How much do you know about your grandparents and great grandparents?

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by Seattle, May 23, 2021.

  1. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I was wondering how much most people knew about their grand and great grandparents? I only knew my maternal grandmother. The others had already died before I was born. I also know that my maternal grandmother was largely raised by older sisters as her parents died early.

    I know a little about my paternal grandparents though relatives and nothing about my great grandparents.

    How far back are you pretty familiar with regarding your families?
     
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  3. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    1 generation
     
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  5. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    My paternal grandfather died before I was born and my maternal great-grandmother died when I was two.
     
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  7. Janus58 Valued Senior Member

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    While I never met any of my grandparents as they all passed before they were born, I do know some things about them.
    My paternal Grandfather was born in Pudasjärvi, Finland (~70 miles south of the Arctic circle). He immigrated to the US in 1883 ( along with 9 siblings and his mother), initially settling in North Dakota (where, it is my understanding, he lived at least some time in a sod house.), then later moving to Minnesota. He changed his surname at least twice. Once before immigrating and then also afterwards. ( surname changes were not unusual for Finns during this time). He was a farmer.
    My paternal Grandmother was born in Halsua, Finland. She immigrated in 1887.
    My maternal Grandfather was born in Kangasneimi, Finland, and immigrated in 1906 (along with one brother), he was also a farmer.
    My maternal Grandmother was born in Reisjärvi. Finland, and immigrated in 1893, at the age of 3, along with her mother ( her father had arrived prior to this). They arrived in Boston, where they lived for at least 6 years before moving to Minnesota*. She had three brothers( all born in the US)

    Of my great-grandparents, I only have any real info on my paternal grandfather's father. He was a blacksmith/Gunsmith. One family source hold that he had been issued a "crown", which entitled him to imprint his name on the rifles he produced, and that some of his rifles found their way into Finnish museums ( however, I have not been able to verify this by independent means)

    *My Mom used to joke that while her mother never taught her how to make very many traditional Finnish dishes, she made really good baked beans. ( Mom did make a couple of Finnish eatables: Cardamom bread (Pulla) and Prune star tarts(Juolutortut) around Christmas, and occasionally "Finnish squeaky cheese"(leipäjuusto)
     
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  8. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I know a fair amount about both sets of grandparents, but have only a few details on some of my great grandparents. My paternal great grandfather ran a shop in Yorkshire, which had a cat called Henry Richard Plumbub Straightedge Naomi Whitworth Binns. My paternal great grandfather was the son of an East Anglian parson, who once got into trouble for attending church with the tail of a cock pheasant he had just shot sticking out of his coat pocket. My maternal great grandfather was a well-to-do Manchester businessman, who ran some cotton mills and had a big house called Mersey Bank and a Rolls Royce. The money got spread out over the generations, but as the eldest child of an eldest child, I have inherited from him an enormous painting by Benjamin Leader, a fairly well known Victorian landscape painter. As a small boy I used to look at this painting where it hung on the dining room wall, during Sunday lunch at my my grandparents' house, and then it was in my parents' dining room and now it is in my sitting room.
     
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  9. candy Valued Senior Member

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    My Mother's family kept records in the family Bible so I have data going back many generations dating from when they came to the colonies. One branch put together a book cover 11 generations. It has no practical value but they seem to love it. Until it was sold about 20 years ago they had a reunion at the homestead every August.
     
  10. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Knew both of my maternal grandparents, and my maternal grandmother's parents (my great grandparents). My great grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon, and had a photo of the first astronauts on the moon hanging on her bedroom wall.

    Only vague memories of my paternal grandmother. My dad did assemble records going back to Scotland in the 1700's.
     
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Must admit my chief recollections of Finnish cuisine, from when I used to visit Wärtislä Diesel in Vaasa, were reindeer steaks (excellent) and variations on gravad lax (also very good). The language was impossible, except that I recall a lift (elevator) is a hiss.

    Which reminds me, Shell Finland used to sell a special spray for deicing frozen door locks, which went by the unimprovable name of Super Piss.

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  12. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Holy Monty Python, Batman!
     
  13. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I have a book like that as well on the maternal side of the family so I know the name but I don't know anything about those names other than it's interesting that they were here (US) as early as the 1700's and that they came from Ireland.
     
  14. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    You mean, as in Fim tim lin bin whim bin lin bus stop f'tang f'tang ole biscuit barrel?

    Yes, and this would have been in the 1920s. Apparently there were loony Yorkshiremen even then. I wonder how they called the cat, when they wanted to summon it. Binns, I imagine.
     
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  15. Janus58 Valued Senior Member

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    "Hissi" would be "elevator". ( I didn't know that off hand, and had to look it up, but I did know that a Finnish word wouldn't end in "ss")
    Both my parents spoke it, as they learned it from their parents. I wish that they had taught it to us kids when we were young, but they decided not to. I did pick up a few words here and there: "jo" for yes, "ei" for no, "mitä" for what, and "voi saatana" for when you hit your thumb with the hammer

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    . ( it was years before I learned the actual translation for that, I just knew that when Dad said it, he wasn't happy.)
    I've lately have been trying to make up for that since Duolingo added Finnish to their list of languages last fall. I'm making slow progress. I can form a few simple phrases: "Onko meillä leipää tai justoa? Haluan jotain syötävää. ( Do we have any bread or cheese? I want something to eat.) , but my vocabulary is still quite small. I think it has helped that I grew up at least hearing it spoken on a regular basis, as it attuned by ear to some of the subtle pronunciation quirks. For example y,u, and ö might not sound much different to a non-Finnish speaker.
     
  16. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Ah OK, blame my fading memory. It was about 20 years ago.

    But kudos for tackling Finnish. It seems to have no points of reference at all with other European languages, though I understand it is distantly related to Hungarian.

    I rather liked the Finns. Taciturn and practical people, not given to great flights of fancy. I'm not surprised they were good at big diesel engines.

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