JCC Interesting family history

Yeah, I was responding to Frank's more general comment, but yours popped up inbetween in the time that I was reading. I didn't edit it after, because it seemed to fit OK-ish with both.

 

Heh yeah. Holland has the tallest people though, so that's another feature you might have inherited from us. It's the tallest nation, I believe. I'm living proof. Do you know what your last name means?

 

My family have the most boring history of all time. Not related to a single famous person. Nothing noteworthy at all. My Grandma told me that they liked to fondue a lot back in the day, though....

 

My paternal grandfather was on a Destroyer in World War II in the Pacific, the USS guest was present at many major battles, including the Battle of Okinawa and the Battle of Iwo Jima, and they would have been the group to support the invasion of Japan if the nuclear bombs hadn't been dropped. Once during battle, his friend yelled out to him, and my grandpa ran to his friend to help... seconds later, a fighter jet went kamikaze and crashed into where my grandpa had been standing.
* I was trying to trace family history on ancestry .com, and I think my grandpa's father (who died when he was very young) might have actually been Jewish... and a revolutionary against the Czar in the "Revolution of 1905," as well as one of the few people in Poland qualified to vote for the first Russian Duma (created as a result of the revolution)

My maternal grandfather was in the Navy in the Pacific during WWII too, he was on a submarine.
* His step-father helped build the Erie Canal in upstate New York
* His father was a Scots-Irish orphan adopted by a German-Candian family in Ontario, never learned what happened to his sister
* His mom's maiden name was Gladys Crapp, and her mother's name was Fanny Crapp
* Fanny's mom, Lucy Ann Lester, opened one of the first hospitals for the mentally ill in North America in upstate New York
* Fanny's dad, John Lester (about 10-15 year younger than Abraham Lincoln), was a preacher and he helped preserve the land of a Native American tribe that was threatened by the government

My maternal grandmother's family used to make moonshine on their farm during Prohibition (she wasn't born until 1928 though).
* Her grandmother came from Paris, and used to dance on stage for performances in NYC like the Rockettes, and somehow ended up married to a farmer from Canada in southern Massachusetts
* Her great-uncle fought in the Spanish-American War
* Another one of her great-uncle's ran off to marry a Native American woman on some Canadian island
* Two of my uncle's, her sons, fought in Vietnam

My paternal grandmother's ancestors used to own a large farm in what would now be either northeastern Poland or Lithuania. It was going well for them until a great fire destroyed most of their town, they had money to rebuild their house but needed money for a new barn. Her grandfather came to America to send money back to his family, but the money stopped coming, so my great-grandmother went to America alone to find out what happened to him when she was 16 or 17. Soon after, World War I started. She found her father, but he had become an alcoholic and homeless, came asking his daughter for money, but she didn't have any to give him, so he left, and was found dead on the streets a few weeks later. After World War I, she made contact with her mother again, had a good job in the mills then and was by then married with kids (including my grandma), and began sending the money that her father was supposed to. After World War II started, they lost contact again until Gorbachev opened up the USSR in 1980's. My great-grandmother died in 1986, 3 years before I was born, but now my grandma sends her cousins money and gifts (or at least a letter once a month, since she's 90 now and has been getting sick a lot and running out of money). So, in a way, my grandma is still carrying on what my great-great-grandfather was supposed to do when he came to America.
* One of my dad's cousins on this side of the family is a multimillionaire, an entrepeneur in computers and innovative business practices
* Another of my dad's cousins on this side is a City Councilwoman in Raleigh, North Carolina, and almost became head of the Democratic Party there
* My grandmother's sister married a guy who we all think was in the CIA, or something more secretive
* The granddaughter of one of my dad's cousins is likely going to be representing the U.S. in gymnastics in the next simmmer Olympics

 

It does have that status, yes. Though according to Wikipedia I'm still 5cm above average height for Dutch women. But yeah, all the Dutch women on my dad's side are tall. I'm actually in the middle of the bunch. The guys are decently tall as well. My poor mom is puny

One of my tall, blonde great-aunts is nicknamed Dutchy because she's so Dutch. I don't actually even know her real name, I've just always known her as Dutchy. I'm assuming her name is something super Dutch, though. My great-grandparents spoke some Dutch even though they'd been in the US their whole lives. I remember my great-grandma also never cut her hair and was very stern. Iowa is a strange place. One of my friend's grandfathers from there speaks Frissian and insists on eating that awful licorice that tastes like boots.

Yeah, my name is just like a place-name basically meaning near some kind of hedge or other. Inspiring The name's evidently decently common in Southern Holland. According to a search, about as common as the name Campbell is in the US. Which is weird to me because there are literally only like 300 people with my last name in the whole US and probably 100 of those are just my direct family.

 

Yeah. Only about 1300 people in Holland have that name, that's next to nothing. But they're almost all concentrated in Southern Holland, in Spijkenisse. That's also where the Dutch Kevin Spacey Fan Club has its HQ.

Apparently there used to be a village with the same name, which was swept away during the St. Elisabeth's Flood in 1421. The survivors founded a new village nearby, Cillaarshoek, which still exists. So your last name could have been that: Cillaarshoek.

 

I'm related to Frank and Jesse James. And Simon Brewer.

 

My father is from Chicago. He worked for many years in food additives, not preservatives. He has a knack for getting into trouble whether its on our cross country vacations or setting up massive Christmas displays. My mother has the patience of a saint. One time my father accidentally lost a "private" videotape of theirs. Needless to say it showed up in some eurotrash pr0n theater.

That about sums up my family.

 

I've had a relative in every major American up to Vietnam, including a great-grandfather who was artillery officer at most of the major battles the US was involved in during World War I. One of my grandfathers worked for the SEC under Eisenhower. The earliest member of my father's family to set foot on American soil was a Hessian soldier who was captured at Trenton (according to family legend and attempts to reconstruct genealogy), while on my mother's side we've got two signers of the Declaration of Independence (Rush and Stockton) and through Stockton we've got a Lord Mayor of London who was Knighted on the field by Edward the VI during the War of the Roses.

 

My maternal side of the family tree has been in America since the 1600s. They were one of the first families in Connecticut, fought in the Revolution and later the Civil War. My Great Grandmother was born on a reservation, rode a horse to school every day, worked in the Boeing factory during WWII and lived to be 101. I wrote her occasionally and she'd write back and even at 101, her handwriting was better than mine.

All I know about my paternal side of the family is that they emigrated from Poland sometime around WWI.And that there used to be a J in my last name but it was Americanized to an I when they came over.

 

Yeesh. Yeah, I think I dodged a bullet there. Although I wouldn't have heard nearly as many pot jokes. My brother was once placed with a roommate whose last name was Stoner

Really? Well, obviously we were destined to start a bandit gang together.

 

My paternal grandfather grew up in Austria and had eight cousins. He and three others left shortly before the Nazi takeover. The remaining five and their families were all killed during the Holocaust.

 

ITT: the history of almost.

 

Oh my God, all of you have such amazing family histories. I can't say the same for mine. The ancestors on my dad's side hail from Southern Italy, where they were hardworking peasants. They were from Bari, Naples, Venosa, a few other places here and there on the peninsula... My grandmother's maiden name was almost the exact same as my grandfather's, except the second letter "i" was an "e." Makes me wonder if I'm kind of inbred.

My mom's side comes from Ireland, the Netherlands, and Bohemia. The Irish side has some pretty typically Irish surnames in it, like O'Brien, Daley, etc... but the family name is from the Netherlands.

 

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum; it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.

 

Sounds like an evil childhood.

 

Zoraster prefers fire, she would have singed your pubes. I call shenanigans, Dave.

 

I call Google.

 

IMDB

 

Do you still have that Viper, Mr. Papagiorgio?

 

It was seized because I didn't pay the taxes.

 

My family arrived in America in 1643. They backed the wrong king and were exiled from England and their lands reverted to the Crown. One of my ancestors was a liaison for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. My family is also listed in the Doomsday book of 1066 A.D. and there're enough documents in England to trace my family back to 500 A.D.

My grandfather was a doctor in WWI. He brought back a pair of wooden shoes that belonged to a little Dutch girl. I wore those shoes a lot. I found out later that when my grandpa found them, the feet of the little Dutch girl the shoes belonged to were still in the shoes.

I don't know what my dad did during WWII, but my uncle survived the Bataan death march. He was put on a Japanese ship and he was very sick, probably with malaria. His Japanese captors called down into the hold and demanded that 5 prisoners come up on deck. My uncle was too sick to climb up the ladder, but his best friend did. The Japanese beheaded the five guys that climbed up on deck and then threw their bodies and heads down into the hold. My uncle did not speak of this until a couple of years before he died at 80+.

My uncle was also the mayor of my hometown.

 

One of my great-great-something grandmothers stowed away in a ship from the Canary Islands to Puerto Rico to follow her fiance after her family forbade it.

Ah, something to make all those old science fiction toys seem less embarrassing.

 

Hey, Facebook friend.