Her name was Christina, and all I've ever heard from grandpa about her is that when they ate watermelon, she'd make them eat it with a spoon so she could have clean, non-toothed rinds to make preserves out of.

Mom's mom's mother or grandmother was a Biddle, supposedly related to the banking and jewelry family.

Mom's mom's father claimed for years that one of his ancestors (he was French Canadian) was a trapper and married and "Indian Princess", and then claimed that that was just a story when he died, so we don't know which he was confused about. We're pretty sure the trapper part was real, but there aren't alot of easily accessible records for that time period, and I don't think we have a name for him anyway, so that's so far unverified. Marrying an Indian would seem to fit the story, and it's true that our predoninantly blonde family has random sports that are very dark and look Indian. Looking at a map of traditional territories, all of French Canada is Algonquin, even now, so if there is an Indian wife there, she was almost definitely Algonquin, and was maybe as recent as 1/32nd or 1/64th as far as we're concerned.

I have an Ancestry.com account, but they don't let you see the records until you pay for a full membership, even though they tell you they're there, so I'm going to be looking for other ways to get them.

Dad's dad is the first of three generations in the Navy, they say. Once, he said his father or grandfather or something was a Merchant Marine and traveled to India and someone in that area was supposedly a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt.

If we're really fron Turkey, that's one of the oldest Mitochondrial DNA lineages in the world, and that's pretty awesome. But as that's through dad's mom's dad, it might not count unless all the women they married into were also from the same lineages...

Gain

(mom's dad's family)

We're pretty sure that Gain is a shortened form of something much more complex in Ireland; there have been at least three proposed spellings of related longer versions that all sound like O'gain-a-henny or something similar. We know that Grandpa's grandfather came over from Ireland, and we think it's from County Claire, which was apparently one of the places people came from, but not as frequently as from, say Cork, though that's another option (and one that may lead back to Scandanavia, eventually, as that's where all the Vikings stayed and integrated into the celtic culture). It's said it was around the Famine, but not necessarily because of it; some of the timing seems to be before or after, but as we don't know what the name was before Ellis Island, it's hard to say.

Mom'e given me the names of her grandfather and his brothers, who apparently scattered for some reason and basically never spoke to eachother again; there's the idea that one went North and one went out to Hollywood, and one stayed around New Jersey or Pensylvania, and one maybe went to Australia... scattered. Sounds a bit mythical, but we'll see how it pans out.

There's a town somewhere up north called Gain, I think...

At one point, through Edward, granfather's father, we we reable to find a branch of the family that had been in the states much longer than we think our branch has, who started far north and moved slowly south, eventually converging with our branch; that one goes back to the 1700s, but sort of scattered, without alot of names.

Aunt B

Aunt B's relatives have been traced back through the Bahamas all the way back to France in the 1700s, and back through Key West and St Augustine and Jacksonville and Tallahassee-- and therefore Florida-- history. One of the ones she's hunting down now came over, supposedly, with Prince Marat (Nepoleon's grand nephew, who married Washington's grand daughter, and who has a house devoted to him in the Old St Augustine Village Museum). He was supposedly 18 years old and already married, so it's unlikely he was in the army at the time, but she's read five biographies of Marat and chased down the records and can't find a listing for him anywhere.

Nino, I think, was the first to reach Eagle Scout status in his whole county in Key West, and Aunt B is going to buy a brick to commemorate it; the scout master is still alive and helped her by verifying old scout troup pictures and passing on information.

Her grandson's father is Comanche, and she talked to a woman who studies the Comanche history and found that according to the tribe-- what they'll tell to people not in the tribe (maybe he can learn more, later)-- at powwow, that family has been pretty important to the Comanche Nation, all the way back to the wars with the French and the Spanish before they were states out there, and she's given alot of specific historical details that Aunt B can pin down and verify. She's working on that branch of the Tree for when he gets married, so she has something imformative and beautiful to give the newlyweds.

Boza

(Father's mother's father)

Aunt B learned that the name comes from a drink sold on the streets in Istanbul, Turkey in the winter called Boozaa, and the places where you'd go to drink it. The drink itself is made of bulgher or millet and yogurt, and is supposed to be a little tart, a little sweet, not really very alcoholic, and extremely popular in the Ottoman Empire for strengthening people through the cold. There are recipes for making it and it's sold in bottles, and it's apparently one of those iconic drinks that come from a specific area.

Our name comes from Turkey. I wonder if we're actually Turkish on that side? This is especially interesting as my sister was born in Istanbul, we thought quite randomly, while we were travelling when I was a kid, and it sort of is a full circle for her, if we are!

Other new info:

We're definitely related to this one Armenian actor that was married to Barbara Eden for a short while in the 70s; the Armenian relative idea is less strange than it was before we knew about the Turkish connection.

In Cuba, where Papa's from, there was an attempted revolution organized in part by one Commandant Boza in the Cuban Army, held at the house of one Dolores Boza, and fought by several other Bozas and related families. They wanted to get the Spaniards out of Cuba, and fought for a time, than gave it up as a lost cause-- they didn't lose. My dad thinks this is interesting because it brings in the ideas of who is responsible for the rise of Castro-- who did he draw inspiration form? Was it our family? And what does that mean? And does it connect us to, say Che Guevara? To any of the other Western-Hemisphere Hispanic revolutionaries?