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I'm not sure as to how great the web site thing is. It took three years for me to get my full ancestry. My great Aunt recently sent me a composition of my family tree. She had to go to Germany and sweden to get the full line. The book, and I do mean BOOK, is HUGE!!!!The best places to find european descendents is at the Catholic church. Once you've found the region where you ancestors were, go to the local Catholic church in that town and you'll be surprised at all the information they have. It did take some time for my great Aunt to find it all but someone in the family had to do it before all was lost. My family was traced back to the 1500's and then they had a stump. The stump was because of that idiot Martin Luther and his protestant reformation. Many areas in Germany did what all good germans do and take evrything to the extreme. With that said, they burnt the churches and all their records which left little room for my great Aunt to trace back any further. Luckily for us we were able to trace back up till the early 1300's. We couldn't go back any further because of the Black Plague that killed nearly 1/4 of europes population. Many of the record keepers themselves died in that era. My family was basically all in southern germany for centuries upon centuries. Being a Historian I realize that my family must have had a life better than most others, where they lived in Germany was one of the most prosperous regions in europe. I found that they were actually land owners who leased their land out to peasants in return for a percentage of their crops.I don't how my Aunt found all this out but evidently in Germany the catholic church has details of peoples family and what they did.Then in the mid 1500's during the rebirth era my family had a split. Part remained in Southern Germany and the other ended up in northern Germany/present day Denmark and somehow ended up in Sweden. I had the pleasure of being born in the fatherland like my family before me. My younger brother however was born in florida. When the swedish decent came into play that took one of the most remarkable turns in ancestory I've ever heard about.
On the Swedish side she traced it back to the 1000's. I could not believe my eyes when i read this because I found it highly unlikely that she could have actually done this. She then told me it was rather easier than the german lineage findings. My family had been in sweden for some time, mainly in the northern part of the middle of sweden. I believe the name of the region is now known as Onca. The trace later took a crazy turn because somehow it ended up in England in the town of York. I later realized that it was true because York was a town settled by the vikings. If you go to York today, you will still see some of the remenants of the vikings in the feautures of people (Hair & Eye color, size of body, facial shapes). People in the Uk will tell you some of the most beautiful women in England come from York. After the Welch, Saxons and Anglicans finally drove my dead relatives out of their british isle for good, part of my family went to Norway and tried to mingle in with the Norwiegens. Either because of death or hardship they went back to sweden. In the Middle ages and the dark ages, our part of sweden was spared from the black plague since the climate was extremely harsh for the fleas to survive that carried the disease. In Scandinavian families your lineage is somewhat easy to find since most Swedish, Norwiegen, Danish people have names such as Jorgeson, Peterson, Jonson and the like. They mostly have names that end with son/sen at the end. That means "son of". which would read....jorgeson= son of jorge, Peterson=son of Peter etc, etc...I still had my doubts that my Great aunt Johanna actually traced it back to the 1000's which was right after the golden age of the vikings. She said at the churches thats what they had. My guess is that the churches back then must have gotten their information through someone who said this person is the son of this person, who is the great grandfather of this person and etc, etc..... Swedes were deep into oral traditon and thats how we have any account of anything from back then, by word of mouth. I honestly don't care how far back it goes. It's just alittle fun to read where your Genes are from.
My dads family tree is simple. All were in germany. It was traced back to the mid 1500's and then no more information was available. His family lived in the northern part of germany. The protestant reformation first took solid ground in northern germany and scandinavia. The region where his family was from was one of those regions where they violently made the transition from being catholic to protestant. In other words they burned the church down along with the records and thats why we couldn't get anything more. From the 1500's on they pretty much lived in the same area throughout the centuries. That leads me to believe they've been that way since europe was settled. I guess the best name given to my relatives before would be to call them Visigoths......They were the people in that area since Roman times. In the 1800's as germany's future was about to solidify, my dads family came to Iowa, clinton to be exact.
One thing I noticed that was very wierd about my dads family was this; the whole time they have lived in America they never married outside their ethnicity. I mean every man married a german girl and every girl married a german man. The only thing I can come up with is the fact that it must have been a big No No to marry outside of the ethnicity in their family. In todays world that seems alittle hard to do. One doesn't go out and look for a girl of german or swedish decent and say " Lets get married" since we are the same ethnicity. I have noticed something that has made me think though. Everytime I'm crazy about a chick, she has been of german or swedish decent. My current girlfriend is swedish and german and I've found it rather odd for someone of the same decent to end up with the exact same, most of the time opposites attract. I'm wondering if the attraction has something to do chemically in your body or if your drawn to the same type of people as your own. But then how would one explain some of my friends that are black always liking blonde white chicks? It's kinda wierd.
Anyways....go online and try a church in europe to find your ancestors.
UF
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