Got a surprise today

[Old Crank]

I occasionally poke at the family tree. A relative sent one my way a while back to have me fill in some data. Have lost touch with him. My late wife's uncle dug up all the paperwork to join the Sons of the American revolution. Unfortunately he ended up with dementia and his records were lost some where. That makes my daughter eligible for DAR status should we have any interest. One point of interest is that my daughter is related to Harriet Beecher Stowe.
My current wife is potentially related to General Horatio Gates who was with George Washington.
Today I got a notification from the LDS people about new information added. In it was some data from ancestors in the tree. It turns out that a few were in the Revolutionary war. One died on a prison ship.
Exactly how accurate some of the data is, there is a glossary of sources in the article expounding on this, remains to be seen.
But my daughter could be a DAR from both sides of her parentage.
Who knew this Canadian could be a SAR.

[catbyte]

1. I discovered that my ancestors were on "the wrong side" of both the Revolutionary War

and the civil War, lol. Folks on my mom's side of the family were in the Iroquois Federation during the Revolution and my dad's family came from Boone County, Kentucky so you know what side they were on during the Civil War. My only claim to fame was my mom's adopted mom was a direct descendant of Abigail Adams but since my mom was adopted, never mind.

[Old Crank]

2. It gets pretty funny

Some times doesn't it.
There have been some references to Native Americans in our lineage. But pretty much all the recent documentation shows nothing. Occasionally one shows up in the early 1700s but isn't there now. My daughter wanted to do a 23 and me test. Nothing there. But the results show pretty true to the records compiled. My stock comes from the British isles and half my late wife's does also, the last 1/4 is from the Jewish area of Poland.

Not sure I will pursue the issue much more.

[catbyte]

3. It can be confusing. My mom was 100% Native American and my dad

was French/Irish/Native American. My cousin documented my European ancestors on my dad's side, so it's pretty clear-cut given the documentation she found. My dad's Native American blood was a bit more complicated. It's difficult to trace Native American ancestry because of the oral traditions. I found mine by going through Tribal and BIA rolls. I found a lot through the Durant Roll of 1870 and 1908 in Michigan, but it's really difficult if you don't know where to start. Good luck!

[chowmama]

4. An aunt of mine (father's sister) wanted to join the DAR

in the worst way. So she researched her family genealogy. This was back before the internet, so it involved a lot of sending away, hiring people, etc. It took a long time and quite a bit of money. You also had to trust that they were skilled and ethical, which wasn't always true either.

Nobody knows what she found, but it made her extremely unhappy. She shut the whole thing down and briefly explored whether she could visit the archive which contained the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad...something. They finally convinced her that she would not be allowed to be unattended in a room with primary source material. She was saying things to us like "one minute alone in there with a razor blade could fix this whole thing". I'd still love to know what it was, but she destroyed every shred of the copies she'd been sent, all the way to present day. Never discussed any details in her lifetime. I don't even know which archive.

I've never done the research to figure out WTH it was, but my husband uses the Ancestry website and took a detour into my family tree. Following my father's mother, he traced us all the way back to the original Leffingwells of Connecticut - and of the Revolution. My aunt followed the wrong line - probably her father's. She was as eligible for the DAR as it gets, and she never knew.

Our Civil War history was equally disappointing to her. The family story was that an ancestor had died heroically on Seminary Ridge. Turns out he died less heroically at Seminary Hill, a nearby military hospital which was also connected somehow to a prisoner of war camp. I'm not sure whether he was one of ours, one of theirs, a patient, a medic or a guard. The odds are it was dysentery, which is neither heroic, romantic, nor dignified.

So - sheep romancing? Aggravated witchery? The family stories were always so boring. I'd be glad to find out different. Whatever it is, it's not like I did it.