(Untitled)

[emrinalexander]

Ancestry.com has a free two week trial thing going, so I decided to try it. In about an hour I had found my mother's parents, her siblings, their families. Also, my grandmother's parents, Titus and Emily (Shaner) Dove, AND my great-great grandparents (Nimrod and Diana Dove - aren't those the best names ever???), as well as I'm getting confused now

Comments

[emrinalexander]

THANK YOU! That explains so much. My cousin, who has since passed away, actually visited the place in Austria where at least some of the family had lived in the 19th century and she said that it's changed countries as borders shifted over time. I remember my dad saying that his grandmother was adamant that they were Hungarian, so - see, I know so little about Dad's side. I have a photo of his grandfather (not sure if it's on my grandfather or grandmother's side even) in an army uniform from the 1800's with a spiked helmet; apparently, he was conscripted into the Prussian army at some point around 1870.

[raina_at]

The borders between Austria, Hungary and what used to be Czechoslovakia only really exist since after WW 1, and since the population was very mixed you of course had lots of ethnic minorities from other ex-Austro-Hungarian Empire nationalities. It's therefore entirely possible that your family lived in Slovakia but were ethnic Hungarians or - more likely - the other way around.

[raina_at]

Btw, there's a village called Gradnitz in Upper Austria near the Czech/ Slovak border.

[roxymissrose]

Austria!! We could be related!

Mr. R is deeply into family tree research. Let me know if he can help. (i'm totally a bystander)

[emrinalexander]

I've done some research and had a friend who had an ancestry.com membership who found a ton of stuff for me, several years ago, but I lost all of the information when my desk top died when we had an October Hurricane or tropical storm or something a couple of years ago.

I got all the way back to 1694 on one side of my mom's family who are from Germany, Switzerland, and England,but I'm not having as much luck with Dad's side, past my grandparents. A cousin of my Dad's visited the place they originally came from in Austria, back in the 1970's, but I didn't know her very well and she has since passed. Her niece was the one who remembered the name of the town was something that sounded like "Gradnitz." Wouldn't it be great if we are related? I'd love it :).

I can see how people get absorbed in this stuff - I found out more today online than I ever did from my parents - actually, I don't think they knew because the older folks didn't talk about the past that much.

[rainbow]

oh, no, i didn't realise you'd lost stuff!

i have emails to you from 2007 that had info; shall i send them again at the same email address? or a different one?

[emrinalexander]

Hi,

I didn't say anything because you'd already done so much work getting them to me in the first place and I felt so bad because I should've backed them up on a disk in the first place. I would LOVE to get the information again, if it's not too much trouble? My email now is: emrinalexander@gmail.com. THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

[rainbow]

huzzah! isn't it wonderfully fun and addictive? <3 <3

and GO YOU finding stuff so quickly!

[emrinalexander]

It's addictive, very addictive. I spent about five hours last night, just roaming around the site, trying to learn how to use things (not very well either, my family tree looks more like a lightening struck bush at this point!).

[dimity_blue]

The 2 week free trial is a great deal, but I was shocked at the monthly price. Ouch! It sounds like you found a lot of info quickly though. Do you think you'll keep on digging around?

[emrinalexander]

I can't afford to do anything other than "free" so I'll find as much as possible and then keep digging, but try to use free channels instead. I traced some family back to Cambridgeshire in 1800 and also to Yorkshire, so I find I have UK roots too :), much to my delight because I have loved everything about the UK since I was a child and my much-older cousin married a lady from Stoke on Trent while he was at Oxford doing a doctorate in something I can't remember now :). Hilary fascinated me with her beautiful accent and making me real tea and so on. Anglophile for life here.

[rainbow]

if you get into it and want both a home genealogy program and a free longer trial of ancestry, check out family tree maker, the 2011 or 2012 versions on amazon.com. if you get the platinum edition in the us, it includes a SIX MONTH ancestry us membership trial, and if you get the world edition in the uk (i don't think it was released in the us) you get 6 months of the world membership trial. which means you get the software pretty much for free.

note: the newest version, 2014, which ancestry is selling only has a two week trial, not a six month one.

[emrinalexander]

This would be wonderful to try, and thank you for telling me about it. I'll go over to Amazon when payday rolls around in October and order one of the versions you recommended.