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[WealthyRadish]

Oh, yes, I forgot one thing... there was one great-whatever uncle that left Russia for Germany before WWII, who then fought at the landing of Normandy as a machine gunner. It was a bit odd hearing him talk about about how many Americans he killed when I spoke with him at my father's wedding.

[Karlito]

Ah yes. Like many of you, I come from a long line of esteemed individuals.

One of my great-great-grandfathers was a German living in Austria-Hungary, except it turned into Poland at the end of World War 1, so he moved to America to start a new life, except he left his wife and more than a few children back in the Old World. Once he got here, he wasted no time finding a new wife and replacing his abandoned children.

I've got another great² or maybe great³ grandfather who was a wealthy Jewish Confederate plantation owner. He helped finance the Hunley, the CSA's ill-fated submarine. After the war he mucked around in Louisiana, where he eventually got in trouble for illegally damming a river to drain his swamp. His case went before the Supreme Court. Twice.

[Tellemurius]

Ah yes. Like many of you, I come from a long line of esteemed individuals.

One of my great-great-grandfathers was a German living in Austria-Hungary, except it turned into Poland at the end of World War 1, so he moved to America to start a new life, except he left his wife and more than a few children back in the Old World. Once he got here, he wasted no time finding a new wife and replacing his abandoned children.

I've got another great² or maybe great³ grandfather who was a wealthy Jewish Confederate plantation owner. He helped finance the Hunley, the CSA's ill-fated submarine. After the war he mucked around in Louisiana, where he eventually got in trouble for illegally damming a river to drain his swamp. His case went before the Supreme Court. Twice.

hooray for players in your family! XD

[Svarte Troner]

I love this kind of stuff 
The grandparents on my dad's side are Ukrainians from Kiev as well as Lviv. The great-grandfather from Kiev fought in WW1 and the Russian civil war and was an officer in the White army. When the shit hit the fan for the whites, he took his family first to Poland and eventually came here.. The ones from Lviv were either Ukrainian or Polish Jews who first escaped Russian pogroms by moving to Poland... We know that my paternal grandmother was born shortly after arriving in New York, but most of the relatives that stayed behind in Poland died in the holocaust/WW2.

My mom's father's side are mostly Germans who settled in PA in the 1870's. They were descended from the Von Isenbergs, some medieval German noble family. Her mother's side are Croatians and Romanians that we know next to nothing about because my grandmother was an orphan, but they were probably really poor. 

[Fniff]

I found the attack that my granduncle was involved in that was particularly important. It was called the Sheemore Ambush. Here's the wikipedia page. He's Joe Nangle. The first citation is even a doc relating to the Nangle family history.

[Max White]

Eh, my grandparents didn't want to talk about their history, and I can't really blame them considering that what we can piece together has to do with most of the family being killed in Nazi concentration camps. Still, a little sad as now they have all passed away, so the story will never be told.

[Jopax]

One story stuck with me out of the many I've heard over the years.

According to my father, one of my ancestors, or a part of the family tree that never went anywhere had a coffe shop up north in Bosnia during the Austro-Hungarian empire. And he got into some sort of dispute with a priest which somehow ended up with him killing said priest. So he legged it back home bringing with him only a coffe grinder thingy. In the end, he was apparently the first recorded criminal on these parts (as in, the first one recorded by the AH goverment), so that's an achievement I guess :S

[Zrk2]

I love this kind of stuff 
The grandparents on my dad's side are Ukrainians from Kiev as well as Lviv. The great-grandfather from Kiev fought in WW1 and the Russian civil war and was an officer in the White army. When the shit hit the fan for the whites, he took his family first to Poland and eventually came here.. The ones from Lviv were either Ukrainian or Polish Jews who first escaped Russian pogroms by moving to Poland... We know that my paternal grandmother was born shortly after arriving in New York, but most of the relatives that stayed behind in Poland died in the holocaust/WW2.

Cool. The Ukrainians I mentioned earlier were apparently in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before they left, so they were much farther west than your ancestors.

[Karlito]

Cool. The Ukrainians I mentioned earlier were apparently in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before they left, so they were much farther west than your ancestors.

My great²-grandfather (mentioned previously) came from the same area, though I'm pretty sure he was ethnically German.

[Svarte Troner]

There's a rumor that my grandfather's long lost brother who was a lot older than my grandpa and stayed behind when his parents/siblings left,  was sent to the Gulags when he was captured in the late 40's for his involvement in a Ukrainian nationalist organization, which I guess would have been the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but he was never seen again...

[Jimmy]

Have a grandfather who was an American engineer after serving in the Navy and marrying a Spanish girl he met on leave overseas. He was part of the team that built the Apollo 11, first spacecraft to successfully land and return humans from the moon. He decided to pack up his family and move to Australia when they built a military base five miles west of his house and a missile manufacturing plant five miles east, meaning the Russians had a pretty good reason to drop a nuclear bomb on his head.

[Hubris Incalculable]

Well... where to start. I know a whole ton of my family history.

My family has its roots in the Netherlands, and at some point during the Reformation they joined an Anabaptist group called the Mennonites, named for their founder, Menno Simons. Due to persecution from Catholics, and, to some extent, other protestant groups, they moved en-masse into Prussia, where they exchanged their native Dutch for the Low German of the area. There they stayed for quite a while, until Catherine the Great offered them land in Russia. They accepted (due to their military exemption rights being removed in Prussia (Mennonites are pacifists)), and settled down in what's now the Ukraine. Then, during WWI, came the Russian Revolution, and, with it, Nestor Makhno's anarchists, who raided Mennonite land, due to a grudge that Makhno carried against them. Around that point, my Dad's Dad's side of the family emigrated to Canada and settled down on Vancouver Island. Following that, came collectivization, and the criminalization of religion.

During collectivization, my Mum's paternal grandmother, who was, by all accounts, a rather feisty woman, got rather annoyed with the communist way of life. One day, she said "They say I have a cow at the collective farm, but I never see any milk," and up she got and brought home "her" cow. This earned her family a one way ticket to Siberia. Eventually they got back, due, in part, to the purchase of a large bottle of vodka, but that is another story. Ask me later.

At that point, the second world war was going full force, and the Germans had fought their way into the Ukraine. The Mennonites (not knowing about Nazism or Holocaust) rejoiced, because these people were going to let them practice their religion again. (Unfortunately, they did not respect the Mennonite Pacifism, and drafted the men into the army. My Mum's grandfather (just recently back from Siberia) very nearly fought in the war, but managed to bribe the camp surgeon into not giving him a clean bill of health, and came back to his family by coal train).

Then the Germans made the same mistake as Napoleon, and were forced to retreat, taking the Mennonites with them, considering them (as German speakers) to be German citizens. After the war, the rest of my family emigrated to Canada as well, and here we are.

*exhales*

[Zrk2]

Cool. The Ukrainians I mentioned earlier were apparently in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before they left, so they were much farther west than your ancestors.

My great²-grandfather (mentioned previously) came from the same area, though I'm pretty sure he was ethnically German.

Mine were very Ukrainian; I looked up my last name a it once meant "tailor" in whatever the language du jour was.

[Svarte Troner]

Cool. The Ukrainians I mentioned earlier were apparently in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before they left, so they were much farther west than your ancestors.

My great²-grandfather (mentioned previously) came from the same area, though I'm pretty sure he was ethnically German.

Mine were very Ukrainian; I looked up my last name a it once meant "tailor" in whatever the language du jour was.

I'm gonna guess you're a Kravets? or probably Portnoy if they came from the Russian empire  . My last name was anglicized from Вейнгарт (Veynhart or Veingart) or more accurately, germanicized upon coming to the US. Which kinda sucks because I want a cool Ukrainian name 

[MaximumZero]

Cool. The Ukrainians I mentioned earlier were apparently in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before they left, so they were much farther west than your ancestors.

My great²-grandfather (mentioned previously) came from the same area, though I'm pretty sure he was ethnically German.

Mine were very Ukrainian; I looked up my last name a it once meant "tailor" in whatever the language du jour was.

I'm gonna guess you're a Kravets? or probably Portnoy if they came from the Russian empire  . My last name was anglicized from Вейнгарт (Veynhart or Veingart) or more accurately, germanicized upon coming to the US. Which kinda sucks because I want a cool Ukrainian name 

Zrk2 is Lenny Kravitz?