Hunting History - Finding Family

 Today I was watching Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail (as one does) and it got me wondering what notable Knights I may have had in my tree! While I can't exactly search and verify the Knights of the Round Table, we absolutely know and can follow the Knights Templar!  To be honest I was surprised to see just how many direct line ancestors I had that were Knights! All of them are from the same line, which doesn't really shock me because I am sure these families of Knights were all intermarrying and funneling down to the same line, which in my case all of them run through the Sutton/Dudley's (the same ancestors that give me Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV) to my Wheeler/Weller line on my mom's side.  Knight's Templar: William de Ferrers - 23rd Great Grandfather William Marshal - 23rd Great Grandfather Fulk D'Anjou - 25th Great Grandfather Robert de Sable' - 26th Great Grandfather Robert de Craon - 27th Great Grandfather And just for shits and gig...

 Cornelis Barentsz Sleght was born in 1616 in Woerden, Reeuwijk, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands to Barent Cornelis Sleght and Jaquemine Pietrtgen. In Woerden he was listed as a distiller and a brandy wine maker after taking over his fathers lands in 1640.  In 1645, he expanded his lands u 'One Morgan and 47 Rods" (or about 2 1/2 acres.)  Around 1635 Cornelis married Trijntgen "Tryntje" Bosch (Boz) but we do not have a clear record of this.  They had at least five children together - Heydnerick, Jan, Jaquemijne, Annetgen, Petronella, and Mattijs.  The last mention of Cornelis and Tryntie in Woerden was in March 17, 1653, where he gave power of attorney to Jan Corsz Rietvelt, where they sold what possetions they had and those left over of her parents' estate.  They were clearly planning to Emigrate. The family arrived in New York, then being called new Amsterdam, where Cornelis was named as the brewer.  The family lived in Esopus, later named Kingst...

My favorite monthly email is the ancestor connector from WikiTree - it selects a theme and then shows you how many steps away you are from a particular notable person or group of historical people. Last month was War of the Roses, and while I can't say that subject has ever been anything I've ever been particularly interested in, this email changed that! I really went down the connection rabbit hole with this one, and I'm still finding notable people on this line. WikiTree told me I was 20 degrees from Henry VII, but it wasn't a direct line (my main focus) or even close to it, my line only connects to Henry through his brother's, wife's, sister.  Now, typically that isn't even a line I would follow, but I did, and the son of that brother's wife's sister was Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, son of John Grey and Elizabeth Woodville.  John and Elizabeth are my 15th Great Grandparents. John Grey of Groby was born in 1432, in Groby, Leicestershire, En...

 If you've been on TikTok at all in the last year I'm sure you've heard various versions of the popular sea shanty "The Wellerman," singing "Soon May the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum," referring to the Weller Brothers supply ships.   The Weller Brothers were Joseph, George, and Edward Weller, a wealthy family who had emigrated from Kent England to Otago Heads, Dunedin Australia in the early 1820s.  The move was originally made to attempt to cure Joseph's tuberculosis, but soon found himself interested in maritime trading, so after a short trip back home he brought his siblings and parents all back with him to Sydney where they founded a brand new business in  Otakou, on the Otago Peninsula .  Their first ship was purchased by George in 1826, named the Albion.  Soon they also had The Dublin Packet, The Joseph Weller, and The Lucy Ann, shipping large quantities of whale oil and bone, along with trade in timber, potatoes, and dried ...

 Johann Christian Orndorff, my 8th G Grandfather was born in Siegen, Germany August 15, 1692 to Johann Heinrich Orndorff and Agnes Giesler.  He married Elizabeth von Mueller in 1721in Nassau, and they had three children together: Johann Christian, Anna Barbara, and Mary Magdalena.  Unfortunately, Elizabeth passed away in 1741, and that, coupled with the religious prosecution of those of Protestant faith in Germany no doubt spurred Christian, and two of his children find themselves on the ship "St Mark" headed to the port of Philadelphia.  (It is unknown whether Elizabeth passed away on the ship en route or just before the emigration, as I don't have specific dates for her.  I also do not know whether or not Mary was with them on the ship, of if she had passed in Germany or on board.  Woman and children under 16 are typically not listed on ship manifests, but we know Anna was with him and arrived in PA, as she's listed in a deed as a married woman years late...

I've thought all week about what my favorite discovery has been.  It was hard; I've been doing genealogy for about twenty years now, and I've discovered a lot!  Proving (or disproving) family lore, figuring out why my DNA doesn't reflect my Italian roots, many notable Weller's (whiskey makers, pottery makers, long lines of reverends...) even a murder.   The best discovery though, has been much closer than the rest: my husband had a half-sibling he didn't know...and we found her using genealogy! I started working on my husbands tree around 2013, he wasn't (and still isn't) near as interested as me, but I plugged away anyway.  When researching his dad, we had a wealth of information  Robert had been a lifer in the military and we had hard copies of all his documents.  He'd been the youngest of five, and passe when my husband Kevin was eleven.  Kevin was telling me of an aunt that came over when he was about nine, and he'd been around eighteen; he...

Last week I touched on the Italian side of my family, The Barra's from Brossasco and the Nardin's from Asiago for "So Far Away."  This week's prompt is "Same Name" and I'm going back to Asiago, to talk about the same family, only this time it's because of a mystery; because I have no idea how my Great Aunt ended up with the name she did - the name of a major battle ground in the Italo-Turkish War. Rena Paganin Giustina Maria Ain Zara "Rena" Paganin was born February 26th, 1912 in Asiago, Italy to Catterina Angela Nardin and Valentino Paganin.  Eleven months after Rena was born, her father would be dead, and less than two years after that she would be on the Duca D'Aosta steam ship with her mother and grandmother Mary Strazzabosco headed to Ellis Island.  But this time we're not talking abut what happened during or even after Rena's life, we're going to talk about what happened before.   December 4th, 2011...