/ot/ - off-topic

I want to get into this but at the same time, I'm paranoid at giving my DNA to some random ass company overseas

>>605029
Good, you should be.

>>605029
You don’t have to do a DNA history to track your ancestry, anon. That’s just to determine genetic links. You can do normal paper trail ones on the sites listed.

>>605029
In my country, our government tried to buy DNA information from one of those commercial DNA companies. That was a big nope for me, even if I trusted a commercial company with my DNA (which I don't) I most definitely don't trust our government with my DNA information. From what I read, the shitty thing about it is that when you submit your DNA, it can also be linked to other members from your bloodline, including people who have not consented to their DNA being submitted and archived anywhere. They only need a small percentage of actual DNA samples to map everyone on the planet.

Thanks to this thread, anon, I went on an ancestry spree for 8 hours not even fucking kidding.

So, I already knew my grandmother was half white and that there was some bad history with her parents and grandparents. I knew I had a rich white great great grandfather or something who married a black women and was cut off from the family for it.

when I went to check his lineage, a few other members on Ancestry had him on their family tree. I laughed so fucking hard when I saw that this one lady emphasized the white side of their family trees.

"WHITE side family tree 1"
"Family tree 2 WHITE"
"White family tree 3"

Like I died laughing. This lady was so ashamed to have black people in her family that she needed to emphasize.

Samefag but this was a nice little trip.

I found my great great grandfathers' WWI and WWII draft registration cards. Both of them couldn't serve, one broke his leg in 1915 and one had poor eyesight so he was also exempt.

Crazy how those small things made it so that they were able to have and raise a family that led to me… A piece of shit posting on lolcow.

Any irishfags had a success doing their genealogy? I find the family tree just stops a bit above my grandparents so I find nothing new, or it's impossible to find docs details and papers

>>605610
im half irish and the best thing you can do is find the og immigrants and trace back to their family or clan in ireland. the clans in ireland kept decent track of their members and information is available online

>>605564

This is pretty cool, anon! I wish my fam had some documents like these but as far as I know most papers have been destroyed in WWII when germany occupied poland.

Love the thread idea, OP! This has become a big hobby of mine. I gathered a lot of information from my grandmother when I was younger for a school project and forgot about it. Came back to it years later (after she had passed) and managed to find a whole generation before what my grandmother was aware of. Her research was incredible though as apparently some of my family actually worked for the births/deaths register. It's really exciting finding a marriage cert to see who was in attendance and checking to see if the church is still standing. Maybe when all of this coronavirus shit is over, I'll go on a road trip to find all of the churches my ancestors married in and and care for any graves I can find. I've also really enjoyed mapping out where everyone lived and what kind of land they had. There's still a few mysteries I have to solve but new information keeps getting transcribed all the time so each time I come back to it, I discover something new. Haven't really got anything exciting to share beyond that because 99% of my family were farmers lmao.

>>605610
That's pretty normal. Registering births/deaths only became compulsory in 1864 so unless your family was from a big city like Dublin/Belfast/Cork or you come from a famous family that's probably as far as you're going to get. I'd recommend checking the baptism/funeral records if you have the patience to go through scanned originals (but I haven't found anything through them yet!)

>>605807

Cheers, I am from & living in one of the big cities mentioned and finding it so hard. I think my grandad a few years ago went on a genealogy kick, hopefully I can get some nice info from him once I can finally see him post covid (which feels like never, really)

>>605702
My family never immigrated I still live here, know all our old family names through marriages etc but it's very very hard to find info on your specific ancestors and not just vague ~clan~ type stuff. Like the anon just above me said, this seems to be as far as you can get unless you're very lucky or have a famous family or one that has always been very adamant about tracking their genealogy, and I've not met anyone Irish here whose family has been like that. It seems to be a mostly American/Canadian interest if I'm not mistaken? My friends from the US and Canada seem to have great track records of their family history, which I'm glad to see

>>605807
Here's the ultimate list of resources for Irish anons:

>irishgenealogy.ie
For birth, marriage and death records. Birth records are the most important because they'll give you the father's name, where he lived, his profession and the mother's first and maiden name. But if you're unable to find a birth record, a marriage record will give you all the father's information too. Deaths are only really useful if you want to confirm the deceased's child's name (usually the oldest is present for the death) or where they lived in later life. Try as many spelling variants as humanely possible.

>census.nationalarchives.ie
For census records. Again, unless your family was from a major city, you'll probably only be using the 1911 and 1901 records. People constantly lie about their age on census records so be prepared for that, it's sometimes up to 20 years age difference. Sometimes children down as "servants" or "farmhands" were actually adopted children whose parents passed away. This website also contains wills (if your ancestor had some money, chances are they left it to someone and this might help you confirm who their partner/parents/siblings were). Also worth a check if you know your ancestor served in the army (for wills but keep in mind that most Irish people served and died for the British army so check their records too, you'll probably have to pay though), worked as a sailor or owned a business. It also contains court and prison records, exciting.

>askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/
A record of houses, office buildings and land done from 1847 to 1864. Good for if you want to know exactly what village an ancestor lived in (since most villages were too small to have a register, so most births/marriages/deaths were registered in the nearest town). You can also pinpoint the exact house they lived in if you're lucky! If your ancestor was a landlord this is also really useful to see what properties they owned.

>logainm.ie
A website for place names. Really helpful to figure out the alternate spelling of place names, get the Irish spelling (since the "English" versions are usually just phonetic spellings of the Irish, rather than translations) and help you to understand the different baronies/parishes (which will help you in your search for church documents).

>duchas.ie
A collection of handwritten stories from schoolchildren (around our grandparents' generation) and photos. Not essential for your family tree but a nice little source for local folklore/daily life if you can pinpoint exactly where your family are from. Some stories involve real people so it's possible to find a story about/written by one of your ancestors (although I haven't been successful in that yet!). It's also nice to see photos of towns as our ancestors would have known them and attach them to your tree/map for a little extra atmosphere lol.

>irishgraveyards.ie/
For searching Irish graves. Could possibly help with pinpointing where someone lived, who they married or who their children were (since most are buried in a family grave).

That's pretty much everything I've used. Also if you live in Ireland or plan on visiting, definitely check out the National Archives building (for original documents), contact the local parish priest for information on baptisms/marriages/funerals and check the libraries for local history. There's a LOT that hasn't been published online or transcribed. If you come from a well-known family, there are plenty of history books published on certain names/areas and genealogy is huge here so you'll probably eventually encounter someone who has a very thorough tree which you can link up with your own (all the more reason to have a tree online with myheritage). There are nuns who dedicate all their time to this lol.

Good luck to fellow Irish anons!

>>605863
Holy shit, thanks so much for writing this up for me and providing so many resources. I massively appreciate this anon, I'm looking forward to continuing my search now!!

>>605820
my bad, my americafag is showing. i was fortunate in that my family kept records of their old stead in cork before moving to iowa. i lived in ireland for a year though and was able to see the land for myself. a lot of the people i talked to in stores and shops would give tidbits of info and hearsay about the land, but they didn't know much beyond the late 1800's to 1900's. they saw me as a tourist and rightfully so tbh

>>605999
Not at all haha, I actually had to read the comment like 3 times because I kept misreading it as you living here too and I was like, "what immigrants?" Not realising you currently aren't here, am idiot. I am glad and in fact jealous you have such a good family history and resources. I am from Cork too! If it wasn't an abhorrent idea for us to share the info, I'd be interested in where around here your family was from.

>>606140
omg, funny enough to see you're in cork! i lived in galway when i was in ireland but visited cork a bunch on the greyhound lmao. do you like living there? sometimes i wanna pack my shit and permanently move to ie, i miss the slower and easy going lifestyle. also i think they lived near inniscarra, i'll have to look through the records and make sure. im lucky that my grandpa left a small collection of documents about his family after he passed.

A few years ago, I got to do a DNA test from 23andme for free and I found out I had a biological father lmao
In other news, my bio father is obsessed with genealogy and he found out I'm related to a couple big Spanish figures. One of them helped with the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire and another was a King of Castile, Spain at one point. Neat stuff. I do want to know more about my Mom's side.

>>605999
living somewhere for a year is called student exchange, not really living there

I'm lucky my grandfather put a lot of effort in family trees and so on and I can trace parts of my family back to the 30 years war during which most older church registers got destroyed. I hope some day I'll have time to more of my ancestors history and maybe also my moms side too.

>>606229
Tiny world! Or tiny shitty ireland lmfao. Galway is definitely a nicer place to spend your time if you're mostly in the city. Cork feels like the shit end of the stick, unless you live in or can regularly drive to west cork which is a heaven on earth. The city itself is fair shit, but I think everyone feels that way a bit about where they live.
No joke, my hometown which is outside of the central city, is about 40 minutes from inniscarra.
If you were to move here, or just come back again temporarily, would you spend more time in Cork, or Galway around where you lived before?

>>606384
>You didn't live somewhere just because you lived there

>>606365
This is cool, but how did you feel finding all of this out? Do you guys have open contact? I wonder if delving into the records of estranged bio family is worth how stressful it could potentially be. At least your ancestry is cool as shit tho lmao

>>606469
>thinking spending a year somewhere is anywhere close to enough time to actually experience local culture, integrate and know what it's like for the locals who have lived there most of their lives
sure jan

>>606513
Okay you fucking elitist.

>>606469
What's wrong with Cork? I studied abroad there for a semester and loved it

>>606469
It was awesome finding out! It felt like things all clicked into place regarding how things were with my dad who raised me. Bio dad gave me a call as soon as we found out and told me his life story, we ended up being very similar, especially having backgrounds in music and computers. My family was shocked, my mom and sister both cried to me saying it wasn't the same anymore and this lasted for a week. I was just excited to have more family.

>>606513
>>606384
bitch i said i was more of a tourist in my previous comment, please point to me where i said i was some sort of expert? i move around a lot. i've lived a year in japan, china and spent half a year in korea until corona hit, all working full time. want to tell me how i don't really know these places and am just a study abroad fag? get tae fuck

>>606469
can't believe your nearly half an hour from iniscarra kek, is your town small? yeah not gonna lie, cork seemed pretty gloomy every time i was there. galway was really fun, one of the best places i've lived in my life. i noticed many people i met even in galway wanted to get the fuck out of ireland asap. i can understand, it's slow as hell in some places. if i moved i'd probably go to galway or dublin just because work would be better there, but i agree it would best be a temporary thing. for now i'm focusing on getting back to japan but i hope to make a visit to ireland at some point in the near future!

My mom did this for both her side of the family and my dad's side and basically all she found out was that we owned a shit ton of slaves on both sides and her side of the family somehow descended from the Tudors or something lol. It was kind of morbidly interesting looking through records of slaves and looking up the plantations my family owned though

Slightly related, I did some research on my parents' house that's over 200 years old so they can get a plaque from the historical society and found a death certificate that showed a guy was murdered in the house and some woman killed herself in the upstairs bathroom. Explains why the house is haunted af

Anyone got any tips on finding someone who may not have been born in Europe/Anglo countries? I can’t find a birth certificate for my great-grandad anywhere, and he was only born in 1914.

>>606781
>want to tell me how i don't really know these places and am just a study abroad fag
You pretty much said it yourself, you're no different from those cunts who spend their gap year in Spain and then never shut up about how they used to live in Barthelona.

>>605016
>>612647
Some African Countries:
https://www.freesurnamesearch.com/search/africa.html
South American countries:
http://www.genealogyintime.com/records/South-America-genealogy-records.html
Also, for Asia, I'd look for census records of certain countries, and I'd do the same with non-Anglo Oceanic countries, as well as the Caribbean and Central America. I'd tried looking for Regions of Asia ie: West Asia, Southeast Asia, etc.; I didn't really get results I wanted.

>>656638
Same Poster, but If you're okay with DNA testing, there's a company that isn't dodgy with the data sharing and privacy things:
https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing/