Geneology

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Comment by Timothy Allen Lloyd on June 12, 2008 at 1:20am

I swear! The subject of geneology can be exahusting! I know that! My uncle and my distant cousin have devoted years and much of their housing space to all of the information that they have gathered. I guess that my take on the whole thing, and this is just as far as my family goes, I'm proud of my German heritage, which is much more traceable, AND my Welsh heritage, which for me, is much more elusive, mysterious and interesting to me. It's difficult when you have ancestors who when they were children, were ridiculed for their language and culture and don't really want to talk about things that happened when they were kids. I remember my grandfather muttering things to himself or to his brother in Welsh (I didn't know what that language was at that point), but never bothered to ask until right before he passed away (maybe sometime around 1982-83). I'm just proud to know that Welsh is what I am! So if I can't trace every relative back to the year 300 BC, I'm not going to worry about it. I know that Wales is where I came from and that is where I shall return and as my good friend Dewi said to me, since I am making the effort to learn the language and cultur and I have such a strong desire to ge ther in the first place, I can call myself Cymro. I never felt more affirmed in all my life. Cymro ydw i! Believe me, every piece of paper that I have regarding my family is in my bedroom in a special file. I want my niece and nephew to know where they come from. I've even conviced my sister to let me read Sali Mali to them. I want them to remember ME as their favorite uncle (which I am, I'm sure) and the one who speaks Cymraeg and tried to bring a little of their heritage to them. Besides that, if I DO end up living in Cymru, they'll have a place to visit on school holidays LOL! Cymru am Byth!

Comment by Gareth Williams on June 11, 2008 at 2:30pm

Go back far enough and Africa is our species ancestral home, and even some of the God squad concedes that now, that The Garden of Eve lay somewhere just South of The Sahara in the North of Central Africa.
A sub branch of a larger branch from the upright primate tree trunk that grew relatively recently, pretty close to the slightly senior Neanderthal branch I guess. Whittled down at one stage to less than 500 they reckon just over 100,000 years ago. By about then, one of them, say a male, could be brought forward to today in a time machine, given a haircut and some urban grroming, put in a suit and we could pass him in the street and not have to take a second glance. Just imagine that.
I would even teach him Welsh!!!

Comment by Gareth Williams on June 11, 2008 at 11:03am

Hey Tim, hang onto any bit of information, folk memory and oral histories within families, communites and even nations and races is strong and reliable, believe me, its true and science never fails to confirm this time after time, take that from the macro level to the micro level and its as true for a family as it is for an entire racial grouping.
Ive just been reading about the long history of European facts and legends to do with American continent. Fascinating. North America was common knowledge among Scandinavian seafearers 500 years before Columbus. Take our Mabinogion stories and countless Gaelic tales of a vast continent across the sea. Science one day always seems to creep up and confirm this. Archeology has found the Salutrians handrailed the ice cap from the Bay of Biscay to New England and brought with them the clovis arrowhead 20,000 years before Christ. Dna has backed that up now. Never a popular topic with Native Americans I know, who are still uncomfortable accepting any early European influence (and who can blame them eh since the subsequent European legacy was so disasterous)
When you visit, go to Borth beach just North of Aberystwyth if you get the chance. There you will see a shallow sea at high tide stretching out for miles, local fishermen and more recently divers swear that there are settlement traces out there. You see what are obvious ancient tree stumps on the beach, thing is, it aint that ancient (approx 8000). The old legend of Cantref Gwaelod' was told to me as a piece of fiction as a child, the land that was flooded. In my 40 years it has slowly been soldidified into fact after discovery after discovery.
The tales of the 'little people' abound Western Celtic fringe lands from Northern Spain to the Western Isles! My peoples arrived here many thousands of years ago but there were people here already. Makes you wonder where is truly our land and who is truly our people? The answer to that is probably everywhere and everybody Tim.
Yeah, I feel like Bob Dylan now, that was very poetic and philsophical for a guy branded by many ignorant misguided folk an Afghan baby killer eh!
Gaz

Comment by Timothy Allen Lloyd on June 11, 2008 at 8:08am

I attended the Cwrs Cymraeg when it was hosted by Rio Grande University in southern Ohio a few years ago and after speaking with one of my distant cousins who has been doing geneologic research for years, discovered that not only did my great-great grandparents own a farm that is now the soccer field at the university, but owned other properties in and around the area. I was actually able to locate the cemetery where they are buried! I found that 2 of my great uncles were soldiers in the Union army in the Civil War and I've visited the family cemetery plot several times. It might seem weird, but the view from that place is absolutely stunning and it makes me understand why so many Welsh people settled in southern Ohio as it looks so very much like their homeland. Unfortunately, my cousin has been unable to trace our roots beyon my great-great grandparents. I tried to pick up the trail by sending a letter to a man in Wales, who apparently has/had some kind of connection to my family, but got no reply. I'm a little stuck. We've narrowed the point origin down to a couple of locations, but at this point, it's anybody's guess. Any ideas?

Comment by gaabi on June 9, 2008 at 11:29am

Here's a group for discussions and sharing resources, etc, on geneology for anyone interested. I haven't done this for myself but I started messing around and here's the text of a message I sent to someone else with the initial resources I found:

Your first step is to do what family tree you can on paper, full name,
where born, brothers and sister,s parents, etc. Do you have or do you
know if anyone has family records? Photos, letters, birth, marriage
and death certs? Then it's a search and a puzzle to put together!
If you can only go back a couple of generations, you might start with
contacting records departments in the towns they lived in for birth,
marriage and death certs, and for census records for that place in
those years - these will give you who lived in the house and names of
people and you just start going back and getting more names and
tracking them back.

here are some places to get started:

The Mornon Family history library. This is an INCREDIBLE resource,
I've been to it in Salt Lake City and it's amazing. They keep
enormous records and have ship's passenger lists, I think every US
census, amazing stuff and not just on Mormons but as many as they can
get to help trace their roots as family is an extremely important part
of their religion.
http://www.ancestorhunt.com/mormon_church_records.htm

This site has links to free geneology resources and a page
specifically of Brit
http://www.genealogylinks.net/

Ancestry.com
you can buy a lot of stuff from them, a family tree maker and census
records, and they have some free resources

index of veterans cemetaries (I had an ancestor in the US Indian wars,
buried in Colorado)
http://www.interment.net/us/nat/veterans.htm

There's some stuff to start with. Check the Library of Congress, too:
loc.gov, for additional resources.

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