Who Do You Think You Are?

Alright friends, this is where I start to get a little nerdy ;) Have you ever seen the show Who Do You Think You Are on TLC? It is a really interesting show where celebrities do genealogical searches of their family trees and find out information about their ancestors. For example, Chelsea Handler's grandfather was a reluctant soldier for the German army in WWII who was later captured in France and taken to the US. The significance to her family was that she was actually raised Jewish and was curious to know her grandfather's role in the German army. She found out he was not a Nazi enthusiast and was basically going through to motions so he and his family would not be harmed. Interesting stuff right?

Gratuitous picture of me as a cute little kid ;)

I think it is impossible to watch this show and not be interesting in finding out a little more about your family history. I have always been interested in my family history but have never gotten too much information out of my parents. All of my grandparents passed away when I was young: my maternal grandfather when I was only 2 months old, my paternal grandparents when I was 6 and 7 years old and my maternal grandmother when I was 11. I do have memories with all of my grandparents except my maternal grandfather. It is interesting because whenever I would see a picture of him when I was younger I would feel a connection to him even though I never knew him. After watching this show I was determined to find out any information I possibly could about him and his family.

I signed up for a free 14 day trial at Ancestry.com and found out as much as I could using the documents available to me. There wasn't much info about my father's family since their records are International (which they charge a hefty premium fee to access) so I trudged along to find out more about my maternal grandfather.

They didn't have a ton of information about him but it did remind me that he was in the Navy. They had no specific records so I don't know too much but my mom was able to tell me that he was a medic in the Navy. The only other info I could find out was that he served from 1944-1946.

While I didn't find out a ton of information about my Grandfather using ancestry, I did find some information about his parents, my great grandparents! I never knew them either obviously but it was so interesting to find out some info! I was named (middle name) after my great grandmother (Anna, my middle name is Ann) and I found out that my great grandfather was one of SEVEN children! Not only that, but I found out that he was a twin AND he had a set of twin sisters. That's two sets of twins. When I brought all of this information to my mom she was definitely surprised that I found all of that info and then laughed and confirmed that twins do run in the family. Which freaked me out, haha! I am not sure how I feel about having kids myself and the chance that I could have twins is definitely something to keep in mind ;)

Cool stuff huh?! Well I'm not done ;) After my search on Ancestry I decided to bust out the bins of family photos that I had because I was determined to figure out why I feel this connection to my grandfather that I only met a few times as a newborn. So I started sifting and found some amazing pics which I will share in a minute. The other document that I found was really short but helped me gather quite a bit of info. It was a really great find!

The document I found was an Employment letter from the last company he worked for before he passed. In this letter I found out he had a Master's degree in Engineering (I'm the only one in his blood line that I know of that has a Master's degree) and his job was basically TO BUILD BAKERIES. My grandfather built bakeries. Seriously. He built bakeries all over the world in fact. It may seem silly but this information blew my mind since it has been my dream since I was 13 years old (so that is about 17 years my friends) to own a bakery. And the one part about owning a bakery that has always baffled me is how the hell to set it up and build it. I'm not a logistics girl haha. To think that my grandfather could have built me my dream bakery is crazy to me. My mom confirmed all of this info for me and told me he was very smart and very well respected which made me very happy.

So it's not a ton of info but it's a lot more than I knew before. Genealogy is very interesting to me and hopefully one day I'll have the resources to find out more about both sides of the family. I am very lucky though because at a recent family reunion I was given discs of my mother's maternal grandmother telling stories of her life and that is an amazing piece of family history to have. My maternal grandmother's family has a very interesting story as well but that's for another day :)

I will leave you with my all time favorite photo of my grandfather that I found while sifting through boxes of family photos:

He looks like a total bad ass here! I love love love this photo :)

So there you go, a little bit of nerdiness for your weekend :) I definitely encourage you guys to check out the show because it is incredibly interesting. Maybe it'll help inspire you to find out a little more about where you came from!