I'm always curious

archieclement

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when ppl post how do I find out about "X",as far as direct lines I knew everything to the CW from oral family history....I knew and asked my mom and grandma, just as my grandma's knew and asked my GGF and my GGGF, its only before the CW the oral history becomes sketchy, do most families not maintain an oral history of their ancestors?
 
when ppl post how do I find out about "X",as far as direct lines I knew everything to the CW from oral family history....I knew and asked my mom and grandma, just as my grandma's knew and asked my GGF and my GGGF, its only before the CW the oral history becomes sketchy, do most families not maintain an oral history of their ancestors?
Some families are very fragmented. I have good oral history from my dad's side of the family--though some of it ended up being untrue--but both of my mom's parents were orphaned young and raised by siblings. There is no oral history there because my grandparents and their siblings were too young to hear it, internalize it before everyone in the family was dead, and they didn't have longstanding ties in the areas where they were raised, so there was no larger network of older relatives to tell them family stories. There's also a lot of family estrangement that limits communication. What I did hear about family history was badly distorted--even basic names and points of origin were wrong. They were just lost to time.
 
My father never talked about his maternal family,telling my once he never cared much for them and I knew little aobut his paternal side other than what my grandfather told me and he died when I was thirteen. I have researched both sides with ancestry and have found out a lot, but have missed all the stories that he knew but never talked about. Sad...
 
We had some oral traditions but my grandfather (who is still alive) is not all that far removed from the Civil War. He knew his grandfather (who died when my grandfather was in his twenties which was also several years after my dad was born) who was the son of a Civil War veteran and the nephew of three others.

Ryan
 
Yeah some sides are just disconnected for different reasons like early deaths or physical separation. I'm lucky that my two 2nd-great grandfathers who I know fought in the Civil War lived a very long time (into the 1920s and 30s) so that my maternal grandfather was able to know them and hear stories about them as a child since he was born in 1919. However, even then there were a lot of things he didn't know or got wrong and I've only found out about through looking at Civil War service records and reading accounts of their units. I also only met him a few times because he lived in Texas and I was born in California, but he wrote a lot of things down.

Other sides of my family I don't know as much about. My paternal grandfather died before I was born so I know the least about him. My maternal grandmother moved from New York to Texas when she got married and I don't know as much about her maybe because she was disconnected from the rest of her family. The grandparent I know the most about is my paternal grandmother because she lived from 1916 to 2013 and I knew her until I was 17.

I think sometimes things and documents just get lost too. When I was a kid I remember my dad telling me a story that my 2nd-great grandparents were Irish immigrants living in San Francisco and then the father got sick and while his wife was tending to him she fell down the stairs and broke her neck, then he died the next day, and then my great-grandfather as a teenager homesteaded out in the countryside with the rest of his siblings. Eventually I only vaguely remembered that and when my dad died I couldn't ask him anymore, but then my uncle gave me a letter written by my great-aunt and a newspaper article which told the story with more detail and slightly different/less dramatic than I remembered it (the family was already living in the countryside at the time and the kids were mostly all grown up). If I never got ahold of that letter, I would have a much more vague and muddled idea of what happened. If it had never been written down it probably would have been completely forgotten.
 
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when ppl post how do I find out about "X",as far as direct lines I knew everything to the CW from oral family history....I knew and asked my mom and grandma, just as my grandma's knew and asked my GGF and my GGGF, its only before the CW the oral history becomes sketchy, do most families not maintain an oral history of their ancestors?

Very little history and what is passed along is quite sketchy.

In my case, I only knew one of my Grandparents. It wasn't but 5 or so years ago ---some 50 years after her death---that I discovered she had two Uncles who served in the War. One died at Gettysburg. Did she know that? Did she forget this? I know dream of a scenario where I would be 12 years old and be sitting at her side listening to her tell stories of how her Uncles served in the war.
My other example is that I researched my direct ancestor for a couple of years until I was sure I had his regiment and his service records, his PW info and his place of burial. Then, and only then, did my Aunt hand me his obituary that told me everything that I had been searching for.

And photographs. . . . almost nonexistent. Working with my cousins, I have collected 3 photos of my grandfather who died in 1948.
 
If either of my parents knew any family oral history they didn't share it. I was an only child and we weren't close, figuratively or literally, to any aunts or uncles (I've got cousins I've never met). All of my grandparents died before I was born and I didn't even know my grandmothers' names. When my mother died (dad died 12 years before her) that's when I decided to research the family, initially just to find out about my grandparents and maybe great grandparents. I began to discover some real eye openers and I ended up spending about three years researching. I still wonder why my parents were so secretive but do now have a few theories. I really wonder how much either knew about their family history before their parents (neither really knew their grandparents but their older siblings did).

I'm always a bit jealous of people who have strong oral histories and whose relatives kept all sorts of memorabilia. My mother didn't even have a single photo of either parent and my father had only one of his mother and two or three of his father (who was a well-to-do man in his day; there's other photos of him on the internet). Dad had a few photos of he and his siblings when they were young but mom didn't have any of herself or her siblings. As far as I know, none of the aunts and uncles had any old 'stuff' either. For a time I felt a bit sorry for myself and thought my parents most odd but I've met others who essentially know nothing of their family history before their parents and also have no old 'stuff.' Most of those folks also don't seem much interested in finding out which I think is also odd.

You are lucky.
 
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when ppl post how do I find out about "X",as far as direct lines I knew everything to the CW from oral family history....I knew and asked my mom and grandma, just as my grandma's knew and asked my GGF and my GGGF, its only before the CW the oral history becomes sketchy, do most families not maintain an oral history of their ancestors?



 
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