help with daugthers ancestry homework?

Question

I posted a couple of hours ago about my daughters 2nd grade homework. She has to trace her ancestors. I found my great great grandfather and he was from North Carolina born in 1818. I could not find anyone before him. I did a search to see what country my family came from and most of them came from Liverpool, England in the 1850's. So since this was well after the gg grandfather was born does this mean our family is from the United States and I have the wrong people or what? I am confused now. I mean if he was already in the US in 1818 then he obviously didnt immigrate here in the 1850's. Any help is appreciated.

thanks for your answers everyone. She has to make a paper doll and dress it in the fashions worn in those days and since it is asking for what country we immigrated from I assumed that I had to come up with something even though the last relative I can trace was born in North Carolina.

Answer 1

I would be encouraging your daughter to dress her doll in a beautiful little Victorian costume. But since the project is probably due soon, you may not get farther with the project in the short term.

The wonderful news is that you were able to find your family back to the early 1800s, so you have the ability to really put time and effort into the project before the next step is due in 4 years when she has to do the 7 generation tree in the 6th grade.

Answer 2

Hi yensenm...I would like to address the information that you have found so far.

I am not sure how old you are but you mention having a daughter in 2nd grade so I doubt you are any older than I am. In fact I am going to guess that you are probably close to a full generation younger.

I think you having a great great grandfather that was born in 1818 might be incorrect. I am 49 years old born in 1958. My great grandparents were born in the early 1890's. I have to go back two more generatons to reach the 1810-1820 era. If you are younger than I am then I would think that your great great grandparents would more likely have been born around the mid 1800's if not alittle later. I would think if anything, the person that was born around 1818- more than likely would be your great great great grandparent and even possibly your 4th great grandparent..

I know this doesn't help you with your daughters assignment but I just wanted to point out to you that there may be a problem with what you have found if you decide to get serious in researching your lineage. It can get addicting once you start on the journey and it can get confusing if you have to do some back tracking when you take the wrong path. :)

Good Luck...

Answer 3

Your question is a little confusing.

If you are sure that you have correctly identified your great-great-grandfather, then we'll accept he was b. in 1818 and "from" North Carolina. Does this mean he was born in North Carolina, or did he just live there? If the former, he is obviouly not the same people as the Liverpool immigrants in the 1850s (I suppose it's possible there is a distant relationship, but that would have to be proven, not assumed based only on a shared last name).

If, on the other hand, he only lived in North Carolina, could he have been born in England and moved to N.C. in his 30s?

If your confusion is simply based on the same surname, you are probably just assuming too much. People with the same surname generally aren't all related, and more likely then not have no connection to each other - just because your ancestror in N.C. has the same surname as later emigrants doesn't mean at all they are related. This is especially true with English, Welsh, Scots, or Scots-Irish names - people with these surnames started coming in 1620 and never stopped. Myles Standish came over on the Mayflower in 1620, but if your last name is Standish, without any other information, you are as likely to be descended from Myles as of William Standish who came over in 1820 or Hans Schultz who changed his name at Ellis Island in 1920. The point is, you just can't assume.

Incidentally, getting back to 1818 for a 2nd-graders homework is prob. above and beyond anyway!

Answer 4

Just lie.

Teachers do this all the time - they give a genealogy assignment that would take a competent, experienced genealogist 30 - 40 hours to do and expect kids to finish it in a week, along with their artithmetic homework. It is like asking a woodshop student to do the cabinets for a new house; or asking a music student, since your daughter isn't a genealogist.

As long as you keep it reasonable - women giving birth between ages 18 - 40, everyone dying by age 80 or so, migration generally westward - it will look plausible. Don't worry about them being the right people, unless you get hooked on the hobby.

The 2nd worst teacher I ever had in my life was my Freshman English 1B teacher. His first essay assignment was "Love". When he passed them back he told us none of us had ever experiecned true love - the kind that lasts through 40 years of shared joys and sorrows, growing deeper every year. Well, Duhhh! We were all within a year of 18.

Second essay was "My most painful decision" and again, he told us we hadn't had to make many. Well, again, Duhh. We were 18-year olds. We'd been in the college prep track in our high school. None of the ladies in the class had faced an abort/adopt decision. None of the men had had to kill or be killed.

I realized, years later, that I should have treated both essays as chances to polish my fiction. If you get an impossible assignment, be creative but believable.

Your GGF may have come over fromLiverpool before the rest. It might be someone else with the same name. Don't sweat it.

Answer 5

a comment regarding your search, turning up persons from Liverpool....
I am thinking it is very probable that your search was on one of those sites, where you use your surname, and it gives "results" as to immigration records. In most cases, someone just beginning their research can use those as leads.
I believe it is a process of "reading the fine print", and the "hits" coming up simply have to do with THE RECORDS THEY HAVE AVAILABLE. Just as analogy... the "available" immigration records might be 25% of the persons who in fact immigrated. The other 75% may have no record in existance, OR the record is in a place which is not part of that database's files.
As you already realize... the persons coming in 1850 are NOT your ancestors, and may or may not even be related to you. (And Liverpool was a popular port for ships, it is not verification that the persons lived there).
Conflicting information is all over the place.. and part of research is evaluating which record is "better". Yours is, because you already made the effort to link your info to KNOWN relatives.
This is a frequent question here, and often confusing. "Your" family is not the persons who bear the same family name, it consists of those persons who your research have shown as being related in fact to you. And most people don't see that distinction until having actually done some verification of records.
You already have shown that you know your own family was in the US by 1818, and with further searching, you certainly will turn up other records to confirm this. I happen to love land records, esp prior to 1850, when the census is harder to work with. Few of those will ever be online, due to the sheer volume.
As mentioned by another poster... the teacher probably had no clue that you would do such excellent work, nor would she/he recognize if someone made an error. In terms of your own satisfaction and success, yes, it matters. It gives you a glimpse into how online services can be faulty, and your own records are far more reliable. It also will give you the skill to be careful in what information you accept from others, especially if they have made no effort to research in original records.

Answer 6

My advice is to help your daughter fill out a 4-generation ancestry chart (you can download one for free at http://www.ancestry.com/trees/charts/ancchart.aspx?). This will show her ancestors back to her great-grandparents. Then pick one of them as the model, and dress the doll in a poodle skirt or something. (Most of my fellow grandmas wore bellbottoms, so I figure poodle skirt is about the right era for the average 2nd grader today).

I like the response that says to lie, but it's probably not a good thing to teach your daughter. (She'll learn soon enough!) Seriously, though, it's not hard to research your ancestors if you start with somebody you know who was born before 1930 and trace their family back in time through the census records. If you search all branches (not just your daughter's surname), you're likely to find at least one immigrant ancestor by the time you get back to 1850. The important thing is to work back in time from people you KNOW were her ancestors, and not rely on the online search engines to point you to people who happen to share your name.

Answer 7

My 9 year old Granddaughter did this last year also.

Because I have done a ton of work on our family history I went too far back.

If you go back to your Grandparents it will probably be about as far as you need to go for a 2nd graders homework assignment.

1.daughter
2.you
3.your parents.
4.their parents
5.their grandparents. That should take you back to the late 1800's. Five generations should be Plenty for a child's homework assignment.

A simple answer is that he might have been born in England and Immigrated here later. Then lived in North Carolina.

My family also came from that area of the world in the 17 and 1800's.

Answer 8

does it say where your great great grandfather was born? go to your local library and there should be a genealogy librarian there