What do you know about your family heritage? Are you interested in genealogy? Do you have anything embarrassing in your family history?

I've noticed that people who are adopted are often even more interested in their adoptive family's roots than birth children are. If you're adopted, is this the case with you? Are you more interested in your birth family's heritage, or in the history of the family that adopted you?

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2000

Answers

Ohhhh yeah (http://kelleher.org) Obsessed you might say.

I've got old photos, I've reached out to other members of my family, I run a web site for it, I collect stories, um ... have I mentioned obsessed yet?

Apparently, there's an illegitimate child in the family, my great-grandmother Blanche, which means that one whole branch of research is essentially invalid, 'cos we know almost nothing about her mother or the actual father of the baby, if she was in fact illegitimate, and legitmized by the kindness of my great-grandpappy.

On the other side of the family, my other great-grandpappy may have been a gun-runner for the Fenians in Ireland in the 1880s. Another unconfirmed legend.

As for heritage, by and large, it's Irish, with some other British Isles incursions, including English, Welsh and Scots and a dose of German/Polish thanks to some other great-greats.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I'm the odd one out as far as the family goes in that I'm almost the only one who takes an interest in it. On Mum's side we haven't yet been able to go further back than 1883 on her mother's side, and her father was illegitimate so we don't know where to go further back than 1915 (when he was born). On Dad's side, we've managed to trace his mother's ancestors as far back as 1823, though no word on his father's family. I also like to collect some of the old family photos, cos again I'm almost the only one who cares about them, and I particularly covet a tintype photo that my grandmother showed me last year of her mother which was taken sometime around 1880. Here's hoping she leaves me it in her will or something

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I've got an interest in geneology but not the time for it. Fortunately, my mom's sister-in-law compiled a history of of mom's family tree with some roots going back 200 years. Ironically, on my dad's side most of the research was done by an adopted cousin. Again, some roots go back as far as 200 years.

One branch of the family lived in New Jersey at the time of the American Revolution but remained loyalists. They eventually migrated to Canada and one ancester fought with the Brittish in the War of 1812. He was captured by the Americans and was jailed until the war was over. He then sought out his relatives still living in New Jersey and lived with them for a while before returning to Canada. ...makes me part Canadian, eh?

My grand-father served in WW-I, was wounded and spent time in a hospital in England. He befriended a nurse there and discovered that they were both from the San Francisco Bay area and that their families even knew each other.... she became my grandmother.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I am descended from someone who "is best remembered for having fallen off the Mayflower."

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

All I know is that my granmother was likely a paranoid schizophrenic, and my great grandfather on my dad's side had two wives at the same time.

I'm not really interested in the family I DO have.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

Oh I love this. I've only researched one branch of my dad's side of the family, the Privetts, but the information I found online in just about two hours simply amazed me.

What I find most surprising is that for five hundred years back, nearly every Privett male in my line of descent has been a carpenter or woodworker. My dad's a carpenter. His dad was a carpenter, but he is also an artist and now makes a living doing portraits. A lot of the men and women in my family are artists of some sort, musically talented and gifted with a great aesthetic sense. My six times great grandfather was a private in the Revolutionary war, and my four times great grandfather fought on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War.

There's a little hamlet in England called Privett where I think my family originated. I can trace them back to the county where Privett is located, in 1583. That's the furthest I've been able to go, and I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact time when they crossed over into America, though I know that my nine times great grandfather lived in the colonies in 1703.

I find all of it fascinating. It gives me a sense of fitting unto things unlike anything else.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

One of my many-times-great-grandfathers was murdered. That's probably the most exciting story in my family tree - apparently the murderer was never arrested, because the Protestant British-descended authorities decided my Irish Catholic g'g'etc'grandfather must have been drunk and just fell in front of the train. Except that the guy was temperance.

I spent much of a summer doing up a geneology of my mother's side of the family (my Dad's had already been done). I can trace back to 1752, when the ship landed in Halifax - that's three years before the Acadian expulsion. Weird. My Dad's people haven't been in Canada as long; they were American planters who came up after the US civil war. Apparently if I ever became an American citizen I'd be eligible to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, which I think is pretty funny.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I'm adopted, but I'm not especially interested in my adopted family's history. At least no more so than I am interested in someone else's family history. I find my husband's genealogical research pretty interesting, and think it amazing that he can trace both sides of his family back into the 18th century. This is because the German Lutherans tended to marry other German Lutherans, and then they immigrated en masse to Wisconsin where they kept marrying each other and documented it all. Much tidier than most Americans can boast of!

There is no way for me to get the State of California to break the seal of adoption as far as I know, so I have no information on my birth parents beyond the "non-identifying birth information" I got from the State several years ago.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

Lucy, your last comment hit me -- do you wish that you had more information? Our eldest daughter is adopted, and we *met* her biological mother and know who her biological father is. While we won't keep this information from her if she wants it, we've decided it's best not to just give it to her as a matter of course at some point in her life. But every time I see a comment from an adult adoptee, I rethink that decision. And I dread that I have at least a dozen more years to continue to rethink it. Oy.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000