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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Craig Henry on April 18, 2013 at 1:41

Well, sort of. I guess. I know where both sides of my family are from because each generation has passed the information on to the young ones.

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Permalink Reply by Alexander Noot on April 18, 2013 at 8:44

My grandparents have done so much geneology that I wouldn't know where to start. I believe they're found names all the way back to 1400 or so.

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Permalink Reply by Chuck Parham on April 18, 2013 at 14:39

My uncle kept our family tree going since he did the initial research. He traced our family back to the early 1600's. His son (my cousin) now keeps it updated since his death 3 years ago. It's very interesting. When they have the annual reunion it covers an entire wall of 80 feet in length and 12 feet high. Some of my tree I am very proud of while other branches should have been pruned.  LOL Some of the more famous names are Frank and Jesse James.  Nah, they didn't pass on any of the hold up money to me.

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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Charles Sample on April 18, 2013 at 15:35

We have a connection.  I am related to Ed O'Kelley who killed Bob Ford.  Not blood relation but by marriage.  I refer to him as my outlaw inlaw.

As to the branches that need pruning, we probably all have some of those.  For example, John Wesley Hardin was my cousin.
 
Chuck Parham said:

My uncle kept our family tree going since he did the initial research. He traced our family back to the early 1600's. His son (my cousin) now keeps it updated since his death 3 years ago. It's very interesting. When they have the annual reunion it covers an entire wall of 80 feet in length and 12 feet high. Some of my tree I am very proud of while other branches should have been pruned.  LOL Some of the more famous names are Frank and Jesse James.  Nah, they didn't pass on any of the hold up money to me.

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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Craig Henry on April 18, 2013 at 17:12

All of my family goes back to Germany. More recent on my mother's side, and back to the 1800's for my father's side. As far as famous people.......I'm related to Germanic Tribes that helped bring down the Roman Empire. LOL!

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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Charles Sample on April 18, 2013 at 18:16

I guess you could say one of my ancestors helped bring down the British Empire.  My gggggGrandfather was Col. Frederick Hambright.  He was a commander of a militia unit before and during the Revolutionary War.  He was one of the commanders at the Battle of Kings Mountain.  Col. Ferguson, the commander of the British forces sent a courier to Gen. Cornwallis asking for reinforcements.  But Col. Hambright captured the courier. The courier told him what Col. Ferguson was wearing.  Col. Hambright told his men to "mark him with your rifles."  Col. Ferguson was killed in the battle.

BTW, Col. Hambright was born in Germany.
 
Craig Henry said:

All of my family goes back to Germany. More recent on my mother's side, and back to the 1800's for my father's side. As far as famous people.......I'm related to Germanic Tribes that helped bring down the Roman Empire. LOL!

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Permalink Reply by Chuck Parham on April 18, 2013 at 18:41

I guess we all have some famous and infamous characters swinging through the family tree. My family tree charting was abruptly stopped in the mid 1950's by a great uncle who started it. Rumor was he found a couple of socially taboo skeletons hanging in the back of the family closet. My uncle resumed the project when the taboo was more tolerable in society. Now it's joked about at reunions. I am from the deepest part of rural Tennessee and a mixed racial marriage was discovered in the research. That was taboo in the South in the 1950's.  LOL

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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Charles Sample on April 18, 2013 at 18:50

My ggGrandfather Sample was an interesting person.  He was born in 1802 but one of his children didn't die until 1956.  He had children born 53 years apart.

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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Charles Sample on April 19, 2013 at 23:43

Chuck

My outlaw inlaw, Ed O'Kelley killed Bob Ford in Creede, Colorado in, I believe, 1892.  Ford was running a saloon and O'Kelley walked in one day, called out to Ford, and when Ford turned around, O'Kelley let him have both barrels of a double barreled shotgun.  It must have just about blown Ford's head off because I have read that Ford's collar button was embedded in a post behind where he had been standing.  O'Kelley hated Ford because he had ridden with the James gang and was Jesse's friend..

O'Kelley served some time in prison for killing Ford.  He finally met his fate in 1904.  He was killed in a fight with an Oklahoma City police officer.

I can remember as a child a brother (or half brother, the family to this day does not know for sure which) of Ed O'Kelley still being alive.  He was a doctor.  All I ever heard him called was Doc O'Kelley so I don't know what his first name was.  When he was young he also rode out to join the James gang but his brother Ed wouldn't let him and made him go home.  So there was apparently some small spark of decency in Ed.  Doc O'Kelley was an old man even when I was a child and had stopped practicing medicine.

There are two interesting stories about Doc O'Kelley.  Apparently he was king of a rough character even though he was a doctor.  There was a fellow in the little village that O'Kelley was feuding with.  One day O'Kelley walked out of the store in the town and this fellow was talking to a couple of other fellows and had his foot up on a bench on the porch.  O'Kelley told him to get it off the bench but he didn't.  At this point O'Kelley pulls out a pistol and shoots him in the foot.  He started to walk off but then turned around and said "You better bring him to my office.  That's a serious wound."

The other story involves my grandfather.  He had been sick and went to see Doc O'Kelley and got some medicine.  Several days later he met O'Kelly and complained to him the medicine did not help him.  O"Kelley then growled at him, "How do you know!  How do you know wouldn't be dead without it!"

The second picture is supposed to be the building that Ed O'Kelley killed Bob Ford in.

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