Ancestral Locations of Most Interest to You

Our ancestors came from varying locations and at different times. If you are like me, you really connect to certain ancestors and their migration paths a bit more than others and spend a lot of time researching those geographic areas.

Which areas (and time periods for them if you wish to be more specific) interest you most?

I'll answer in the next post.

The last of my lines to settle in Monroe County, Mississippi, did so in 1896, so I am interested in Monroe County and some of its surrounding counties--especially Itawamba County, Mississippi, Lee County, Mississippi, and Lamar (formerly Sanford County), Alabama.

I enjoy reading about colonial periods in Virginia and North Carolina because a lot of my Southern ancestors came from those states.

I'm also interested in Ohio's Amish country where my Lantz and Yoder families lived for a while--mainly Holmes and Wayne Counties.

I also enjoy reading about colonial times in New Hampshire and in the Cape Ann/Boston area of Massachusetts where some ancestors lived. I've got a couple books on Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island where the Rathbone/Rathbun family resided.

I dabble in most areas where ancestors lived, but I find myself collecting more for these counties or periods. I purchase lots of social history relating to these areas/times.

>2 thornton37814: my family comes from Mennonite settlers in Ohio, and before that Pennsylvania. I have some Yoders in the tree. The Mennonite migration to America has been one of the more rewarding things I've learned about researching the family.

On a relatively small island in northern Ontario, I have approximately fifty different ancestors from five generations across various branches spread among four different graveyards, not counting two who are still buried in what is now a pet cemetery. There are also two original farmhouses from the 1800s still standing, both still in the family, and until just last year there was a third as well (but in the woods nearby there are still the ruins of the log cabin that preceded it).

>3 southernbooklady: Mine were in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania (and some nearby ones) before going to Ohio and in Berks before that. A few appear to be in St. Marie aux Mines in the Alsace Region of what is now France prior to that. I still need to work on records that will actually prove they are mine, but the case is being built.

>4 Cecrow: It's neat when we see the actually residences from that long ago. I've been fortunate to see one such Indiana farmhouse that dated to the 1860s. I've also seen a cabin we believe was the dogtrot home of an ancestor who died in Mississippi in 1897. They moved to Mississippi around 1859 or 1860. The county historian isn't sure if it was the original home or not. This type home dates to that period so it seems likely it was.

>6 genealogy_nana: We need more than 24 hours in a day!

>6 genealogy_nana: I have ancestors from Pulaski County, Kentucky--Sipple and Hicks. They lived in the Science Hill area in the early 1800s.

>7 thornton37814: Amen!

I spend most of my time on my Knox County, Indiana, ancestors, simply because there are so many of them. I intend to work more on my Belgians this year. They lived in the Kersbeek-Miskom/Zuurbemde area. They were Catholic and I can get the church records on FamilySearch. I also want to dig more into my Quaker ancestors in Guilford County, North Carolina.

>8 casvelyn: We talked about all those Quakers we all had the other night.

>9 genealogy_nana: I don't think I have any Pulaski County, Kentucky ancestors. I barely have Kentucky at all. Just a Harris family in Wayne County.

>9 genealogy_nana: Hello! That's great! It really is a small world...

I don't think I have any Easley, but I do have Anderson in that area. Elizabeth Anderson married Joseph Sipple. Her parents were Pouncy Anderson and Tamar Griffith. On the Hicks side, my earliest identified ancestors are Nenian Hicks and Martha (maiden name unknown). There are some GREAT given names in those families.

I had the dates somewhat wrong in prior post though. My Sipples did arrive in Kentucky in the early 1800s, but they didn't come to Indiana until sometime between 1910 and 1912, when they moved to Tippecanoe County up here.

>8 casvelyn: Yep, I love Quaker research because of the records that are available.

>11 casvelyn: Have you gone over to Earlham College to use their Quaker collection? When I worked at a theological library in Ohio, we sometimes visited the Earlham library for various meetings of the state theological library association. I think the archivist was a member in Ohio--even though the library was across the state line. I didn't know I had any Quaker ancestors back then.

>12 thornton37814: I haven't been to Earlham, mostly because my Quakers are fairly recent discovery. We do help a lot of patrons with Quaker research, because they had such a large presence in Indiana, and we refer people out there quite a bit.

>13 casvelyn: They do have a good collection. I'd mostly be researching the descendants of Eli Thornton (a fairly distant uncle) if I went there.

>15 genealogy_nana: That’s amazing! Joseph and Elizabeth are my 4th great grandparents. I’m descended from John Daniel as well!

I suppose statistically we all have cousins everywhere, but it never ceases to amaze me when I actually meet them.

I think we subscribe to Blue Grass Roots at work... I’ll have to look that up next time I’m in the office. I don’t have the patience for land records myself, so I’m always glad when someone else looks at them. :)

>15 genealogy_nana: Another cousin connection in this group! I'm loving this.

>16 casvelyn: She keeps talking about that article . . . and most of us are having to wait to read it until we can actually get to a library in person to read it (probably months from now). You'll have to report back on how it is!

>17 thornton37814: Well, as it turns out we canceled our subscription back in 2013. (Before I worked here, so I have no idea why.) So next week I'm looking at my acquisitions budget to see if we can re-subscribe. Maybe we can get her to give us the cliff notes one of these days to tide us over.

It's about my ancestors, so it has to be amazing! I'm probably biased though. :)

>18 casvelyn: I see a trip to Allen County in your future!

>19 thornton37814: Road trips are for amateurs lol! I'll have it ILL'd. It's almost always free and if ACPL doesn’t pick it up, some other library will. *wanders off to WorldCat to see who has this*

You know, I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life, and I’ve been to Allen County exactly once. And it was for a conference, so I had about 2 hours of research time.

>20 casvelyn: The next time Carrie Beth and I go on a research trip there, you'll have to come visit! I'm always looking for an excuse for a Fort Wayne trip!

>21 thornton37814: That would be lovely!

>23 genealogy_nana: I’m descended from William Edgar and his first wife, Sallie Hicks. They moved to Indiana between 1910 and 1912. William and Sallie divorced between 1920 and 1930 and William married Lena Nalley Zimmerman.

>25 genealogy_nana: . . . to the white birch hence 20 chains to a red oak then along the line with John Doe and meandering along the creek . . .

>25 genealogy_nana: You have fun with that now... :) I like a good mapping project, but about halfway through I tend to start questioning my life choices.

>26 thornton37814: Lori, you know they done cut down that oak tree 150 years ago and now no one knows where anything is LOL! (Or, why I avoid metes and bounds like the plague.)

>27 casvelyn: I know. It's fun to draw the maps and fit them over current maps to try to figure out where they lived.

I have an old copy of Deedmapper around here somewhere, but I need to bring it up-to-date, I'm sure. I like the challenge of drawing them by hand, but I always have to hunt my instructions because I often work in the rectangular survey states! I can handle the NE 1/4 of the SW 1/4 of S27 T13 R5E.

I'm interested in Lancashire in particular, and Yorkshire holds some interest for me as well.

>31 MsMixte: I have ancestors from Yorkshire. I’ve always wanted to visit where they lived.

>31 MsMixte: >32 casvelyn: I want to go to Yorkshire some day too.

>33 thornton37814: I have ancestors from Scagglethorpe. I have only been as far north as York, however, because we didn't have time to go further.

>34 MsMixte: I'll have to get out my handy road atlas of Britain to see where Scagglethorpe is located.

>34 MsMixte: Scagglethorpe might be one of the best tow names I’ve ever seen!

My ancestors lived somewhere between Thirsk and Ampleforth (I think, the records are a bit sketchy) so not that far away.

In 2019 I was able to visit Auronzo, Italy (north of Venice) where my grandparents lived before coming to America.

In October my parents and I took a little "family history trip" to visit some of the places that had come up in our research -- a church and graveyard in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, the original homestead of the family (I was shocked it was still standing) in Goodville, PA, and the village of Batsto in New Jersey, which is now a preserved historic site.

We were circumscribed in what we could do because of Covid, but I underestimated how meaningful it would feel to just be on the spot of these places I only knew through sporadic records. And the trip had a couple of unlooked-for rewards. In Palmyra, we met the church caretaker who was able to provide the location of an ancestor's farm, since he was a founding member of the congregation. So now I have it almost pinpointed. And in Batsto, I found some local research about the glass industry in the village and found an ancestor's name on a photograph of an employee list of glassblowers who worked in the factory in 1855. I had suspected he worked there because of his profession and because he lived in the area, but it was hard evidence that he was at that specific glassworks, which was very gratifying to confirm.

>38 southernbooklady: I visited the location where some ancestors lived in Howard County, Indiana, and I'm pretty sure the house on the property is the one in which they lived. I really want to check some additional records to verify that when I get a chance to do so. It is always neat to actually see the actual home in which they lived. Glassblowing is an interesting occupation!

After getting DNA connections on Ancestry, I find many of my family were in Texas.

>40 mnleona: I think a lot of us had distant uncles, aunts, and cousins who moved to Texas. I'm speaking for the Texas State Genealogical Society and using a case study of a second great-grandmother's brother who moved to Texas as the basis for most of one lecture.

I have a LOT of French ancestry in southeast Missouri, who came via Canada and France pretty early on--one came to Canada as early as 1670s. I have not been able to pinpoint where in France most came from. I know one was born in in Normandy in 1636, but there are a lot that I haven't traced further back than to Montreal or Quebec. I'd be interested in knowing if they came from the same area in France, and at around the same time.

My family comes from the area around the Jura mountains where France, Germany, and Switzerland meet and I've run across records in French and German in the same town, depending, I guess, on how borders shifted over time. I have had some luck finding people who were researching the same families using Geneanet.org.

DNA indicates a lot more German and Scandinavian; much more than the French that runs on both sides of the family. Mom & Dad were both descended from the same early French colonists in Missouri; in the early days there was a LOT of intermarriage. There are zero Scandinavian names in the records...so would Normandy ancestors account for that Viking blood? There's also a bit of Irish that may also account for it. Anyway, more research needs to be done to answer just where in France these people came from, and was some of it from near the German border.

>44 theretiredlibrarian: You sometimes need to look at the overlapping regions for those regions. For example, the German may include parts of the Alsace in France as well as Switzerland, Austria, etc. (Italy also includes Switzerland, so you sometimes have to look at the broader regions. A person with a trace of Scandinavian will often have Scots and or Irish ancestry. If you are looking at a lot of Scandinavian, you may want to look at the broader region and see what parts of Europe are included. Also remember that the ethnicity estimates are the least accurate parts of DNA tests. The estimates will change over time, hopefully becoming more accurate and precise.

I have seen changes of what I have in my DNA on Ancestry. At first it said no Italian and since my maternal grandparents were Italian, I knew that was wrong. It now shows 47%.

>46 mnleona:, whew that's a big correction! I'm pretty sure mine still has an error too.

I'm working on my Irish Ancestors, from County Cavan and Limerick. Otherwise I'm in New England (MA, ME); the South, Kansas, Orgon, Michigan -- with everyone winding up in California.

>48 cozydell: I was in Ireland last year and loved it. My DNA shows a touch of Irish in me.

Some research has found that at least one French ancestor originated in Normandy. Pierre Valle was born in 1636 in St. Saens, Normandy and died in around 1686 in Beauport, Quebec. His wife, Therese Leblanc, was born in Quebec; her parents immigrated from Acquitaine or possibly Poitou.