It's my Caribbean heritage that makes me.... I don't know what.

A cowgirl?

I found out that the main documented ancestor in maternal line came over earlier than I thought, during the French and Indian Wars, from Ireland with his brothers. They went back to fetch more of the crew, who later fought in the Revolutionary War. Hell, some of them fought at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse down in Greensboro, which I find fascinating (not far from my college.)

The family pulled over more relatives who didn't immigrate back then during the big Irish influx. Not sure whether my direct line comes from the first, second or third waves. I'd only known about the third wave until pretty recently.

The swedish side is easy for American history. I can find pdfs of the ship manifests at the Ellis Island site for both my grandparents.

A cowgirl?

That's got to be the Texas, no? (Not that part of Texas.)

It's my Caribbean heritage that makes me.... I don't know what.

Such a good dancer?

No, I don't really have much other than pothead.

I just found my Auntie Mamie on Ancestry with the dates 1898-1898. She actually died in 1984.

And ew, I accidentally stumbled upon an account, by someone who sat on the jury, of the murder trial for the guy who beheaded my dad's cousin (and her dog) and another person on a beach on one of the US Virgin Islands. I did not need that level of detail, thank you

My grandfather came to Canada because HOMG! TRAINS!

No, seriously. HOMG! TRAINS!

He was apparently brilliant, good with maths and languages, and was expected to go into teaching, but dropped out of everything to clerk at a train station before deciding he had to go somewhere with MOAR TRAINS.

His eventual bride was the first in her family (err, possibly the first--everyone is unclear about the actual date of birth of her stillborn brother) born in Canada. My great-grandfather had grown up a workhouse orphan, and her mother who knew him from church had corresponded with him after he left for Canada and came out to marry him.

Apparently, she wasn't allowed to take my grandmother back to England when she went for a visit home in 1912, because my great-grandfather didn't expect she'd return if she did.

I'm told he was pious and miserable.

And yet, still an improvement Gram's dad.

And now I apparently am partly responsible for hooking up two unrelated (common norwegian name) in marriage!

I've got genuine not heresay links to Waldos (as in Emerson) and Brontes. Very, very, very distant cousins up the line. Still ain't a writer.

I made the A team in roller derby and my league got into WFTDA--the Women's Flat Track Roller Derby Association.

Yay!

Ancestry.com showed me that none of the thousands of descendants of Morris Tucker, who was first mentioned in 1659 as a householder in Salisbury, Mass., knows where the hell he came from. Some people like to think he came by way of Bermuda, but they just want to be related to Gov. Tucker. As a cousin once said, "I can get him back to the water, but I can't get him on that damned boat."

If we ever manage to develop time-travel technology, it's going to be the geneologists who have the most fun with it.

he had to go somewhere with MOAR TRAINS.

Heh. A lot of the innovations in American computer science are offshoots of Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT. Train people have science brains!