100 years ago the northwest 41st army division was on its way to France

[Argonaut]

My maternal grandmother told me for years we were related to kings and queens of England as passed down in family oral history. After doing a genealogy search about 10 years ago I found it was true that members of the Plantagenet family had gone to Ireland and settled there. I ofetn wondered why I was drawn to books about the Plantagenet from an early age. I wish I had been able to show her this while she was still living but she ha died before anyone knew what the internet was or had access to it. Ironically the family tree also includes Oliver Cromwelll's grandfather in it. It is very interesting to trace your family's origins. On my wife's side they are related to Meriwether Lewis. I am the only one of my family(wife, 2 children & 2 grandchildren)who is not related to him.

Great stuff.......one of my grandfather's was George Ludwig Rupert, he came to America as a Hessian soldier as a mercenary for England, he was captured by the Spanish in Florida, escaped after being transferred to New Orleans. He made his way north up the Mississippi and joined George Rogers Clark (William Clark's older brother) to fight Indians and British for the American's the rest of the war. After the war he joined with the Daniel Boone group still fighting Indians and helped open the west of the time.....in Kentucky and Ohio. He rescued a woman (Elizabeth Pursley) that later became his wife (and my grandmother) The Pursley's had been a long established frontier family that had been fighting Indians for decades by the revolutionary war. from a 3 year captivity (lots more stories there) Boone called him the "the little German" and employed him to train people with firearms. So...... You know one of the founders of the Plantagenet clan was Elinore of Aquitaine, she owned 1/3rd of France, was one of the founders of the Knights Templar, married both the kings of France and England, led the 2nd Crusade and was the mother of Richard the lionhearted and king John. We have been fighting Muslims for 1000 years. Nice to meet you cousin. Dave Wright

 

[Dungannon]

I've been doing genealogy on the paternal side [others have taken the material side back to Switzerland and Holland] for over 20 years now. While oral history has been helpful in getting me started in the right direction, it has usually ended up being a blend of two or more stories that got attached to one person.

For example: I'm named after my dad, and my dad was named after two uncles that died early in life. One uncle is supposed to have died in a logging accident, and the other gassed in WWI. Well, it took me 19 years to find a 1911 newspaper article from a small NC paper that described the death of the older uncle, when he was crushed by a log while unloading a wagon at a sawmill. The other uncle volunteered for the Spanish-American war, stayed on for two more enlistments, was wounded three times in the Philippines, and later enlisted at 38 in the Canadian Army during WWI. I now have a copy of his Canadian military file, and he survived WWI despite being shot to rags but he lived a miserable life in constant pain until his death in 1938.

It is an interesting hobby for winter months, but once you piece together the overall family connections, getting details of their actual life events is more spotty. Lots for some, nothing more than a name and possible year of birth for others. I don't trust anything on the Internet unless there is an actual document to back it up. Subscribe to Ancestry as well, and post both memorials and biographical data on Find a Grave.

As to military service, I've found record of direct ancestors serving in every conflict except the Indian Wars. Both sides in the Civil War.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

I found out that I lost 2 GGgreat uncles in Civil War, one near the beginning and one near the end. They were just Ohio farmboys. My maternal grandfather was in the Army chasing Poncho Villa all around Mexico and I have his Mexican Campaign medal and all of his WW1 medals, paybooks and pictures of him in France in a shadowbox that my grandmother made for me before she died. My mom made me a similar one for me of my father who was a Marine who spent over 2 1\2 years in the South Pacific. They are among the most treasured things I have.