RYou

Someone from Salt Lake City uploaded all of their geneologicals on Ancestry. I was searching there one day and bumped into the information, all dating back to the 1400 and 1500's. We are cousins like 20 generations removed. What blew me away was that they show the name change back in the 1400's. Apparently back then a son would take a different last name from the father (or so I'm told, could just a little old time philandering though ;-) ). Phoenetically they sould the same, it's the spelling that's different. From that I was able to find a family crest which doesn't exist under my name.

As long as we're talking about family I'll digress into a bit of a funny story. Great grand pops Johann came over in 1865 leaving his wife and 2 kids back home with the intent of making enough money to back and retrieve them. Well, he never made it back and ended up marrying again over here. That's not is not a rare as you might think for the times.

Anyway, my uncle takes a vacation to Austria aroubd '75 and knowing we were from the region, he looks up the name in phone books where he stayed. Well one day he finds the name and they own a little bakery. He heads over there and shows the little baker and his wife his passport. They speak little English so they call in a grandson who interprets for my uncle. It turns out the guy had an old family tree written down and there was a branch for Johann and his two kids and wife and the little guy explained Johann went to America and never came back. We matched the dates and the town to immigration records and sure enough the old man was a bit of scoundrel and the whole darn family is heir to a polygamist.

We also found out that one of the cousins was a pretty famous artist back in the 20's and 30's, and mysteriously disappeared in '38 when the Nazies moved across the border.