Your ancestors? Who were they and what are their stories?

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topjars said:
I bet that workedo_O
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It did for a time.

They actually lost vast tracks of land and castles when they were lead to believe if they signed all of their traditional lands over to the O'Briens the most powerful family in the north of Clare that this would protect their lands from the British. In the end the Brits took lands from both of them and the O'Briens kept parts of what was the O'Loughlins lands for themselves.
 
My family history is pretty epic and detailed. I've always been much, much close to my mum's side than my dad's and in particular the family was set around my grandpa's (mum's dad) side of the family who were German plus luckily my grand grandma lived until she was 104 so I got plenty of stories and family history from her. The other sides of the family are all pretty boring, run of the mill English background and for various reasons we were never as close to them anyway.

My ancestors ended up in Palestine (half of them via Ukraine first) as part of a religious community due to a) being expelled from the Lutheran Church and b) mid 1800's pre-unification Germany generally being a mess. They lived there for several generations and there were several German colonies that they moved around throughout Palestine including ones that are pretty much smack bang in the middle of downtown Jerusalem and Tel Aviv these days.

WW2 rolled around and they were interned due to Palestine being British ran at the time. With Palestine being literally about the only place in the world where there were a decent number of Germans who were greatly outnumbed by Jews they were routinely targeted, attacked, bombed etc. by them, and with Jews fighting Arabs who were also fighting the British the situation in Palestine got pretty untenable. They were put onto a ship by the British and told that they were heading to one of Australia, the US or Canada and were only able to find out which because one of the people in the community could navigate by stars.

Anyway so they ended up here knowing absolutely sweet * all about Australia (my great grandma distinctively remembered asking about it on a map when she was in school and being told "you don't need to know about Australia, it's not like you're ever going to go there") and not speaking a word of English. My grandpa actually had to start school here not knowing any English at all.

Probably the best story is one about my great great grandfather which got a write up in the paper a couple of years ago when my great grandma's brother (great great uncle?) passed away (he somehow managed to one up her and make it to 105!!). You can read it here and it saves me having to write all of it out. Incredibly interesting bloke too. As you can see from the article he did some work with Lawrence of Arabia for a while, but he also led work on several stations and bridges of the Baghdad rail line which was funded by the German Government, mostly in Aleppo and a town called Jarabulus (which is just down the road from Kobane where the intense Kurdish-ISIS fighting + American bombings were happening), as well as going through German East Africa and helped set up colonies there.

Anyway there's a book written about the religious community they belonged to, as well as one about my ancestors in particular (which unfortunately I can't find a preview of online but which is sitting next to me right now in hard copy) :thumbsu:

tl;dr: Ancestors are Germans from Palestine so I pretty much qualify as the anti-Jew.
 
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Gus Poyet said:
In the end the Brits took lands from both of them and the O'Briens kept parts of what was the O'Loughlins lands for themselves.
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I married into the Lachlan clan, been to Lachlan castle on the shores of Loch Finn.

One of my ancestors sailed into Hobsons Bay in 1842. Created a family with a native girl.
 
Short versions:
- A number of my pommy ancestors ****** some s**t up and got sent to Van Diemen's Land for being naughty.
- Scottish great-grandmother settled here.
 
My paternal forebears arrived at Portland, in Victoria, in 1853. He was a shepherd from the Isle of Skye, in Scotland. Upon arrival, someone suggested that the sensible thing to do would be to trek overland on foot to Horsham. The silly bugger did this. My part of the family stayed in Horsham until 1893, when they moved to Fitzroy. It was here that my grandfather established a family tradition of working for the public service. My father worked for the Post-Master General's Department for 47 years, and my brother worked for the Department of Immigration for 25 years. I also worked for Immigration when I was 17, but I only lasted twelve months.

From there they moved to Northcote, and lived there, as did I, until the late 1960s.

Due to many unfortunate encounters with bores obsessed with genealogy during years of research of public records, I have vowed never to further my knowledge of my family tree. It would make no difference to who I am.
 
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western district micks, down where skilts mob were
then scots and english wasps. on other side. scots mercantile and law. english mercamtilists[sic]too. sounds better than mercatiles.

nothing overly unedifying in any, earnestly mediocre.

but if i may blow my own trumpet, i am the most mediocre of the lot. there is some, are some whispers that skilts my illegitimate father. he denies this a'course, he won't get any christmas cards or fathers day cards from moi
 
blackcat said:
but if i may blow my own trumpet, i am the most mediocre of the lot. there is some, are some whispers that skilts my illegitimate father. he denies this a'course, he won't get any christmas cards or fathers day cards from moi
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How did you acquire this knowledge? I thought I'd covered my tracks pretty well. That's not all I've been covering.
 

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Inferno said:
Lawrence of Arabia for a while, but he also led work on several stations and bridges of the Baghdad rail line which was funded by the German Government, mostly in Aleppo and a town called Jarabulus (which is just down the road from Kobane where the intense Kurdish-ISIS fighting + American bombings were happening), as well as going through German East Africa and helped set up colonies there.

Anyway there's a book written about the religious community they belonged to, as well as one about my ancestors in particular (which unfortunately I can't find a preview of online but which is sitting next to me right now in hard copy) :thumbsu:
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medusala also has some contacts with Lawrence of Arabia in his travels n travails. i only know the lutheran insofar as the old church on the old road out the back of geelong to the ocean road, not the torquay rd.
 
Dads side: Moved to Australia from Dundee Scotland and came here when he was 14 , his family were farmers and moved to Australia. Nothing else to represent really.

My mum was born and raised here. My granddad was born in Manchester , England and my grandma was born in Australia.

However my grandma's dad was born in Germany and she told me a story about him moving to Australia after WW2 and that he had to pretend he was "Dutch" as he was scared what would happen to him if people knew he was German.
 
Know more about my Mum's side than Dad's. A real mix bag of English, Scottish, Irish along with Cornish and London East End Jewish, most going back at least six generations in Australia, arriving in Sydney then heading west or north for a couple of generations before gravitating back to Sydney. A lot of anecdotal evidence points to some Wiradjuri indigenous ancestry on Mum's side going back five-six generations but no conclusive proof.

On Dad's side, have one famous (or infamous) ancestor, Peter Handcock, who with Breaker Morant faced the firing squad during the Boer War. He's my great-great-grandfather.
 
Got hardly any family at all. Very rare family name (less than ~400 worldwide) that originates from Northern England, with majority of records indicating that a lot of them died through military service over the years. On my fathers mothers side it has strong ties to Fraser clan from Scotland. My fathers father is half aboriginal but carries his english name as I stated earlier. Don't know a lot about my indigenous family as my great grandmother was part of the "stolen generation" and was forced to adopt European names etc. so lost a lot of information about my heritage. I know my mob is the Wiradjuri people of central NSW.

Know hardly anything about my mothers family except that a relative help invent polystyrene which seems pretty important I guess.
 
The_Reaper said:
I also know that something serious happened to my grandmother back during the Japanese occupation but I was never told (because I was too young). I just knew that something happened.

And that my mother had me taken out of learning Japanese in high school because she thought her mother would be rolling in the grave over one of her grandchildren getting forced to learn Japanese.
I personally don't have any hard feelings against Japan or Japanese people though I must admit that due family stories (from family members who lived under both British colonial rule and Japanese occupation) that I do get pissed off whenever little graham likes to pretend that Britain and Australia were responsible for Japanese actions during the war.
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Ironically, my granny on my mum's side had less bad things to say about the Japanese occupation than what happened after the war.

The brunt of the japanese attrocities happened in the vicinity of singapore so being a kampung villager in the northern states she had a different perspective and was largely able to forgive (I also studied Japanese in primary and high school). What really got her goat was that despite the chinese population fervently fighting against the wartime occupiers and many ethnic malays collaborating with the Japanese (because the british was seen as the greater of two evils), they were largely thrown under the bus when the communists became the new enemy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briggs'_Plan

My granny and her family were forced into internment camps for a number of years so there was still alot of hurt when they were derided as pendatang (foreigners) or asked to balik cina (go back to china)

My maternal grandfather in Penang always claimed descent from a Chinese Opium War general.
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My paternal grandfather smuggled heroin and guns across the Thai border :p
 
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On my Mums side my ancestors have been in Australia since the 1850's at least and one is very dark, though apparently indigenous South American according a rather fishy story. My great Grandad was a camel driver in South Australia.
 
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Poms who stole some sheep and were forced to * off to Tasmania.
 
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