Ancestors

I've started doing some Ancestry.com again. It makes my head hurt. Too many names and dates. I wish there was a way to have info up on both my monitors so I can look at the new info and then also look back at the tree to match up names and dates I already have, rather than back and forth. I did find out I have more Scottish ancestry than I thought. My grandfather (father's dad) came to America from Scotland when he was 4 years old with his parents, my great grandparents (supposedly I'm named after my great grandmother). My last research awhile back I wasn't able to get any father back in Scotland than my great grandparents info. But, it appears now I'm finding 3 more generations back for great-grandfathers. At least I added them and will see what info there is. I'm not sure how to really know for sure, when there isn't much to go on but one record where the names match and maybe/sorta the dates. It's like, ok maybe this is a great grandfather...

But I was able to get farther back now on my grandmother (dad's mom). Last time I was trying to research I didn't even have her maiden name and I couldn't even find my grandparents marriage or anything that might tell me her last name. My half sis remember it or what she thought it was and she was correct, so once I got that in, a bunch of hints moved me forward. Her mother, my great grandmother, is a McPhee (so that explains the cousin McPhee names that grandma used to talk about a lot) and going back they are also from Scotland. My grandma's dad's ancestors were from Ireland. I remember asking her once and her mentioning Ireland and Canada and I see that my grandpa's grandfather and going back was Nova Scotia, Canada

I'm still stumped on my mom's father's ancestors, which are from Denmark. I'm still where I was, pretty much a few years ago, with finding back to my 3rd great-grandfather, though I did find that my great grandfather had more siblings than the 2 I had originally found a few years ago. He had a total of 6 more siblings! I added all of them, hoping maybe their info might give me more hints back farther, but still no luck.

Danish/Scandanavian is very hard to research. Between the last names changing every generation (at least until the late 1800's) and trying to read documents in Danish, it's a challenge. I have used google translation to figure out what some words mean. I did discover my great great grandfather was a "clog maker" in Denmark. Interesting, because my grandpa was also a shoe maker/shoe repair in his early years. He and my grandma even had a shoe shop store for awhile. But grandpa had actually learned it from his father in law, my grandma's dad, who was a shoe maker/repairman.

Years ago (before ancestry.com I think) my mom had given me info she had on her dad's parents in the form of full names and dates of birth, so I did have that to start with when I did ancestry several years ago. She also gave me a handkerchief that belonged to my grandpa's mom. There wasn't a lot of family history about my grandpa's mom. He didn't talk about her very much. She left him (the youngest) and his 2 brothers with his dad when he was young. I knew he had a half sister named Loretta. I guess I just assumed Loretta was from his mom's second marriage and was younger than the brothers, but in my research I found out she was actually from a previous marriage before she married my great grandfather, so Loretta was older. So what would make a mom of 3 boys leave her boys with their dad, take her daughter, and leave? I'll never know, I'm sure. She ended up in Wisconsin and remarried again. Some time before WWII my grandpa's dad went back to Denmark, it sounds like to live. After WWII started he was never heard from again and I can't find any record of him in Denmark after he returned there.

But, back to my grandpa's mom. She's actually the person that I have been able to go the farthest back on, interestingly enough. While I'm just following the hints back and adding these people who supposedly are the right people, it's been interesting where some of the tree leads back on following way back on some of these great grandparents times many. Supposedly one takes me back to a Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half brother to Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Humphrey pretty famous in his own right, with being said to have discovered Newfoundland.

There's another family tree in my grandpa's mom's that says it goes back to like the year 1040. Who knows. Being no expert I certainly can't verify the sources and make sure they actually are.  Heck, I can't even find my uncle's 2nd marriage/wife, haha. When I put in his info, as a brother to my mom, I found his first marriage and his 3rd marriage and divorce, but nothing on his 2nd marriage. 

I also found out my great uncle (dad's uncle) was married 3 times. I remember him as a kid when I visited my dad and grandparents. You were lucky if you ever got more than 2 words out of him and it he did answer it was usually a grunt yes or no. I don't know how he managed to get 1 wife, let alone 3, LOL. I knew his first wife had died, and the wife I knew raised his down syndrome daughter (my uncles cousin). I found record of his first wife's death certificate. She was only 22 when she died, and sounds like something related to alcohol poisoning. I'm sure there's a story there. The divorce decree on his 2nd short marriage of 2 years (his daughter would have been a small girl) stated reason for divorce was "cruelty". Then 2 years later he married his 3rd wife, who outlived him by 15 years. I just remember that she wasn't very patient with her special needs step daughter (who was an adult and still lived with them).