Alberto Monteiro wrote: > > Julia Thompson wrote: > > > >> For example, how close I am to you? I imagine we might have > >> a common ancestral by 1600 or so. > > > > Most of my ancestors at that point were in the British > > Isles. to the best of my knowledge. A few were in France. > > > And those are the best candidates: France once invaded > Maranhão, who was where the family of my monther's > father come from [they were the local nobility]. OTOH, > we might have some ancestor among the jews that came > with the Dutch invasion of Pernambuco, and were latter > exiled to New York when Portugal took it back.
Interesting. The French ancestor I know about was a Hugenot. > > If you go to http://www.rootsweb.com and do a search > > > The last time I got interested in genealogies, I was > horrified at how much mercenary it had become in the > Internet. It seems that it's a big source of income > for some people. Some people will do research for free, and just ask that the cost of copying & mailing be reimbursed. A number of people won't even do that, it seems, which is kind of sad. If you're really stumped and need something looked up somewhere else, information not on the internet, it may be that the person best qualified to track down the information you need spends so much time doing that sort of thing that they either need to receive real reimbursement for their services, or not do it at all and have a more regular job. I have a friend who is pretty good at doing research on behalf of other people, but whenever someone suggests she turn pro, she shruggs it off. (If you wanted her to check out something in San Antonio or Houston, though, gas money might be appreciated if she hadn't planned on going there already.) Another thing is that some of the places that have information up on the internet and easily available really need to charge for subscriptions to pay for the servers, bandwidth, etc. ancestry.com has databases not searchable by those not paying; they have other databases free to all. But there are lots of scams out there, and the last place I'd look for professional help is from a spammer. :P If you had narrowed something down to one or two very specific places, I'd subscribe to mailing lists or post on message boards to see if some kind volunteer would be willing to spend some time looking for the relevant information at the place where local records are kept as my first step, and if information were sent snail-mail, do something to reimburse for actual expenses incurred. > > I'm probably related one way or another to over half > > the people who were in Virginia at the time of the > > American Revolution, including a number of > > scoundrels. :) > > > That can't be prevented, can it? Some of mine were > slave owners. AFAIK, no one was a slave trader, which > is some degrees lower in the morality scale. In the 1860 census, one great-great grandfather is listed as having a wife, a number of children, and 2 or 3 slaves in the household. Looking at ages of everyone, I'd guess that the adult male slave wasn't working any harder than the father, and that the older sons were working that hard as well, but it doesn't change the fact that he owned slaves. I haven't looked hard enough at the census records on other ancestors to say anything one way or another on any of them. I know nothing about any slave traders in my family tree. Just people trying to weasel a Revolutionary War pension out of the government when, according to the rules, they didn't deserve it. The interesting thing about slave ownership is that most of the slaves were owned by people who owned a great many, but most of the slave owners had 4 or fewer slaves. So the average slave-owner experience was of having 1 to 4 slaves, and probably not treating them much worse than their own household members, but the average slave experience was of being one of a great multitude where more abuses were likely to occur. Julia _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
