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...