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This has always interested me, how my family came to be and how. My ancestors may not have been great people and done great things, but it is still a comfort and a feeling of fulfillment to know the story.

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The only family history I have really been able to look into is on my father's side. It's hard though, especially as we live a fair way away from our relatives and don't see them all that much. And the history is always filled with speculation and uncertainness anyway.

What I have been able to establish though is that my great grandfather, Frederick, lived in Kent, England. Where he was an ex member of the British Army. He married Margaret May on March 14th, 1992 and migrated to Western Australia a year later.

There isn't really much to tell that would interest you, although there is one story I'll tell. One of their son's, Bill (my grandfather) was bored with life so ran off to enlist in the army, underage mind you. When Margaret found out and finally tracked him down it was too late, he was already in combat in Borneo.

That's about as far back as I've managed to go with my father's side. All I know of my mother's is that her great grandfather was in the second landing at Gallipoli, and survived.

I also know that I have Irish, Polish and German blood in me, but I haven't been able to find out too much.

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So, if you actually took the time to read that, I'd love to hear of your family's history. biggrin

Wow, that's quite a blood mix you have there.

Yeah I suppose I do have a military family. Both My great grandfathers were military, one Army and one Navy. My grandfather was in the Army also.

Then, more recently, my aunties partner was in the Air Force for twenty years and one of their sons (my cousin) recently retired from the SAS.

Wow, these are some really remarkable histories!

Personally, I am English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Welsh and German. This is why I cannot get tan in the summer. Burned? Oh, yes. Red. Like a lobster. But, the truly interesting stuff is on my father's side. The first of any of my family to arrive on American shores in Colonial days was a German schoolmaster, Hans Jacob Holtzlau. I've heard it said that few men are as formidable as a German schoolmaster, so I think I may safely count myself fortunate not to have tangled with one! The English lot are descended from the brother of the famous Admiral John Benbow, after whom all those old English inns are named, but his start was humble enough. I know little of the brother I'm decended from, but John, it is said, got fed up with his lot at the age of 16. He took his house key, flung it up into the oak tree outside, and ran off to sea. This was considered mere legend, until 1954, when the highway came through the old Benbow land, and the oak tree reputed to be the very one of legend was cut down to make way for it. A key was found embedded in the wood at a depth corresponding approximately to the time at which John had embarked on his life at sea. The section of tree itself is in a musem, considering the fame of the man it once belonged to, but one wax cast was made of it. My grandfather has that cast on his mantle.

The stories of Admiral Benbow from his naval career are legion and each one is even more riveting and cinematic than the one before, but he died from his wounds some days after a naval battle of epic proportions in which he distinguished himself to an amazingly considerable degree. He commanded a fleet of ships sent to harrass the French in the Caribbean during the War of Spanish Succession, but most of the captains were terrified of what would likely happen to them, and they turned tail and fled like a bunch of little girls. There were only two ships left of the original five, and the odds were very much in French favor, but Benbow was nothing if not gutsy. They found their quarry. Mostly by their quarry finding them. The French ships felt confident they could win the day, and they had every right to think so. They were stronger, faster and better supplied, but Benbow was a cunning man, and would not be so easily bested. Chain shot shattered his leg in the fray, but he had no patience for lying around belowdecks while the surgeon fussed over him like a mother hen. He demanded that he be patched up and taken back topside, where he could command his men from right in the thick of things. This gained him a bit of lead shot in his belly in addition to his other wounds. But, in spite of ridiculously heavy odds, they sent the French to meet a few fish up close and personal, but Benbow wasn't done yet. He ordered his two ships to come about and run down the three captains who had fled from battle. He arrested them, hauled them to Jamaica for trial for their crimes of cowardice and mutiny, and they were executed (except the one who died en route). THEN, he allowed himself to succumb to his wounds. Tough old bird! There was a ballad written about him, and of course, numerous inns sprang up that bear his name.

My great-great (great?) grandmother was French, descended from the Merovingians, a ruling house of France who are now extinct in the male line. Which means that descendants still exist, but the name's died out.

Apart from that bit of European blood (which is what gives my family their occasional weird hair colours (weird for Asians, I mean) - my sister has dark reddish-brown hair, my aunt was blond when she was a girl and I myself have very dark brown hair) there is nothing interesting about my family history. On my father's side, they're all scholars and artists and academics, and on my mother's side, they're all businessmen and landowners and rich nobility types. The yin and yang of Asian society. rofl

Wow, I'm amazed at how much some of you know about your family historys! I don't really know much about mine. My Mom doesn't get along with her extended family, so I don't usually hear much about her side. All I know is that she's part Irish.

On my Dad's side, I know a little more. My Great-grandfather immigrated with his family to the United States from Germany when he was two. I think his wife, my Great-grandmother, was also German, but I'm not sure. That's all that I really know.

In conclusion, I know that I'm part Irish and part German. Mostly German, actually.

I have a sick family story, that I actually only just found out about a month ago.

My great grandfather was Estonian and living in Estonia during the time of the First World War. He worked on a merchant ship, and therefore knew a lot of different languages. When the October Revolution happened, he fled the country, trying to get away from being forced into either the Red of White armies. Somewhere he came across a dead frozen German soldier in the snow. He took the soldier's dog tags and his uniform and kept walking, abandoning his long Russian name for the name of the dead soldier, which was Eiswald.

Eventually he stumbled across the front line and into Ally territory. Coming across ally troops, he put his arms up and spoke German to them, saying he surrenders. They shipped him off to a military prison and he stayed their for the rest of the war. When it was over, I don't know how, but he convinced them that he wasn't actually German. They put him on a ship to North America and he jumped ship at Canada.

He met my great grandmother in Montreal. He didn't speak a word of French or English and she didn't speak any of his Eastern European languages. Still, they got married because that's what they needed to do if they wanted to get any land. Romantic, eh? And so yeah, he kept the name Eiswald and worked in Montreal as an engineer on big oil rigs. They forced him to leave, however, once the government found out he was Estonian, cuz Estonia was now part of the USSR and you know how the west felt about communism back then, leading up to and in the wake of the Second World War. They thought he'd sabotage the oil rigs or something.

After that he worked at the Hershey chocolate factory, and yeah, the rest is history.


So that's my heritage story. From my dad's side I'm native american (Algonquin), Scottish (Hunter) and French (Perrier) and from my mom's side I am Estonian, Scottish (McCallum), French. Not to mention, my mother's maiden name is still that German name, Eiswald, but there is not a single drop of German blood in our family.

Lets see; aristocracy, yes I am indeed blue of blood. What more is there to tell?

Thanks! Admiral Benbow is of considerable pride to the family, and I think most of us can sing bits of that ballad. He's certainly one of the more colorful figures on my father's side, and his life would make for excellent cinema. My mother's side by comparison seems a remarkably boring if not particularly staid lot, and the only stories I have from that side are a little less than repeatable in polite company.

*sigh* In truth, I wish I could claim even a snippet of the aristocratic heritage the gentleman whose self-inflicted nickname I've borrowed for my Gaia username could boast, though, admittedly, I would not wish for the accompanying penury! Still, I do rather like the coat of arms that the armigerous member of his father's lineage bore back in Devonshire - together with the now-vanished Minster Hall, as I surmise! The American line is, of course, largely extinct (they were not exactly a robust bunch, for the most part, and their last scion seemed, ironically, the healthiest of them!), but I often wonder about the original English branch. They were once somewhat plentiful enough, I gather, in Devonshire of ages past, though my onomastics books on the topics are distressingly silent on all permuatations of the name that I can imagine. The only apparent surviving branch I have found lives in Canada, and there are few enough of them left. I have done little investigation on the distaff side, however, and there may be plenty of them around, if a bit scattered. But, I gather the male side suffered from some rather serious congenital disorders which claimed many of them rather young. I suppose it may have been the result of the consanguinity that seemed rather prevalent in the line, and I don't hold out a lot of hope for the American line's survival on the distaff side. This man's mother's line had a fair amount of consanguinity in it as well, even as close to his generation as his own maternal grandparents, who were first cousins. After discovering this, I don't wonder at all on the provenance of the frequently-used tropes in his stories of "tainted blood!"

But, returning to my own family, my step-mother has an unflagging enthusiasm for genealogy, and in truth, traces family trees professionally out in Colorado for such clients as come her way. It seems lucrative enough, but her main source of income is her speechmaking. In summer, she goes on something of a lecture circuit and attends various conventions around the nation, speaking on a wide range of topics. I was most amused by some recent ones on the matter of heralry and those kiosks one sees about advertising "Family Coats of Arms." Heraldry is something of a passion of mine and she and many genealogists have amusingly sharp things to say about those "family history to order" kiosks.

I am reading these histories with great relish, and wish, perhaps not in vain, for further tales of ancestral glory that reflect so delightfully upon their descendants!