I only have one way to find out about my family and it's from my father. I think he is the oldest living person in my family. I've asked him to write down as much as as he knows as about my Mom and his family as he can.

Has anyone thought of this? My father knows quite a bit. I have learned a lot over the years.

When I was researching my genealogy I used many online searches and programs to build my family tree.
My parents knew very little on it because they never looked.
Later, years later, I was visited by a historian documenting my fraternal heritage.
I revealed what I learned and added my children to the lineage and he was extremely happy at the information I provided.
I even took him to the cemetery so he could take 'rubbings'.
The crux was the sample of hair I gave him marked 'grandpa' in the family Bible. He only wanted one strand with a tell.
Later, I received an email from him with a link to my updated 'tree' where he thanked me again.

I asked my father if he could write down everything he could remember about his family. I think he liked it.

I come from a long line of Mormons, and our ancestry was traced
back to Adam and Eve 5 times. I am not sure what the benefit of
that is.

You could try Ancestory.com and see where that leads you. Speaking of Mormons I’ve heard that they kept good genealogy records.

I know a little bit, but not all that much.
My cousin has done a lot of work on our family tree from my mother's side.
I know from that side there's some German blood as I believe the grandfather of my grandfather was a German soldier, stationed in my country.
That has made me wonder, what the hell for? This must have been in the 19th century as my granddad was born in 1898. So what was a German soldier doing here in the 19th century? Maybe he wasn't stationed, just met someone here and stayed.

I know my mom's grandfather was a tailor. My mother can recall him actually sitting on a table to make clothes by hand.

From my dad's side I don't know a lot. Just branches of his uncles, and that's about it.

A few years ago I bought a nice booklet thing for both my parents in which you could write things like family tree. My dad didn't do anything with it unfortunately, he felt it was all nonsense. He passed away in 2016 so much knowledge is lost.

Oh hang about, one interesting thing I found out the other day: People on my dad's side of the family were quite gifted (spiritually). I had seriously NEVER expected that, I always thought I got my gifts from my mother.
But I bumped into a second cousin on FB the other day, who's a medium, paranormal, and so on. I found out from her that her dad -my father's uncle- was a healer. People came from afar to him for healing.
His parents were also into the spiritual/healing/paranormal.

It made me feel so good to learn this! Kind of like "I'm not the black sheep after all" hahaha.

See, Crystal, you learned something. I've learned things about my family in the last couple of years that I never knew. I didn't know that my Mother's father died crossing a street and was hit by a car.

Yes, and in a way I'd like to know where I come from, but in another sense I'm more interested in dynamics, as in 'who were they, what were they like?'
That can be so helpful! Like me realizing a number of years ago that my grandmother from mother's side may not have been the loving warm woman/grandmother I would've liked as a child, but that she was a very strong woman. She didn't get married until she was 38-ish, and helped her parents run their business by going off on her own to do things for that business.
Also as a married woman and young mother she did things as travel by herself by train with all the young kids (my grandfather had a number running around already from his 1st wife who deceased). Wearing trousers and stuff, going to the beach.
In those days I think that was quite something, not really what a woman was to do by herself.

That made me see my grandmother from an entirely different perspective, from a unpleasant irritable one to a strong independent woman, way ahead of her time.

I see the same strength and independence in my mother, which helped me appreciate her more too, and myself & my daughter.
Those kind of tendency I like to find through family stories! They're really helpful to better understand yourself, your parent(s), siblings and children if you have them.

I know I’m Dutch on my dad’s side of the family and on my mom’s English and Scottish. My mom has an Aunt who’s doing the family tree on her mother’s mother’s side and from what I think I’ve heard is that under the last name of Graham they came from England and settled in what is now North Carolina during the 1600’s. I’ve heard that I have ancestors who fought during the American Revolutionary War and also fought for the Republic of Texas and thus I could join “The Daughters” of both if I wanted to. I almost forgot that where the Graham’s settled they had a plantation.

My mom’s maiden name is Danvers while her mom’s maiden name is Doss. Even though my last name is Bush it’s originally spelled Bos (with the two pronounciation dots on top of the O) so when my grandfather (my dad’s dad) started going to school the teachers just pronounced it Bush and so it got changed to that. Only known famous relative is my mom’s distant cousin was Carrol Shelby who invented the Shelby Mustang.

Mrs. Danvers!!!!!
-Rebecca

I was a bit surprised, to learn that I'm about half
Scandinavian.

But, i guess that explains my love of boats.

Danvers also seem to be a somewhat popular fictional last name. Look at Captain Marvel or Carol Danvers and on SuperGirl Kara Danvers, SuperGirl herself, along with her sister Alex. And speaking of being Scandinavian when I originally took the DNA test through Ancestory it showed I was 17% Scandinavian but that’s probably changed now since it seems that Ancestory has reclassified Country groups.

Well maybe “Country group” isn’t the right term but people group. This is what my original DNA results came back as:
56% Europe West (includes Holland)
19% Great Britain (includes England and Scotland)
17% Scandinavia
6% Ireland
1% Iberian Penisula
1% Italy/Greece