Who’s a Hobbis?

Ancestry.com has been a true mine of information!

I have (surprisingly) found few skeletons in the closet. Ok, there is the guy who couldn’t make up his mind what name he wanted to use - Henry or Harry. Come on, stick to one and be done with it! And then there’s the guy who had no idea whether he was born in 1801, 1803, 1810 or 1816.

 

But the best has to be the publican, general labourer and father of four who was (allegedly) not only deaf, dumb and blind, but a lunatic as well! Now, I’m all for equal opportunities for disadvantaged people but this particular combination of disabilities sure would have made ordering a pint from him interesting!

 

I told you a few weeks ago how happy I was to have found out that my Hobbis family really does exist and that Poppa Les hadn’t changed his name to avoid capture by South American drug barons intent on snuffing him out for a failed deal … OK, it would have been kinda cool and made a good story, but those sorts of people know how to hold grudges and it would have made any Mexican holiday a little nerve wracking …

Anyway, I do have a family history after all and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks buried under mountains of Hobbi that may or may not be related to me. I think I’ve found a common thread from myself back to about 1807 which is pretty astounding given that I’ve only been at this for a short time. My Auntie has been doing her side of the family for the last two years and is still stuck at about 1790. I guess I’ll be hitting a brick wall soon too then.

But in the meantime I’m a happy chappy. Not only do I have a grandfather, but a great-grandfather, and even a great-great-grandfather. And I can name them. And I know where they lived.

To get all this info I signed up with Ancestry.com for a free 30-day trial. I had to give them my credit card details and cancel the subscription before the end of the month, but in that month I got a ton of stuff. Copies of Census records, birth notices, death notices and marriage announcements. Fantastic stuff.

It’s official, we’re Hobbises.

Hobbi sounds more fun though.

With my ego-stroking done (406 hits on Google, but I think Brad Pitt may have more) I turned to Googling my rellies.

213 hits for my dad.

0 hits for my granddad.

They’re not doing so well. And I guess even Google has its limits. So, where to next?

Google!

Hit me

Try Googling the word “genealogy” sometime and you’ll get something like 54 MILLION hits. The very first link on the hit list was FamilySearch.org which is run by the Church of the Latter Day Saints - in other words, the Mormons.

Now, I’m not a religious person and I’m known for my lack of tact, so if you’re Mormon, Bhuddist, Hindu or Catholic and are offended by anything I say then please accept my apologies. If you’re American then that’s just your bad luck. Sorry about that

Anyway, FamilySearch is supposedly “the largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world“. This is probably true too given the Mormons’ goal of cataloguing every potential convert there ever was and ever might be. Apparently if you want to become a Mormon you can even convert all your ancestors to Mormonism at the same time because they know who they were. Of course that might be wrong and I’ve just offended a whole heap of people. Sometimes being tactless is dangerous.

We’re all going to Hell

Let me digress for a moment …

There are at least two different religions that state that when the sky falls in and the world comes to an end if you’re not a follower of that particular faith then you won’t be granted entrance to the heavenly kingdom and will be cast down into the depths to suffer for eternity. Both religions have their followers which means, from a cynic’s point of view, we’re all going to hell. Bummer.

Back to the Mormons

Anyway, FamilySearch did turn up a few matches for my granddad but none came anywhere near his birth date which we knew was around 1907. I guess the Mormons figured he and all his kin were a lost cause.

Next on the list was Genealogy.com. No matches.

After a few more dead-end searches on various “find your ancestors now!” websites I finally stumbled on the holy grail of genealogy research - Ancestry.com

I did a search for my granddad, and whaddya know!? He came in at Result #2

Woohoo, my family really does exist!

The first step in the hunt for my ancestors was to Google my name. Apart from the narcissistic joy of seeing my name on the internet it also made me realise that the internet never forgets. I found a copy of my old FortuneCity website that I abandoned years ago and have long since moved to www.minormania.com. There are places I worked at 20 years ago, newsgroups I posted on when Netscape 1.1 still rulled the World Wide Web and Bill thought the internet was a fad and would go away.

But the weirdest thing was seeing my name being used by other people as if it were their own! For instance, apparently I married Lorraine in Scotland in 2001 (just don’t tell my other wife!). I also have an interest in Ham Radio in Vancouver and run a business called Tipton Engineering in Texas, USA.

All very interesting but it didn’t get me very far in the search for my great granddad.

You would think that after nearly 40 years of being one I’d know what to call lots of us. But I don’t know, and it’s bugging the hell out of me now that I’m blogging about us.

So what is the plural of a surname that ends in ’s’?

Do you do the same as with other nouns and add ‘es’, so we become Hobbises? Or do we use an apostrophe ’s’ so we become Hobbis’s? Or do we have to drop the ’s’ and become Hobbi?

If anyone has a clue, please let me have it, coz I haven’t got one. (although I do kinda prefer “Hobbi” even if it does turn out to be wrong)

Smalltown boy

I grew up in a small town in New Zealand, twelve thousand miles from the small town that I was born in on the other side of the world in England.

I had a small family. Just mum & dad, and one brother. The extended family included one aunt, one uncle, two cousins, and two sets of grandparents. That’s it. No-one else. So there were 12 of us, But grandparents die, as they do, and for much of my life we were a 9-person family, everyone included.

I also had a unique surname - Hobbis. There was only one Hobbis family in all of New Zealand and it was mine. So I spent much of my life feeling kinda small - a small family in a small country, with no roots back in Blighty.

Mind wobble.

Then, when I was 13, we went on holiday to the States. I looked in the local phone book and saw nine Hobbises listed. And that was just the Santa Barbara whitepages. How many more were there in the rest of the country?! I hadn’t really thought about it before, but there must be other Hobbi out there, and some of them just may be related to me! Who are they, and how come they live in the States and not England? It was a mind-wobbling thought. Kinda like when Zaphod Beeblebrox goes into that box and discovers just how small he is compared to the rest of the universe … only he really was the centre of it all and I’m not … so, nothing like that at all really.

Who do I think I am?

So where do I come from?

Who am I, really?

Buggered if I know.