The GeneaMeme just looked like too much fun to pass up!
The Ancestors' Geneameme
The list should be annotated in the following manner:
Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item
1. Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents [Andrew Jackson Adamson, Rachel Ann Garner, William Alexander Harmon, Emma Elizabeth Miller, Nathaniel M. Harrison, Sarah Ann Gabbard, Ira Perrin Irwin, Elisabeth Ann Avery, Elijah Thomas Comstock, Miranda Jane Brown, Joseph Christopher Wood, Letitia Ann Mayberry, Elias B. Hays, Martha Frances Crutcher, Peter Buell Allen, Mary Rowena Hoskins. I can name my husband's 16, too...]
2. Can name over 50 direct ancestors [Absolutely! Ahnentafel reveals 59 by the end of the fourth generation - one of my German lines has been traced back about 14 generations.]
3. Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents [Have only the 4 on my mother's side. My mother left my father when I was two - she cut up all the pictures of him.]
4. Have an ancestor who was married more than three times [Have a sister who's been married 4 times ...does that count? One of my gg grandma's had a sister that married 5 times - each one was a neighbor and she got his land when he died. Hmmm.... ]
5. Have an ancestor who was a bigamist [YES - my ggg grandfather Ephraim Comstock left a wife in Kentucky and married another in Tennessee - the abandoned wife married again, too. No divorce.]
6. Met all four of my grandparents [My birth father's mother died at age 32 of pneumonia - I never knew his father who had gone off to California and never, no he never, returned.]
7. Met one or more of my great-grandparents [Two. My maternal grandmother's father lived until I was 11; my maternal grandfather's mother lived until after my first child was born. She died in 1963 - we had five generations.]
8. Named a child after an ancestor [All three of my children have a middle name from an ancestor.]
9. Bear an ancestor's given name/s [I wish.... My mother heard my name, Karen Kay, from a total stranger the day before I was born and stuck me with it.]
10. Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland [Most of them....]
11. Have an ancestor from Asia [No]
12. Have an ancestor from Continental Europe [Germany - two family lines]
13. Have an ancestor from Africa [No]
14. Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer [Lots of farmers - some were storekeepers and schoolteachers, too, but they had farms.]
15. Have an ancestor who had large land holdings (what's large? Larger than 40 acres? Yep. Larger than 640 acres? Probably.) [Just small farms....]
16. Have an ancestor who was a holy man - minister, priest, rabbi [My gggg grandfather Richard Jones was a Union Baptist Minister in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. I had lots of Quaker ancestors - they could all preach if they wanted.]
17. Have an ancestor who was a midwife [Doubt it.]
18. Have an ancestor who was an author [had some wannabees...]
19. Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones [YES - all three, Smith, Murphy, and Jones and two families of Brown that are not related!]
20. Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng [No]
21. Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X [No]
22. Have an ancestor with a forename beginnining with Z [No. My gg grandma Wood has asister Zella.]
23. Have an ancestor born on 25th December [I'm cheating - my husband's grandfather, James Frank Pippin, was born on Christmas day, 1892]
24. Have an ancestor born on New Year's Day [I was born on Janury 4th - almost New Year's....]
25. Have blue blood in your family lines (supposedly if Royal Descendants book is right) [We thought for awhile my husband did, but the line is faulty.... Even though it goes through a person approved for Colonial Dames ...DNA indicates not! I never could make the line work out anyway, I always thought something was very wrong - people just not in the right places at the right time.]
26. Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth [Nope]
27. Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth [Nope]
28. Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century [all but a few]
29. Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier [several]
30. Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents [The best one is my great grandfather Mon Comstock's permission for my grandfather to marry my grandmother. It's written on his store letterhead.]
31. Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X [Yes. And everything else. My Samuel Brown in Old Pendleton couldn't sign his name - he was the only one of five Sam Browns living there, that could not sign his name, so I was able to separate and identify him.]
32. Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university [Likely not - I don't know of any]
33. Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence [The same ggg grandfather that was a bigamist was also convicted of forgery in Breckinridge Co, KY, and sentenced to a two to four year prison term, but was found to be "not in that Commonwealth". I know where he was, but I'm not tellin'.]
34. Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime [They say an ancestor isn't an ancestor unless they are direct. But I have two uncles of sorts who were murdered in the same family line. My 2nd great granduncle James Irving/Ervin Comstock was poisoned in October of 1893 - either by his second wife or his stepson. They were never convicted. He was a brother to the criminal & bigamist above. My great grandfather's brother, Hardy Comstock, was shot & killed by his neighbor Chester Lemon who turned himself in. Lemon was acquitted because Hardy was reported to have been seeing Lemon's wife - made the killing justified in 1936.
35. Have shared an ancestor's story online or in a magazine [Both in Blogs and in local genealogical publications.]
36. Have published a family history online or in print [Just online]
37. Have visited an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries [Most of my ancestor's homes were burned during the Civil War. I would like to visit Providence, RI where the Comstocks came from, even though there is no home there now.
38. Still have an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family [One of my husband's family homes is still owned by descendants of a different child - homesteaded in 1848. The house has been added on to, but the original part is still there.]
39. Have a family bible from the 19th Century [They burned in the fires during the Civil War. My husband's great grandma was reported to have a Bible, but it disappeared and no one will own up to having it.]
40. Have a pre-19th century family bible [I wish!]
