Saturday, June 3, 2017

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Which Ancestor Moved the Furthest?

It's Saturday Night, 
time for more Genealogy Fun!!


For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to:


1)  The Family History Hound listed 20 Questions about your Ancestor, and I'm going to use some of them in the next few months.  

2)  Please answer the first question - "Which ancestor moved the farthest from their home?"

3)  Write your own blog post, make a comment on this post, or post  your answer on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a link to your answer in comments on this post.

Here's mine:

I have several possibilities here, so I asked Google to tell me the distance:

1)  My own ancestry:

a)  Samuel Vaux (1815-1880) was born in South Petherton, Somerset and moved to Aurora, Erie County, New York, then to Burnett, Wisconsin, then to Andrew County, Missouri, and died in Concordia, Kansas.  The great circle path from Somerset to Kansas is 4,352 miles.  The great circle path between the different places is more; the actual path from England to New York is not a great circle, of course.  

b)  Johan Nicolaus Konig (1707-1776) was born in the Palatinate in present-day, Germany, and migrated to York, Pennsylvania.  The distance from the Palatinate to York is 6,340 km, or 3,939 miles.

All of my known immigrants came from western Europe to New England, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the 17th and 18th centuries, except for my two English ancestors in the 19th century (including Samuel Vaux above).  I think Samuel is probably my guy.

2)  My wife's ancestry:

This is really a no brainer.  Linda's second great-grandmother was Rachel (Morley) Whittle (1821-1860).  She was born in Bolton-le-Moor, Lancashire, England, sailed with her husband to Sydney, Australia, and sailed to San Francisco, California in 1851.  The great circle distance from Bolton-le-Moor to Sydney is 10,557 miles, and from Sydney to San Francisco is 7,416 miles.  So at least 17,973 miles.  I won't worry about the actual sailing distance from Bolton to Capetown to Singapore to Sydney...  or that she probably died in Sacramento.  

I would love to have some time with these persons and hear their stories?  I can only imagine.


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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver


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10 comments:

John said...

Here are my calculations: http://blog.transylvaniandutch.com/2017/06/the-ancestor-who-moved-farthest.html

Suzanne McClendon said...

Wow, she sure covered a lot of miles!

Here is my post for this week: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Have a blessed weekend.

Janice M. Sellers said...

Here's my contribution to this week's topic:

http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2017/06/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-which.html

Mary Rohrer Dexter said...

Here is mine for this week http://skeezicks1957.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-which-ancestor-moved-furthest.html

Gayle said...

HOW FAR IS FAR? Details at Family Research and Me: http://familyresearchandme.blogspot.com/2017/06/how-far-is-far.html

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

My post for the week is here: http://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2017/06/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-which.html

Fax said...

Hands down: My great grandfather, Henry Tigges who may have first been refused admittance because he arrived twice, May and December, in the same year (1866) from Germany:

Brandenburg to Bremerhaven 236
Bremerhaven to New York 3755
Return 3755
Return 3755
New York to Portland, Oregon 2895
Return 2895

Total 17,291

Ellen T-J said...

Hi Randy,
I'm the Family History Hound and I'm flattered that you are using some of my questions.
Thanks so much.

Ellen Thompson-Jennings

Wendy Callahan said...

Oh, it was definitely my 3x great-grandfather, William W. Winsor, born 1811 in Duxbury, Massachusetts. I lost him after 1850 (very irresponsible of me to lose an ancestor, I know). And then found him in 1860 in Clallam County, Washington!

I hardly believed it, but as I gathered evidence and found out it was him, I was quite surprised. Last week, I had the good fortune of getting a book that gave me a little insight into his adventures in Washington state. I still don't know if he ever returned home to Massachusetts...

http://www.newenglandgenealogy.net/2017/06/william-w-winsor-james-g-swan-almost.html

Wendy Callahan said...

And, gosh, I didn't consider my immigrant ancestors. Just here in the U.S. :)