Who Do You Think You Are?

[SherriBerry]

This is the title of a new show on NBC (Fridays) that traces the ancestry of different celebrities and I just love it. Not because the subjects are celebrities, but because everyone has a story and I would love to trace my ancestry too. It's fascinating to watch people learn things they didn't know about where they come from.

I have enough information to trace my ancestors back a few generations on my mom's side and to my great-grandparents on my dad's side, but I'm going to have to pay for the World Deluxe membership on ancestry.ca to track them all across at least six different regions of Europe and there are some that will not likely be on a database. And that's just what I know of now.

Has anyone on MR tried tracing their roots online?

[Babyblue]

This is the title of a new show on NBC (Fridays) that traces the ancestry of different celebrities and I just love it. Not because the subjects are celebrities, but because everyone has a story and I would love to trace my ancestry too. It's fascinating to watch people learn things they didn't know about where they come from.

I have enough information to trace my ancestors back a few generations on my mom's side and to my great-grandparents on my dad's side, but I'm going to have to pay for the World Deluxe membership on ancestry.ca to track them all across at least six different regions of Europe and there are some that will not likely be on a database. And that's just what I know of now.

Has anyone on MR tried tracing their roots online?

I love that show myself Sherri.The last one will be next Fri.IHope they will come back with more.I have not tryed tracing my family but i am thinking about trying it.Good Luck!

[Suzanne]

I traced my mom's dad's side and with the help of another relative I was able to trace back to my first ancestor coming over on a boat from Holland in the 1600's to New jersey and eventually moving to Kentucky. I traced all the way down to me. I've tried to trace my mom's mother's side because we have Irish and I think Welsh on that side but I've hit dead ends. I REALLY want to trace my dad's side because we supposedly have Apache indian as close as my fourth great grandmother but I have nothing to go on. My uncle has some stuff but for some reason, I can't seem to get with him to get the info. Ancestry.com is a great place to start but I have also found a bunch of other websites that have info for free that I used. I just did a search for ancestry and some popped up. That was ten yrs. ago so I'm sure you'd find a ton now. I also went to the cemetaries where family is buried and found a ton of relatives I didn't know about there.

[Behshad]

Stevew2 tried to trace his ancestors down and create a family tree but this is all he came up with :

[Babyblue]

Stevew2 tried to trace his ancestors down and create a family tree but this is all he came up with :

[Everett]

I tried to find out if i was tommy shaw's long lost son but no dice

[bluejeangirl76]

Has anyone on MR tried tracing their roots online?

I haven't, but my brother got way into that for awhile. He traced our dad's side all over the place. My dad's mothers parents both came from Ireland... I'm not sure about dad's father's side, but I know that we thought that side's heritage was Norwegian, but my brother found a relative in Norway that he emailed with and found out it's possible that originally that side came from Denmark and only moved to Norway later... I need to ask him about this.

[Everett]

Stevew2 tried to trace his ancestors down and create a family tree but this is all he came up with :

Are you sure that's not blueskies???

[Clasicrockldy]

Just passing by to give you all some FYI......

NBC nicked this program... "Who Do You Think You Are?" from British telly.... so it isn't an original idea from NBC...

[SherriBerry]

This is the title of a new show on NBC (Fridays) that traces the ancestry of different celebrities and I just love it. Not because the subjects are celebrities, but because everyone has a story and I would love to trace my ancestry too. It's fascinating to watch people learn things they didn't know about where they come from.

I have enough information to trace my ancestors back a few generations on my mom's side and to my great-grandparents on my dad's side, but I'm going to have to pay for the World Deluxe membership on ancestry.ca to track them all across at least six different regions of Europe and there are some that will not likely be on a database. And that's just what I know of now.

Has anyone on MR tried tracing their roots online?

I love that show myself Sherri.The last one will be next Fri.IHope they will come back with more.I have not tryed tracing my family but i am thinking about trying it.Good Luck!

Thanks! I heard about the show on Oprah when they profiled Emmett Smith. Next week is Spike Lee and I heard a second season is in the works which is great to hear.

[SherriBerry]

Just passing by to give you all some FYI......

NBC nicked this program... "Who Do You Think You Are?" from British telly.... so it isn't an original idea from NBC...

Lisa Kudrow from 'Friends' saw the show in Britain when she was visiting there, and gave it the credit when she talked about it on 'Oprah'! She is a producer for the US version on NBC and I think the first person whose ancestry they traced. I didn't see the full episode yet, but I know they found a relative of hers that the family believed was dead.

[SherriBerry]

I traced my mom's dad's side and with the help of another relative I was able to trace back to my first ancestor coming over on a boat from Holland in the 1600's to New jersey and eventually moving to Kentucky. I traced all the way down to me. I've tried to trace my mom's mother's side because we have Irish and I think Welsh on that side but I've hit dead ends. I REALLY want to trace my dad's side because we supposedly have Apache indian as close as my fourth great grandmother but I have nothing to go on. My uncle has some stuff but for some reason, I can't seem to get with him to get the info. Ancestry.com is a great place to start but I have also found a bunch of other websites that have info for free that I used. I just did a search for ancestry and some popped up. That was ten yrs. ago so I'm sure you'd find a ton now. I also went to the cemetaries where family is buried and found a ton of relatives I didn't know about there.

I'll have to try that too. I'd like to go on Canada's version on History Television called 'Ancestors in the Attic', because I have a feeling I'm going to need to travel to some remote villages and I'm not a rich movie star who can afford it!

[Suzanne]

Wow, well I decided to get back into this and went onto ancestry.com again. It's been 5 or so years since I've researched and now have found the part of family I couldn't seem to find. I went back to my g-g-g-grandpa on my maternal grandmother's side and found other family trees that people have been working on that relate to mine. So I might contact them on that part. I still don't have much info on my dad's side yet but I'm going to keep poking around. I know so far I've found out I had relatives in the civil war but that's it.

[Babyblue]

Just passing by to give you all some FYI......

NBC nicked this program... "Who Do You Think You Are?" from British telly.... so it isn't an original idea from NBC...

Lisa Kudrow from 'Friends' saw the show in Britain when she was visiting there, and gave it the credit when she talked about it on 'Oprah'! She is a producer for the US version on NBC and I think the first person whose ancestry they traced. I didn't see the full episode yet, but I know they found a relative of hers that the family believed was dead.

I belive she said that on the start of the show too.I love to watch it ever Fri nite.Great show just hope they keep doing it.

[squirt1]

I am very interested in this. I have a daguerritype ( tin photo) only made for 7 yrs in the 1860's. The lady looks like my mom who was born in 1917. My cousin, made a familty tree about 20 yrs ago on my mothers side. In the yrs that type of photo was made, the lady on the tin photo had 4 children and was 36 when she died 10 days after her 4th child was born. I need to use ancestry.com and I know the Mormons have kept a wealth of records as people entered at Ellis Island . Anyone who can give me more info, I would appreciate it.

[SherriBerry]

I am very interested in this. I have a daguerritype ( tin photo) only made for 7 yrs in the 1860's. The lady looks like my mom who was born in 1917. My cousin, made a familty tree about 20 yrs ago on my mothers side. In the yrs that type of photo was made, the lady on the tin photo had 4 children and was 36 when she died 10 days after her 4th child was born. I need to use ancestry.com and I know the Mormons have kept a wealth of records as people entered at Ellis Island . Anyone who can give me more info, I would appreciate it.

One thing they do on the show is go to the actual city or region where the last ancestor they can track is known to have lived, because there are local records and historians who can trace through the archives. For Susan Sarandon, they traced her ancestors back about 400 years through the records of the church in the Tuscan village they were from, but much of what they learned started from looking through local records at the New York Public Library. There should be birth and death certificates, records of property, census records, etc. There should be experts too on the daguerritype who may be able to tell you who made it and work from there. Librarians, museum archivists, and university historians are great sources of information on where to look.

Here is a link for searching records from Ellis Island - sometimes just putting in a last name (or even first name) and year of birth of a relative may be enough to get started on a search:
http://www.ellisisland.org/

If the Mormons have records that may be useful to you, you might want to contact the History department of Brigham Young University. There are also a ton of magazines and books on geneology and tracing your family tree, so the library is a good place to start for tips too. I fire keywords into Google. I learned about a relative I didn't know about just by Googling my last name, but I have a very uncommon last name outside of Germanic regions.

Good luck!