Your personal ancestral immigration story

A majority of Americans of German descent can trace their lineage back to the Palatinate. It's a fertile region in more ways than one.

My dad’s maternal line came here from Sweden in the 1800s; his paternal line was mostly English, and they arrived in New England in the late 1600s.

My mom’s side is much more recent—her mother was born in present-day Ukraine on the Black Sea. My great-grandmother was a Black Sea German who was born/raises in Odessa. My great-grandfather was from the same region and was of part-Jewish descent. He was murdered by the German-led occupation in the Odessa oblast. My great-grandmother, who was not Jewish, fled with the children (one of them my grandmother) through Poland and made it to Germany by the time the war had ended. They ended up being sponsored by another family of German immigrants in North Dakota, and came over through Ellis Island after the war. My grandmother (and great-grandmother), needless to say, had difficult lives.

9th great grandfather landed in New France in 1647; my grandfather’s family emigrated to New England in 1894.

My mother’s great grandfather left Faial, Azores on a whaling ship at age thirteen, and landed at New Bedford in 1834.

I always knew I was mostly Irish but I was stunned when I did a DNA test and came out 100% British and Irish. A friend joked I was aggressively Caucasian. My dads side has been in Canada more than 100 years and my moms side has been hear since the 30s and still there’s been no mixing with people from other European countries even. I thought there’d be something else there even if it was five or 10%. My ancestors apparently came from all over Ireland and lancashire

My paternal grandfather immigrated from Prussia in1912. At that time Poland did not exist as a country. His future wife came from Austria-Hungary and was sent back home from Ellis Island because she was ill. She made it here just in time to die from the Spanish Flu when my father was an infant. My maternal lineage is French Canadian.

My maternal grandfather's ancestors came to Virginia from England as indentured servants in the 17th century. My maternal grandmother's ancestors came to Philadelphia from Germany as Protestants in Catholic Bavaria, also in the 17th century.

Don't know much about my paternal side's arrival in the New World, but they also seem to have been here since the 16th or 17th century.

Thanks for starting this thread, OP. I love reading your story and the others!

On my Dad's side it was Irish and Danish immigrants coming in during the 1860s, as well as some Mayflower and later ships of ancestors coming in during the 1600s.

On my Mom's side it was pretty much all English, one of which was in the Jamestown Settlement in 1607.

I also did have one Prussian sailor ancestor who changed his name. My favorite ancestor was a sea captain from Hamburg who came to the US in 1828. He changed his German name Wilhelm to William (not uncommon), but he changed his last name (Temm) to Brown, a version of his wife's last name (Browning). I have no idea why such a change - was he in trouble? I will never know. But I have records of him staying at a brothel for a while, where it turns out he met his wife (whose brother owned the brothel).

I find this stuff really interesting, I know most do not.

I find it all interesting, too, R7. William Browns story is fascinating. Let's hope his wife had some job in the brothel other than serving the customers. And you have a Mayflower ancestor! There are some really interesting posts here. Early arrivals, colonists, a 13 yr old girl on a whaling ship, Jamestown, and indentures servants. Makes me want to relearn our history.

My favorite ancestor, of the ones I've known, is my grandmother. She was full of stories, style, and advice. Liked her cocktails and had a happy, tinkling laugh. She was lively and spirited and told us this story. Her father was a known womanizer in their small city in Ohio (circa 1917). One night on the way home from a tryst the angry husband shot him. It was a flesh wound and later that night she and her mother dressed the wound. Deeply ashamed, my teenaged grandma vowed she'd leave Ohio and never look back. When she met grandpa while he was visiting family after WWI, she took the opportunity to leave town and go with him to his adopted home in San Francisco where they married. She once told me in a letter, "Follow your dreams, nothing ventured, nothing gained."

My ancestors on one side left England (East Anglia) for New York in the 1660s, subsequent generations moving west bit by bit as the frontier expanded. My ancestors on the other side were farmers who left Småland, Sweden, in the 1860s, settling in Nebraska.

[quote] Småland

Makes sense. Once they were no longer children I’m sure IKEA no longer wanted them hanging out in Småland.

My Nana, her husband, my mother and uncle were brought here from Germany after wwII although my Nana's husband was Ukrainian. My father was adopted so, not a ton known.

I ascend from an African Queen and a Hottentot.

There should be some standard labeling for present day Americans based on when their earliest line in America arrived. People whose ancestors arrived in the 1600s should be Original Americans (after the Indians) and people whose ancestors arrived after the Revolution should be the Latecomers. The 1700s before the Revolution could be just Early Americans.

What if your ancestry is split though like R2? Would the lineage of the earliest arrivers take precedence? It seems like a logistical nightmare.

Paternal lineage started in the US around 1630, that family lived in New England until about 1850 and moved to the Midwest.

My maternal grandfather's line also descended from an indentured servant from England in the 18th century . My paternal grandfathers line were from Germany in the early 1800s . My maternal grandmothers mother descended from a noble line from Spain who lost everything in the Spanish American war. Their plantation was burned to the ground and land seized .My great grandmother and her nanny fled on a fishing boat steered by my great grandfather,who was 16 . She was 14 . They married a year later . Then had 22 kids,17 who lived to adult hood. So when I say Im related to half of Miami,believe it !

I have a definite 18th century ancestor who appears in all genealogy trees as the great-grandson of Samuel Fuller, who crossed on the Mayflower when he was 12. However, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants won’t accept that my ancestor is his father’s son, along with all the other children from the father’s second marriage. The Mayflowerdna.org site acknowledges that there is evidence of the second marriage, including DNA evidence, but they want more. I’m screwed out of joining the society.

R13 No, there shouldn't.

R13 I’m more of an Original American than most republicans. My family came here knowing English.

R13 Let's just say we're all Americans.

Like a lot of people I have ancestors who lived in New Amsterdam. One was 2years old when the English took control. His mother was born in New Amsterdam in 1640 and his father was born in the old country. These ancestors I find interesting because they witnessed the changeover.

I can attest that not all descendants of the original Dutch settlers became like the fictional elite van Rhijn family.

R13 is J.D. Vance, who believes that some Americans are more American than others.

[quote] Let's just say we're all Americans.

R20, are you one of the Latecomers?

R23 Haha. Yeah, "Latecomers" i love that. Holy Jesus.

It is interesting in flyoverstan you have so many patriotic people who have only been here several generations but people out east who have been rooter here way longer and don’t care as much.

Rooted* not rooter. Once he’s gone, can we PLEASE get an edit function?

What about the people whose ancestors came through Ellis Island in the late 19th, early 20th century? (like mine) Oh, yeah -- the Undesirables.

My earliest ancestors immigrated in the late 19th century and the last one came over in 1920. I'm a blue-eyed white guy with an easily pronounceable name. I am also predominantly Irish. I'm honestly glad to be descended from later arrivals and not some nasty colonizers or people-owners. I'm always grossed out when people proudly proclaim their family's long association with this country. I'm always like "you're proud of that? Huh." but I keep that to myself. Nowadays I barely even want to think of myself as American with the way this shit hole country is going, and I definitely don't think it's brag-worthy.

R27 I find it interesting my mom was adopted but the father who adopted her was from a Jewish family that came through Ellis island but ended up in Chicago.

[quote] I'm a blue-eyed white guy

I think it’s wild that it is said that all blue-eyed people (as am I) have a common ancestor. We’re all carrying his gene.

One of my grandfathers, from Italy, came through Ellis Island, wound up in Quebec and Vermont (stone quarries, his sister worked in one as a timekeeper), married a woman who was native and French Canadian, got divorced, and then came to Boston, was partners in a construction business, lost it during the depression, continued to work as a stonemason, hired two of my uncles, whose mom was a widow (German ancestry, from NYC), who asked him home to dinner, and my grandparents met. Got married, she had more kids (one was my mom).

Another interesting thing about genealogy is seeing the cause of death on the death certificates. I’ve seen people killed in terrible accidents (one somehow involving a clothes iron) or who committed suicide (one purposely laying down on a railroad track).

His brother moved to Chicago and some of his grandchildren and great grandchildren restore houses in Lake Forest and Oak Park, Ill.

My story

I'll write more about my actual ancestry details once I dig into my files, but here's a tiny tangent - a story no one probably gives two shits about but I thought was kinda cool.

I used to live in the Midwest, in a larger city, and a block over, there was a guy who owned a bakery (and also lived on the same street). He was not "famous" but he was well known in that little neighborhood because of his various businesses, etc.

About 6-7 years ago I move from Big City to little resort town, and maybe two years after that I'm working on my family tree. (Had a lot of time on my hands during the pandemic!)

A lot of my early work was just trying to go back in the most direct way possible, but now I'm filling in some various parts of the tree. I went back to one set of great-great-great (I think) grandparents, who were maybe first generation born in America from German parents. Instead of just filling in my "line" - my direct ancestor of those grandparents - I started filling in details about all the other children those ancestors had, not just my great-great grandmother.

Of course, you probably already guessed that Bakery Dude, the guy who randomly ended up as my neighbor for a time, is a distant cousin (officially a 4th cousin, I think), a descendant of one of my great-great grandma's siblings. I never met him, as in shook his hand introduction, when I was living there (I mean, I'm a Fat Whore™ so you better believe I was at that bakery!) but it's just really cool to think about how connected we might be to people we don't know or haven't met.

Any other Sicilians? I’m 1/4 but live in Flyoverstan. I feel like they don’t exist in those part of the world or at least don’t self identify that way. I feel like if I was in New York I’d find more people who would.

We're from France.

R5 under the new rules/incoming law, you could be eligible for a Canadian passport now!

4th cousin. You don’t say! That’s not exactly meaningful. I would have a couple of hundred 4th cousins, or more.

My mother's family settled in the 1660s in the Mid-Atlantic where most remain. My mother grew up on a farm that the family had owned from that time. With very few and recent exceptions, they married their neighbors.

My father was born in the U.S. to Irish immigrants, part of a wave of Irish immigration to Canada and the U.S. after WWII. Thanks to these relatives, I am Plastic Paddy (in one of its several definitions) in the that I was neither born nor raised in Ireland but acquired Irish citizenship by ancestry.

...after WWI.

Ah R40, lucky you to have acquired the Irish citizenship through the family. My great-grandfather came to the states from Ireland in 1880 - alas, I am one generation removed from acquiring the citizenship. If only my father had done so, but we really weren't a family who looked back and revelled in where grandparents and others were from.

I've done some of the work, we really aren't notable on either side; just immigrants who came to the states in the 19th century, settled in the greater NY area made a living and got on with life.

“ What's your family immigration experience?”

We are descended from - and talk only to - God

Well you still have to communicate with the Lodges in some way…as you all married each other.

Forbeses

Forbeshesh

The first arrival with a variation of my last name was my 8th great-grandfather, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1716 also from the Palatinate in westernmost Germany (Bad Kreuznach). They moved to Germanna in central Virginia in 1731, then to the new state of Ohio in 1803 on a land grant given to Rev War veterans. Others on my father's side were in Plymouth in 1626 and a many-time great aunt was burned in Salem.

My paternal grandmother's family was also early arrivals; the most recent arrival was in the 1820s from Wales.

My mom's side of the family all arrived in the mid/late 1800s from England, Ireland, and Italy. All of my great and great-great grandparents arrived before Ellis Island.

My Ancestry/23 and Me DNA studies are pretty consistent with British Isles and Northern France predominant (with a small percentage of Scandinavia likely from Viking ancestry). I'm 23% Italian and 1% Cypriot thanks to the two great-grandparents from the Naples area.

One of my early colonial great-grandmothers was a Shakespeare (yes, that family), so fortunately that branch is very well researched. Other ancestors founded colonies in Hartford, CT and Newark, NJ.

There is one ancestor who I'd love to have a drink with and hear his stories. One great grandfather emigrated from Manchester, UK to Boston; he worked as an electrical lineman for the MTA by day and an electrician in Boston vaudeville halls at night. I have his IATSE pin. I'd love to hear his stories of 1890-1920s vaudeville. From what I've heard from my mother, this guy both loved to drink and talk.

Potato famine Irish. Rise of (Protestant) nationalism Germans. Rural poverty English (unhappy with Catholic daughters-in-law but fuck 'em). Welsh coal miner who wandered Europe after a labor uprising. Mohawks who came over quite awhile ago.

[quote]...alas, I am one generation removed from acquiring the citizenship. If only my father had done so, but we really weren't a family who looked back and revelled in where grandparents and others were from.

R42,yes, Irish citizenship by ancestry was a stroke of good luck in my case. I know more than a few people in your shoes, one generation too removed to qualify for Irish (or Italian) citizenship by ancestry.

I did it a decade ago with moving in mind, before or after retirement. In the meantime I married an EU citizen and we lived in the US briefly before moving to the EU. The Irish passport made everything very easy.

Canada has the best possible plan, now coming into effect.

R39 Sure, I think most of us have hundreds, if not thousands of 4th cousins.

I just thought it was really something that somehow, we both ended up living a street away from each other in a city far away from where our ancestral family had started. It made that annoying "it's a small world" Disney song pop into my head. 😄

I’m 25% way-way-old New England Yankee (Mayflower descendant, multiple 17th century settlers, etc). And 75% more recent Euro-mix immigrants, late 19th and early 20th century.

No DAR for you!

I think it is interesting to go back 3-4 generations, but more than that and you're just cherry-picking a line to investigate because there are so many branches to pursue at that point.

Just 4 generations back and you have 16 great-grandparents and their trees to choose from - that's a lot already and then it obviously multiplies with each further generation back.

People rarely investigate every line on both mother or father's side - usually because some of those tracks just stop at some point.

It's human nature to investigate the more interesting or the most documented side - but then people impose all of these qualities on the one or 2 sides they can track back far enough.

It is, by its nature, a selective and biased approach. I just wish people acknowledged that more often.

FUN FACT: I was very close with a co-worker on a project 20+ years ago - she worked in another dept in the company in another city. She was adopted and didn't know much about her roots. When I did 23andMe - guess who was my 2nd cousin? Yep - that co-worker.

My mother's line were Prussian Germans who came over in the 1700s, shortly before the Revolutionary War. My father's line were all shanty-ass drunken Irish micks who staggered off the boat at Ellis Island in the early 1900s and most likely went straight to the nearest bar they could find in the city.

So many Prussians. No wonder this place is a nightmare so often.

Prussians are the high-class Germans.

No, they are the most war-like Germans.

Mine is easy. Both parents from Italy. 97% southwestern Italian, 3% from Greece/Eastern Mediterranean. That 3% is like two ancestors seven generations ago (5x great-grand parents or the equivalent mixed in).

My 9th Great Grandfather Jan Aertson, is Anderson Cooper's 8th Great Grandfather. Anderson's Vanderbilt line became rich and famous, while mine became tavern owners in Brooklyn.

r60 your ancestors probably kicked my drunken Irish ancestors out of your tavern after too many pints!

Both sides of my family are Germans who got land grants from William Penn in the 1680s. There's a street the length of my hometown with my father's last name, another, smaller street with my mother's last name, and a small town in the south of my birth county with the name of one of my mother's side's ancestors. So yeah, we go waaaay back in PA.

And believe-it-or-not, I did the research (surprisingly easy if you're from PA) and I actually was a member of the DAR for two years before I quit last year. Almost all the women there were older than I and most were very wealthy (and they'd all married money). I did get to know some interesting women there, but I made no friends. Yes, they knew I was a lesbian. This was the crew who were OK with me being gay, but the whole trans thing freaked them out.

The only other liberal woman (who was younger than I) moved to rural Michigan with her husband; we didn't keep in touch.

But I sure learned how the other half (Trumpers with money) lives!

My dad did a deep dive on ancestry.com. I’m a descendant of John Rolfe and Pocahontas on my moms fathers side. Also someone who came over with Oglethorpe and founded the Georgia colony. Mom’s mother’s side is a mix of Mennonites who came in the1799s and Canadian Métis who came in the 1859s. My dad came to this country from Germany in a business trip in the 50s and ended up staying .

[quote] What if your ancestry is split though like [R2]? Would the lineage of the earliest arrivers take precedence? It seems like a logistical nightmare.

It seems like an exercise in vanity and exclusion. Please see R13.

[quote] I’m a descendant of John Rolfe and Pocahontas on my moms fathers side.

They had a son, Thomas, who had a daughter Jane. Jane married Robert Bolling. Jane and Robert’s descendants are known as the “Red” Bollings. Robert later married another woman and their descendants are known as the “White” Bollings (so not related to Pocahontas). These are the accepted descendants of Robert Bolling.

One of Robert and Jane’s children was John, who also had a son named John. These are still down the Pocahontas line. The last John had a set of accepted children, so all Red Bollings. However, there are a set of Bollings that later descendants claim were also John’s children. If they were, all those descendants would be descendants of Pocahontas. Since they are not accepted as true children of John, all the descendants are called “”Blue” Bollings. Sadly, I’m in the Blue Bollings and likely not a real descendant of Pocahontas. It would have been nice those.

[quote] J.D. Vance, who believes that some Americans are more American than others.

How about the old lady? (No hate, no shade to the Mrs.)

I have some ancestors (Pennsylvania Dutch, like many others on here) who have been in the US from the 1750s, and who probably participated in the Revolutionary War. They were German of course, but DNA says my family is 98% British/Irish with 2% southern European, so apparently the German genes became more and more washed out by intermarriage with English people over the centuries in Pennsylvania. You're down to 1.5 % contribution from any one source after only 6 generations. (50%, 25%, 12.5 %, 6.25%, 3.12%, 1.5%)

My surname comes from an English branch from York that arrived in Virginia in the 1780s. (Just after the conclusion of the Revolutionary war). They became the hillbilly branch, living in the Appalachians. One of my ancestors was a Hatfield of the Hatfield/McCoy feud, so that says it all. Many first cousins marrying first cousins. Yikes. My great grandmother took back her maiden name and gave it to her children after driving the father off. There's speculation that that happened because of a family feud and she wanted to avoid retribution to her children.

Another English family came to the US in the 1600s and settled in Connecticut. We had no contact with that branch, because my great grandfather on that side died before the birth of my grandmother. Only much later did an amateur genealogist from that side contact me via internet and gave me some background on that branch.

All of those disparate families from different areas emigrated to Montana between 1870 and 1900.

My mom's parents were both born in Ireland. One came from what is now Northern Ireland, and the other from the southwest coast. My grandmother was originally supposed to sail on the Titanic to the US, but delayed her passage for 2 weeks and ended up on the Franconia. My grandfather was born shortly after the civil war and emigrated to Iowa when he was a very small child. The Irish grandparents also ended up in Montana, one around 1900, the other after 1912. And that's where my parents met.

So a mix of distant and recent immigration, probably like most.

[quote] Mine is easy. Both parents from Italy. 97% southwestern Italian

Do you have a fat cock, Dustin?

[quote] Prussians are the high-class Germans.

Then why did so many of them feel the need to come to America?

R69 World War I was on the horizon. Many countries we know today didn’t exist at that point. There was no Poland. If you didn’t leave you were likely to be conscripted into whatever army got ahold of you.

There was a concept of Poland, just not an independent state at that point.

I know that my father's side came from Latvia and my mother's was from Russia but we don't have enough info about them beyond 3 generations. It frustrates me to see that so many people have so much info about their ancestors and we can't find much at all.

[quote]Do you have a fat cock, Dustin?

Absolutely.

Thanks, R70. I was just being snarky. I figured that there was some historical reason.

One of my great, great, great grandpas on my dad’s side had a shit ton of kids. He had a family in Canada and abandoned them. Then he went to the Us and had a whole bunch of other kids.

R69, even the most “high-class” countries had substantial underclasses. Prussia was at least as class-stratified as the U.K. Plenty of people who came to the U.S. from there were peasants, my own ancestors included. They wanted opportunities that they were never get in Europe.

R69, I have a great-great grandfather from Germany who, who like the earlier Prussians, left to evade the draft. Or, as my grandmother said, "avoided conscription."

The various principalities in the now German region, along with attacking each other, were also often at odds over religion. Some of the the earlier Prussians were fleeing religious persecution as well as the "warring" factions of Christians trying to dominate. For example, there was the "The Thirty Years War (1618–1648), one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, played out primarily in German lands, but involved most of the countries of Europe. It was to some extent a religious conflict, involving both Protestants and Catholics." Many people of the region headed to the Colonies during that time, early members of my own family included.

R77 = Barron Trump

The Irish grandfather left Ireland to escape gambling debts.

My mother's family came across on the Mayflower. My father's family came over before the revolution, and fought in that war. One of my forebears fought and died in the Battle of Ticonderoga. Both families settled in the Massachusetts area until the westward expansion brought them to Kansas and California. Happy to say they missed the Civil War entirely. No slaveholders. Nobody famous.

Speaking of ancestry, a few years ago I started a thread about my uncle who committed suicide in the 80s (?). I wanted to update the thread but it's too old and closed.

He's listed by the military as dying in 2011. There isn't an obituary for either decade. I have submitted a FOI request with the military.

In searching for information about him I stumbled onto a treasure trove of information about my grandparents. I found out my Nana's maiden name. I found a bunch of documents from the Holocaust Survivors and Victims database that are intriguing, I wish I could read German. What I can gather is, they (mostly my grandfather, my Nana by association) were interviewed and denied... something by the review board at Geneva as my grandfather's documents for the entirety of WWII were forged. 'Petitioner is not within the mandate of the organization' 'However, in the opinion of the board, the petioner gives the impression of attempting to conceal certain of wartime activities, which if known, would exclude him from the mandate'

[quote] I found a bunch of documents from the Holocaust Survivors and Victims database that are intriguing, I wish I could read German.

Google Translate: use its camera option to translate one page at a time in a second, print or manuscript.

My maternal grandmother was from a Quaker family in Indiana, by way of Virginia & North Carolina. The earliest of her ancestors arrived in Jamestown (from England) in 1623, at age 24, on a ship named Diana. He wasn't a Quaker (obviously) but his son married one of the first known converts to Quakerism in Virginia (1659) and converted shortly thereafter. Her parents were French Huguenots, who had immigrated to Holland, and then England, before arriving in Virginia around 1835. Within 2-3 generations, everyone in my maternal grandmother's tree was Quaker (you can tell because all the birth/marriage/death dates are from the records of Friends' meetings).

My maternal grandfather was German, British & Dutch. The earliest of his British ancestors arrived in 1676 (in Maryland), the earliest of his German ancestors arrived prior to 1727 (also in Maryland).

My father's tree is ALL Irish. All of his great-grandparents were born in Ireland, arriving in the U.S. between 1841-1863. Settled in Brooklyn & the Hudson River Valley.

[quote] Her parents were French Huguenots, who had immigrated to Holland, and then England, before arriving in Virginia around 1835.

TYPO -- that should should have read 1635.

r82, a lot of it is handwritten but I will definitely give it a shot - thanks!

I was born in the wagon of a travelin' show My mama used to dance for the money they'd throw Papa would do whatever he could Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good

My paternal grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Liverpool England at the age of 18. In order to get U.S. citizenship he had to enlist to fight in the Spanish American war. I have his medals.

His English family disowned him for this. He died in the swine flu epidemic of 1918. His son, my Dad, was 6 months old.

It's weird, from photos I look more like him than I do my Dad.

Of my 32 sixth-great grandparents (late 17th/early 18th CC), only two were not born in what is now the US. My DNA says I’m 93% British Isles, 6% Northwestern Europe, and traces of others. That tracks given the known immigration records of my ancestors. The earliest generations were in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia. Over the next generations, they made their way westward through New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio where I’m from. The early 19th C. immigrants were from Baden Württemburg. The lot of the English early settlers were merchant class and craftsman types. I don’t know how the hell I’m so poor.

Does everyone in the US do their DNA analysis? I think Americans tend to buy into that melting pot business about all Americans being a Heinz 57 mix, descended in an unbroken line from: a freed slave, a plantation owner, a Prussian officer in the Revolutionary war, an Italian immigrant whose name was simplified by Ellis Island staff, Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign artists,a quarter-Cherokee great grandmother, French Huguenots, Grandma Moses, Norwegian bachelor farmers, a Holocaust survivor, Alfred the Great, Charlie Chaplin, Pocahontas, and Cleopatra.

R89 I’m R2 and I have done a DNA test as well as built out my family tree. I am definitely a “Heinz 57” variety, although my DNA shows larger chunks from certain regions (England, Russia/Ukraine, Germany, and Sweden are the most substantial)—but I also have small amounts of French, Latvian, Portuguese as well. I actually don’t show as having Ashkenazi Jewish DNA, but my mom and uncle do. I frankly don’t think it’s a myth that many Americans have significantly mixed DNA/lineages given the amount of people who have come here from all over the world and intermixed. I would say it’s probably rarer now for the average American to be a “pure blood” anything (or close to it) than to have a variety of genetic origins.

…. it’s probably rarer now for the average American to be a “pure blood” anything (or close to it) than to have a variety of genetic origins.

To this point: my grandfather was the 8th generation, going back to the 1640s, of 100% percent French without any intermarriage. In Quebec they are called pure laine.

We all have over 1000000 15th great grandparents. Most all white people are a descendant of Charlamange.

For me I’ve always been interested in my ancestry because I’ve always been interested in history. It’s also interesting to think about where your ancestors came from and how it has shaped who you are. I also think it’s really cool that snap can be used to help solve crimes or identify Jane and John Does.

R92 or someone else in the 9th c. who procreated.

Not suprising at all that all these old queens are English/German.

The latest Ancestry percentages are 54% England and NW Europe, 17% Germanic Europe, 16% Scotland, 8% Wales. Only 1% Netherlands now that my Dutch ancestry has been so watered down. It may seem like a mix but what's important is that it's all NW Europe.

[Quote] a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of us Anglifying them

Aaaaaaaaaaaaccurate!!!!

what's important is that it's all NW Europe.…

Proud Boy!

[quote] Does everyone in the US do their DNA analysis?

R89: Oh hell, no! I'm not giving my DNA to a company (and going into a database) just to satisfy my curiosity about distant ancestors, or to "prove" that I'm a descendant of an Ancient Planter (Jamestown), or whatever. Everything I know about my ancestors is from research of public records and written family histories (the Quakers, in particular, were really good about that stuff).

I have several friends who have taken DNA tests. Two of them were adopted, so I appreciated their reasons for doing so -- they knew next to nothing about their biological parents/ancestors. The others knew a fair amount going back few generations....but took a DNA test prove something in particular (being descended from a particular group) OR just because it was en vogue to take a Ancestry/23&Me test. One of them, who just wanted to prove her Ashehezahi heritage, learned that she had (at least) four older half siblings. Unbeknownst to her mother, her father had been a sperm donor while attending medical school, while her parents were dating. That didn't go over very well.

Marlene Dietrch was Prussian German.

The romantic girl from Schöneberg

[quote] Oh hell, no! I'm not giving my DNA to a company (and going into a database) just to satisfy my curiosity about distant ancestors, or to "prove" that I'm a descendant of an Ancient Planter (Jamestown), or whatever.

WOW this is really bringing out the eldergays

Father's side is mostly Jewish and recent immigrants. Some of Mom's side has been in the American colonies since the 1500s. They fought in the Revolutionary War and for the Confederacy. Some were Huguenots fleeing France. She is also British Isles (English, Irish and Scottish) as well as African-American (West/Sub Saharan African decent).

Is that supposed to be a "burn" R101?

There were no “American” colonies in the 1500s.

Unless you mean a Quebec fur trapper.

A friend was constantly referring herself as Italian and very proud of it. Did her DNA and learned she's mostly Irish and less than 15% Italian. Took the wind out of her sails, poor thing.

After my sis did her DNA we learned, along with German and British Isles, we also had some French, Spanish, and Finnish heritage. I feel a lot more interesting now!

I like it in The Thin Man when Myrna Loy says something about her ancestry on her father's side, and William Powell says, "How is your father's side, by the way?" "Much better, thank you."

[Quote] There were no “American” colonies in the 1500s.

Every area controlled by Europeans in the Americas was an American colony. This included much of South America, all of Central America, and some northern and southern areas in North America.

Try harder. Weak effort.

There were no colonists here in the 1500s whose descendants fought in the Revolution or for the Confederacy. LOL

That’s not what American means, dearheart.

There are many different definitions, but the one you just provided isn’t one of them.

My ancestor came to Virginia in 1623 as an indentured servant. I assume that he probably had legal problems and was forced to leave England (Cumberland County). After he had served the five years of his indenture, he was deeded 50 acres in Accomac county, and he shows up on a 1628 census list for colonial Virginia.

So far over your head—that’s not even the jist of the post being responded to. You can shit stir to your heart’s content.

gist* 🫣

I’m 7/8 Irish American and 1/8 Swiss-American.

The 1/8 Swiss is my father’s grandfather. His ancestry in the colonies dates back to a Swiss mercenary soldier in New Amsterdam. The history is very murky. Apparently he served as a mercenary soldier in the settlement for a while and then went native in the town. What he did is unknown, except he didn’t like the English so when they took over, he went with some Germans who landed in the city out to Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Germans were from all over, so it’s possible there were other Swiss in the group he migrated with. I bring this up because they continued to call themselves “Swiss” until the time my great grandfather came to New York City in the late 19th century and worked in a wealthy persons house. He married an Irish girl and had my grandmother.

The other 7/8ths are not as interesting — all came over from Ireland during the potato blight in the 1840s. Like many of those Irish in the first wave, they fought and scrimped and eventually established themselves, so my family was more lace curtain Irish, although my father was shanty Irish.

I don’t get why someone would be more happy about their Italian ancestry and not their Irish. I am very proud of being Irish. And I have a Gaelic last name not one of those invader ones. Apparently only original Gaelic families have banshees

[Quote] So far over your head—that’s not even the jist of the post being responded to. You can shit stir to your heart’s content.

Who are you even talking to? That’s the issue here — you don’t know how to properly respond on a public forum.

If you had quoted whomever you were responding to and then said, “no, XYZ,” then you’d be clear what you weee saying.

Saying “there were no American colonies in the 1500s is an increasingly ignorant thing to say unless you contextualize it.

^^^ “were”

And “embarrassingly”

It was contextualized. That’s what the quotes were for.

Zzzzzx

There were no “American” colonies in the 1500s.

Context!

I am hooker

[Quote] There were no “American” colonies in the 1500s.

[Quote] Unless you mean a Quebec fur trapper.

If you think your scare quotes contextualize this reply, you’re just confirming what I just said about your not knowing how to communicate in a public forum.

Lots of DLers from English and German stock, which is interesting. I don't know if there has ever been a study on homosexuality and ethnicity, but for some reason there does seem to be a higher than usual prevalence of homosexual males amongst ethnically English and German men.

I blame Queen Victoria and her children.

[quote]our earliest ancestors arrived in 1660. They were known as Palatines.

My grandfather was a Palpatine.

From proud line of hooker. My grandma vus entertain all troops in WW2. Make much money

I AM SWISS!

R77 thank you for that thread. I had ancestors on both side who left Germany and I believe religious conflicts were an issue with all of them.

Many of my father's German ancestors were all part of various German religious sects - I'm forgetting all the various ones but Anabaptist was one (I believe they have some connection to Amish/Mennonite)....they all settled in western/central PA and nearby areas. I think those denominations were very conservative - if not actually being Amish/Mennonite than observing very simple dress. Mom's German ancestors were split evenly among Catholics (we think they became Catholic at some point because they were forced to) and Protestants.

As for my father's father's line (the one that bears our family name) we were always told we were Scotch Irish and that was exactly what we were. But when I did Family Tree DNA I learned our DNA indicated we were "Border Scots" (possibly also known as Ulster Scots) which meant our ancestors were in Scotland and then emigrated to Ireland before coming to the USA. Dad has a bit of Swiss and French in his line as well.

I have a few interesting people in my tree as either distant ancestors or distant cousins. One of the ancestors was apparently known for being among the first settlers in western/central PA and was held captive by Native Americans for a while. A distant cousin was a famous (ish?) Canadian football star. Another distant cousin was one of the first doctors to work on HIV/AIDS.

Doing both Ancestry and FamilyTree DNA helped my research a lot. (Got a big surprise with that unknown half sibling, tho....) 23andMe, however, was not helpful. I was also lucky that so many of my ancestors/relatives were born/raised/died in western/central PA, where the recordkeeping was AMAZING and where people have been compiling info for decades. The only unexpected bit w/the DNA tests (other than the half sibling) was that my mom had been told numerous times she had Native American ancestry, but there was no proof of that in any of the DNA results.

R118 Link please. Oh, here's one!

R14, I'm from San Francisco where there are many Irish and Italian descendants and immigrants as well as legions of Italian and Irish marriages. I don't know what their spawn are called but among my friends, the pride in the Italian part of their heritage is off the charts. The Italian side overrides almost everything else, like one of my my past lovers. Granted, he looked like the statue of David, but the culture of the British Isles side (his mom's family) was completely ignored, though he did love them.

I think it must be the glorious art history, fashion, food, and warm Mediterranean climate that besots everyone. I'm about 30% Irish but mom always emphasized her Welsh/English roots. As a Protestant she felt the lack of family planning urged by the Catholic church was unseemly. Funny, her lifelong best friends were a Spanish Catholic and a Jewish woman from LA. Both were huge and loving influences on my life. I'm glad mom had few prejudices and grew out of the ones she learned in her small Midwest town.

Not to bash Italians, I love them, but one of my best friends, Italian/Irish, and I traveled Europe together. Always proud of his Italian heritage, his disappointment was palpable when we got to Italy and he was treated just like another American. Couldn't speak the language and very reserved in personality. I condoled him.

Also R114, congratulations on having banshees. I'm a fan. Have you tried this wine? It's great!

As a dirt-poor kid hearing tales of our once-royal German-ness, I almost believed my family’s bullshit.

Except, all the Germans on my dad’s side came over in 1890 from Poznan and worked as electricians or plumbers - perhaps an excavator. Most kissed up against middle-class, but their kids didn’t have as much luck.

My mother’s side cared much less about ancestry as long as the graves were kept presentable. That side was Scottish-Irish-??? From Tennessee. We have a bit of EVERYTHING on that side. That’s the side that features ancient family photos where some of the men are not wearing shoes.

R89 - that was my point upthread. Once you go back more than 3 or 4 generations, you're just continuing one line in search of something interesting, even though it is 1/16th or much less of your familial heritage.

For many Americans who don't know their past and whose families immigrated in the past 100-150 years (which is a lot of them), there's great value in knowing your history.

But once you go back before that - it's just an ego trip, trying to find amazing stories and lineage that has nothing to do with you and has not informed how you live your life or your traits genetically.

I still watch shows like Finding Your Roots with Henry Gates and I do find it fascinating - particularly for black Americans who have lost so much documentation over the years. But I know they're always trying to find something interesting for TV - and they completely ignore 99% of the others in your family that led average, hum-drum lives.

I wish people would recognize the bizarre egotism in doing your genealogy. Well over 99% of us came from average or below-average people -as was the norm before the 20th century middle-class boom.

I’d also like to differentiate between family members who died from injuries in 1918 and family members who happened to drop dead from the Great Flu pandemic.

I had so many people claiming our uncles died from the war. No, they survived the war and came home to catch the flu!

[quote] Once you go back more than 3 or 4 generations, you're just continuing one line in search of something interesting, even though it is 1/16th or much less of your familial heritage.

Agree, for a lot of amateur armchair genealogists, yes, this is all they're doing, following a few lines.

I've worked on numerous lines, as far as I could go (I have just shy of 6,000 people in my tree). But I'm still probably in the middle of "I only want to follow a few lines back" and "I have 100,000 people in my tree" types of researchers.

"I still watch shows like Finding Your Roots with Henry Gates" - God how I hate FYR. Talk about an ego-centric program! Every week, Henry Louis Gates, Jr sucks up to several celebrities... all he does is fawn, fawn, and more fawning.

Then he presents a geneology charts (how much do these cost?) and has hsi "gotcha!" moment. Jay-sus Christ it's so repeatative.

Note that this program never does the genaology for some average schmo... just a "celebrity" who could damn well afford to pay for it to begin with.

The heat of a thousand suns I hate that smug Gates and the smarminess of hos surprises and idiotic questions, like, "so, your great-great-grandfather was an overser on a plantation - how do you feel about THAT?!"

R127 nice try, but you failed (again?). If you can, comprehend the intent of the original post addressed by the comment you copied. Bye👋🏼

R130 You said, "But once you go back before that - it's just an ego trip, trying to find amazing stories and lineage that has nothing to do with you and has not informed how you live your life or your traits genetically."

I could not disagree more. While I am very interested in of my family's recent history since circa 1880, I didn't learn about the earlier adventures until my sister did the research. The women in my family are all eligible to join the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). There is no interest in that among them, most live in the present, while still interested in the past because it's nice knowing.

My family line goes directly from the 1660 immigrants through my father and uncle. It's all documented. Over the years many new immigrants joined the family, and now we're distantly related to vast quantities of modern day fellow Americans. My sister met some distant cousins in Ohio. The family resemblance was scary. Who were those people who looked so much like me? Shared DNA.

Now that I know my family history, yes, I am proud. Those early settlers suffered as they built this nation. I do not deny that cruelty and ignorance was involved in the settling of the US. But I proud of the progress we made to be more inclusive and equal. A war was fought to free the slaves, women worked tirelessly to gain the vote. Marriage equality, women's rights, human rights, compassion for immigrants, we've done much to improve the lives of people in this country.

To see our progress threatened by and idiot like DJ Trump is horrifying. It feels like we may soon be fighting a second American Revolution to stave off fascism. Trump's recent actions reflect those of his hero, Hitler. We can't just sit and watch. I don't plan too, I hope you don't either.

We can be true to the ideals of the founding fathers, who for all the sins shown by history, strove for peace and liberty. Remember the words of Abraham Lincoln spoken at Gettysburg “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Keeping the government out of the hands of billionaires and their stooges will take hard work but it must be done.

I don't burst into flames of hatred at the very sight of Henry Louis Gates as R133 does, and I can appreciate watching the show and the various notables to hear their stories.

But I think that show and Who Do You Think You Are? are, obviously, showing a very narrow lens of what the experience of genealogy research is really like. It's sort of like watching an HGTV show and thinking you can do a whole house's worth of renovation in an hour. And sometimes those episodes get into the shallow waters, trying to jump to conclusions and say "Oh, X person in my family tree survived scurvy so that must be why I became an orange grower!" 🙄

The show I actually liked the best was one called DNA Family Secrets. Despite the name sounding very tabloid-y, the cases were interesting. All the participants were regular people, not celebrities. And there was a host, as well as an academic person who was almost like a therapist, and was very gentle with any news relayed to the person getting ancestry info. Unfortunately there's only about 10-12 episodes, I think, but I thought it was the best one of them all. (They might be on YouTube.)

Two of my grandfather's cousins were executed for sedition in pre-independence Ireland.

R13 And the descendants of slaves should be labeled Gatekeepers with permanent, irrevocable status and immunity from petty inconveniences like parking tickets. Their ancestors did work from sun up to sun down while get the living shit beat out of them, reviving no compensation beyond temporary shelter and food so they can wake up one more morning each night to work and pacify and get beat for wanting freedom.

Immigrant people go home! Since my ancestors are from like 12 different countries it's going to be very hard to do.

How would the world have been if cultures kept to themselves, didn't conquer,colonize, enslave, pilllage or plunder? I think it would be a better world to see all those cultures intact keeping their traditions alive and not every culture looking similar.

But it is what it is.

[quote]How would the world have been if cultures kept to themselves, didn't conquer,colonize, enslave, pilllage or plunder?

Inbred and dull. Like R139

Mostly Cajun and Irish with some British strains. I descend from the first cousin of a first lady, so once you get back to our mutual ancestor, my family tree is well documented. Another part of the family traces back to the French settlement at Port Royal, in what is now Nova Scotia.

Well that’s where the original Cajuns came from, so I hope so.

"High-class Germans" = most Aryan.

[quote] "High-class Germans" = most Aryan.

Not necessarily. There would be a lot of Aryan peasant stock.

Also New Netherlands Dutch, R21, Northern NJ. Overall a mutt with Irish Protestant, German Jewish, Scots, and a lot of English also.

#138, since talk of reparations for the descendants of slaves keep coming up in the news, I personally think breaks on loans could be a way to help out. For example, educational grants, lower rates on mortgages, business loans, college loans, things like that. African Americans were barred from decent housing, jobs, and higher education for years, as recently until the 1960s when fair housing laws and affirmative action were implemented. Such discrimination still happens and the racist trump administration is trying to roll that progress backwards. Even after the Civil War, freed slaves struggled to learn to read after it being illegal for them to do so. Educational opportunities were scarce as well and segregation created unequal learning spaces.

I shared my general ancestry story above but there are some really sad stories in my tree (as I suspect there are in most every tree).

There was a distant cousin in the 40s who served jail time for sodomy.

A few distant relatives (including a few married couples) died of syphilis - you could get it then, really not realize you had it, and then in a year or two it would fuck with your brain, cause insanity and ultimately kill you.

Multiple cases where the entire family, or all the kids, or all the kids and one parent, died of a transmittable disease. Diptheria was one if I remember correctly (1860s).

Three or four murderers, about as many murder victims. One 1908 case made the national news - the killer was married to a relative, tried to kill two of my great-great grandmother's children, ended up killing his wife (another relative). Another guy was murdered in the 1980s by a neighbor who thought he was fooling around with his wife (but my relative hadn't been, he was dating that woman's friend).

One of my grandfathers died of tuberculosis

Mine too, R148. He was in a sanitarium for almost a year but he survived TB, dying a decade or so later of mesothelioma (he'd been a Navy shipbuilder in the 40s and likely got asbestos in his lungs then) and black lung (he'd also worked in the mines).

I’m 100 percent Litvak — the rock bottom of the Ashkenazic food chain. Great grandmother served a prison sentence for nearly killing her landlord in the Old Country. One grandfather left Communist literature in the outhouse and was caught. He barely escaped being sent to Siberia before he emigrated. The other grandfather — most likely the offspring of first cousins — was born into abject poverty but was a boy genius who graduated from Yale Medical School at 18. He drugged my grandmother to keep her quiet and carried on affairs with every vagina that crossed his path. My family legacy is cancer, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, congestive heart failure, etcetera etcetera. Tell you what: 5,000 years of historical trauma, 5,000 years of inbreeding and this is what you get: tsuris. Any further questions?

I have. A lot of crazy on one side of the family. I wonder how much of it could have been cured by modern medicine or was brought on by substance abuse. There were family members who threatened to jump of roofs (quite often in one case), rode down the stairs in a baby carriage. Threatened children, one uncle whose family would only peek out from a crack in the door and never met anybody, somebody scalded themselves, and somebody who would stick tissues up his nose and walk around. I’m odd but not that crazy. This was all in the early 20th century.

One of my great-great-great-great grandfathers was kicked to death by a man named Pleasant.

Long ago a great aunt told me the story of the night she heard moans and distress from behind her parent's bedroom door. The next morning they gave her a chamber pot of blood and yuck to dump in the outhouse. Soon after she met her new sibling. She didn't even know her mother was pregnant. This would have been around 1910.

Another ancient aunt told me of the time her young father (around 1919, before said aunt was born) came home to the family farm to find his sister dying. She told him she took poison because she was pregnant. He jumped back on his horse and sped to town to get the doctor. When they returned his sister was dead. Their parent were very religious, ran a strict home. They were distraught to lose their daughter and regretted their authoritarian ways, they would rather have their daughter alive, and that no matter what happened, she could come to them. They never learned who the father was.

My aunt said it changed the family profoundly. Her father raised his own children to know whatever they did, he would be there for them.