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On my mother’s side, the older sisters traced their father’s name back to England, and went there for further research. Not much was said about what they found. There is the briefest mention of my paternal grandmother, and her ancestors trace back to the late 1600s in north america.

Of my paternal grandfather, nothing is known or said. Nothing.

Meet the Ancestors: A couple of Irish, lots of Scots, a few hoity-toity Frogs. And an Injun or two in the woodpile, a ways back.

yup……fair win. paul daniels had a tv show on one of the 4 channels that existed in 1980s england….. i cant remember which channel, but i do remember seeing it…..

You could not watch TV in the UK on a Saturday night in the early 80’s without Paul Daniels popping up. He was very talented, although a bit annoying.

My grandpa paid a guy $25.00 to research our genealogy but he had to give him $250.00 to keep quiet about it.

I’m German on my father’s side, Swedish and Ruthenian (? prob. Czech or something?) on my mother’s. My father’s family changed their German surname during WWI to my veddy British-sounding one. This was during the wild period when sauerkraut got renamed “liberty cabbage” and streets like “Berlin” got redubbed “General Pershing,” und so weiter.

My mother didn’t remember what the German name was, though.

My maternal grandfather and -mother emigrated from Europe to Canada, where Grandpa worked for the railroad. Then, when Mom was 12 (ca. 1928), they moved to a farm in . . . Florida, of all places, near Orlando. Mom told me the first thing you learned was to shake out your shoes every morning. “Scorpions, you know.”

My father has traced our lineage back to early colonial Massachusetts (as in within a decade or so of the Mayflower). He never got a good line on where in England we came from though.

Interesting tidbit: in our direct line was the lone surviving son of an Indian attack (Native American type of course)! Nearly wiped out the line, they did.

My mother’s mother’s father was from Germany and interestingly did not change the spelling of his easily translatable surname…but he did use the English pronounciation, which his descendants do to this day.

Most of me, however, is British Isles, as far as I know. One day I’ll pay natgeo to find out for sure.

Nina: we looked at a genetic ancestry scan as a Christmas present for my sister. None of the reasonably priced ones offered what she wanted, and NatGeo was nearly useless. Their “service” is actually a contribution to their “Genographic Project”.

Skandia Recluse: I cannot find out anything about my putative maternal grandfather. My grandmother married another man less than two years after my mother was born. One of my maternal cousins tried to research him, and found nothing except a possibility that he died several years before her and my mothers were born. (Yipe!)