How did you get here?

[loyalsister]

To the US, I mean.

My Ancestors are mostly European, particularly Irish. No white man- no me.

Some of mine were already here, and the people and culture are beginning to feel the genocide committed by invaders.

Others were brought here to be bought and sold.

And other people have ancestors who were invited - not very politely. Because we took the territory that is New Mexico, Arizona, and part of California during the Mexican American War.

[Control-Z]

1. I recently did a post like this

and it was really a fun thread - until I got too busy to keep up with it. I was hoping it would live for months!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022281433

[loyalsister]

8. Sorry I missed it

Maybe we can revive yours...

[Control-Z]

27. Nah. Yours is going great!

What would be nice is if we could merge them! Remember when the mods used to do that on DU2?

[loyalsister]

39. I didn't post much back then

But that really is a great idea. Thanks btw

[RebelOne]

2. All ancestors on mother and father's sides came from Ireland and England

in the 18th and 19th centuries. I think there were a few Scottish in there too.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. Ditto

Altho my Grandmom's family ended up in Ohio, then later her parents moved to Wash. state when she was 6
( she remembered the adventure of traveling by train)

I am Irish/Welsh/ maybe some Oklahoma indian, if rumors are true
and somehow ended up living in the Deep South where so many Celtic heritage people located.
Guess it just took me half my life to find out where I really belonged!!!!

[RebelOne]

54. All of my ancestors settled in the North,

Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. My parents moved to Miami, Florida, where I grew up since the age of 5.

[DURHAM D]

3. On The Hercules in 1635.

[loyalsister]

12. My history knowledge starts much later

Where was it coming from?

[DURHAM D]

15. England

I forget the name of the port city they departed from. My ancestor was actually the Master (Captain) of the Hercules for a couple of years.

[Light House]

4. My parents left the Soviet Union shortly before Hitler invaded

and settled in San Francisco in the Russian community there.
Did experience some bigotry while growing up, but not much.
Still speak fluent Russian and English.

[loyalsister]

6. That's awesome that you kept your Russian Language

So many immigrants were discouraged from speaking theirs. I think we are gaining a language with the expanded use of Spanish.

[Light House]

9. Thanks.

It's not that easy, but my wife is Russian and our kids were taught the language also.

[Elwood P Dowd]

10. How did they get out of there during a war? (nm)

[Light House]

13. They fled just before Hitler invaded.

I said in my first post that they left before Hitler invaded.

[Recursion]

5. My ancestor was a pirate who accepted a French amnesty

and settled in New Orleans

[loyalsister]

21. Ancestor?

By this time aren't there more than one? Sorry to seem nosy, just usually there are at least a few between now and the days of piracy?

[Recursion]

24. Oh, sure, but that's my paternal great-great-etc. grandfather who first came here

The first person with my last name to come to the US. We have plenty of other scoundrels of different types all over US history. My grandmother's joke was that we can trace my family tree as far back as Mississippi kept capital punishment records.

[loyalsister]

37. That sounds similar to my family

Grandpa was a bootlegger.

"as far back as Mississippi kept capital punishment records."

[BainsBane]

90. Aaron Burr

is a scoundrel I descend from on my father's side. Less of a scoundrel was the Great Awakening minister Jonathan Edwards.

On my mom's side, which is the family I'm closest to, they were all Irish peasants and then Midwestern farmers.

[loyalsister]

107. "Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God"

I had to read some of his stuff for an Early American Lit. class. Very scary stuff.

[BainsBane]

110. for sure

He delivered those fire-and-brimstone sermons in a dead pan manner, historians say, not at all like what you would expect from reading them. Ben Franklin used to count how many people passed out during Edwards' sermons.

[RebelOne]

55. An ancestor on my father's side was Edward Teach (Blackbeard).

From what my father told me, he was a great-great-great uncle.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. My grandmother and mother crossed the border from Canada to steal cleaning jobs.

My grandmother fled Ireland to England to steal Brit cleaning jobs.

[LiberalEsto]

11. My parents came to the U.S. in 1949

They were Estonian war refugees and were living in a displaced persons camp in post-war Germany.

[DURHAM D]

17. How interesting.

Have you/they been back to visit in recent years?

[LiberalEsto]

72. I wish they could have but my mother died in 1975

and my father went back once, when the Soviet Union had heavy restrictions for foreign visitors, particularly from the US. He was permitted to stay in the only hotel for visitors, which was in Tallinn, the capital. He couldn't travel outside the city to his home town, and I'm not sure he could travel around the city much either. Relatives and friends had to visit him at the hotel. This may have been in the early 1980s; he died in 1988, just a few years before Estonia regained its independence.

[loyalsister]

23. Amazing

How was there experience as immigrants? Were they welcome?

[LiberalEsto]

74. Well, it helped that they both spoke fluent English

although with a British accent.

They had an Estonian-American sponsor family in Brooklyn NY that took them in and helped them get on their feet and find jobs. Finding a sponsor wasn't easy in the late 40s; it had to be someone of the same former nationality, and there were strict quotas for how many people could immigrate from a given country. They also had my ailing grandmother with them.

My father got a job as a bookkeeper at a car dealership, and I believe my mother scrubbed floors. They were soon able to rent an apartment, and took in at least one immigrant woman as a boarder; she became my godmother. There may have been others they helped. In the late 1950s they helped an Estonian family from Sweden come to the US. The husband was a former boyfriend of my mother's. They lived with us in NJ while building a house in a neighboring town and remained lifelong friends with my family.

Estonians are fortunate because they look enough like Americans of white Anglo-Saxon origin to be unnoticeable. There were quite a few Estonian-Americans in the NY-NJ area and they organized schools to teach the kids the language, history and culture. Even though I was born in NYC, I spoke Estonian at home and went to Estonian Saturday school, scouts, folk dancing classes and summer camp, so I am still reasonably fluent in the language.

[loyalsister]

81. Great story

It's like a blueprint for how to maintain a cultural identity that they did very naturally.

[LiberalEsto]

89. Latvians, Lithuanians and Hungarians do pretty much the same stuff

I can't speak for other ethnic groups but I'm sure there are many others that find ways to pass on their heritage.

[SoCalDem]

14. Mother's side...Bohemia/Germany/Ireland

Father's side France/Spain via Cuba

The occupations I know of:

gypsy
college professor (Baden Baden)
farmer
jeweler

[frogmarch]

18. My dad’s paternal ancestors were English and emigrated

Last edited Thu Feb 21, 2013, 09:59 PM - Edit history (1)

to New England in the 1600s during the Great Migration. One of the families, John & Elizabeth Cogswell and all but one of their children, an adult daughter, came over on the ship Angel Gabriel, which sank off the coast of Maine during a hurricane. The Cogswells survived and settled in Ipswich MA.

John and Elizabeth Cogswell were also ancestors of American presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and of British princes William and Harry through their mother, Diana.

My dad’s maternal ancestors were French and German and arrived in the U.S. from Alsace-Lorraine in the early 1800s.

My mother’s paternal ancestors were English and her maternal ancestors Indian and Portuguese. My mother was born in India and never left. I was too, but I came to America on a WWII U.S. troop transport ship when I was about a year old.

[Romulox]

19. My maternal relatives came here as indentured servants. It seems America has written them out

of history.

[loyalsister]

31. True

I think that is true of so many. My inspiration for this post was a criticism I heard of Black History month. Currently the history of voluntary immigrants and invaders continues to dominate the very concept of history in this country. We don't acknowledge or discuss Black History, Women's History, the history of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, or any other, enough.

[BainsBane]

91. Not real history

but popular history, yes. Mine also came over as indentured servants.

[ScreamingMeemie]

20. Late 19th century--Mother's side: French/German Father's side: Irish/German

My father's mother was disowned by her rich lawyerin' family (Irish) for marrying a poor (German) bartender in late 1920s Milwaukee.

[HereSince1628]

22. Well, the Bay Colony gave my 11th grt grandfather land in Lynne, MA that he thought was crap...

so he decided to go steal some better land from the existing residents of Long Island...

Unfortunately the Dutch who held the land didn't think too much of that idea and they threw his ass in irons!

When they let him out, he had to settle for second pickin's... so he and 6 others moved across Long Island to a place way out in the middle of no-where that they decided to call Southampton.

[octoberlib]

25. On my mother's side,

Last edited Thu Feb 21, 2013, 06:19 PM - Edit history (1)

Great great great grandparents fled Prussia due to religious persecution, ended up in Ukraine. Fled Ukraine due to the Russian Civil War and came to the US. On my father's side they came here from Holland. Not sure why.

[lamp_shade]

26. My Father's parents from Slovenia. My Mother's grand-parents from Ireland.

[Spider Jerusalem]

28. My ancestors left Europe for one reason or another

I have been able to trace, probably, a few hundred immigrant ancestors; as far as I know only four of them arrived after the Revolution, and most of them arrived before 1700. Most of them left Britain, most of those were English, but they were also Scots, Welsh, Irish...and Dutch, German, and French. My various ancestors include the younger sons of gentry families who set out to make their fortunes in the New World (one ancestor left his sons behind in England to finish their schooling; one of those sons went on to become a founding member of the Royal Society and royal physician to Charles II), Catholics who went off to Maryland with Lord Baltimore, Puritans (including one of the commissioners sent to govern Maryland under Cromwell; he was killed in the Battle of the Severn, called "the last battle of the English Civil War"'; and one of the founders of Hempstead, Long Island, whose great-grandfather was supposedly burned at the stake under Bloody Mary), Quakers who had land grants from William Penn, French Huguenots, Palatine Germans, and (my most recent immigrant ancestors) Irish escaping the famine.

[CTyankee]

29. boring family ancestry. All Scotland, England and Wales.

Pale as ghosts we are...

[loyalsister]

45. It could be worse

That's similar to me, except for some Native American. My great great great grandfather had five children and three Native American wives who died soon after the children were mobile.

[CTyankee]

51. Growing up in Texas I remember hoping that maybe some of my forebears were

Native Americans. The Welsh side had, after all, lived in Oklahoma before coming to Texas. Nothing of a sort turned up there, tho...

[loyalsister]

108. My dad takes a sort of romantic pride in our Native American ancestry

But he's actually pretty clueless about it. He told me that I should identify as NA to apply for scholarships, etc. I told him that those were intended for people who did not pass as white and grow up in the suburbs.

[Shrike47]

62. All English and Welsh here.

My younger son has been referred to by friends as 'the whitest guy I know.'. We 's pale and wan.

[CTyankee]

73. when my daughter studied theatre in Dublin her Irish friends said she looked so Irish!

But there doesn't appear to be any Irish in my family. So it's all that British Isles look, altho my son has dark hair like the Welsh side of my family.

[Blue4Texas]

30. Remember the Alamo

[LeftInTX]

34. I know descendents who are Mexican American

Alamo descendents got good land grants.

[Blue4Texas]

38. We already had land grants

They became Texas LOL

[loyalsister]

43. I missed TX when I listed territory gained in the war

I always think AZ first because the most interesting story from a Mexican American man is from AZ. It came from the sheriff in my town of Columbia Missouri. He spoke about it publicly and talked about how he was discouraged from speaking Spanish and feels like he lost something.

[Blue4Texas]

46. True in Texas too

We got in trouble for speaking Spanish at school or work - if language is culture then yes we missed the experience of integrating it into a psyche we grew up in

[loyalsister]

49. Interesting how there is considerable evidence of positive effects of knowing more than one language

As more Americans whose native language is English are acquiring Spanish, we are better for it.

[Blue4Texas]

53. Great thread

Thanks for posting an opportunity to learn beyond our common interest in DU

[loyalsister]

65. Thank you

I love all of the responses.

[LeftInTX]

32. My paternal grandparents are survivors of the Armenian Genocide

They came in 1912-1923 from Turkey. Horrific stories about what the Turks did.

My mom is from the south, North Carolina and Georgia. They are basically English, Scotch, Irish. They've been in the US a long time. Have no idea when any of them came over.

[dixiegrrrrl]

68. Has there been any public admission of that genocide?

your grandparents were exceptionaly lucky,and their survival and migration to the US sounds like material for a book.

[LeftInTX]

71. Not by the Turks

They keep on denying.
However, it is recognized by parts of the Europe and informally in the US.

The US won't formally recognize because Turkey threatens retaliation.


And my great grandfather wrote a book!!!

[WCGreen]

92. I was just watching the movie America, America about Turkey and the

bitterness between the Armenians, Greeks and Turks.

It was a good movie and made me think about what makes the US unique is that no one can really claim that this land belongs to an ethnic or religious tradition but is a country based on laws. I think a lot of people seem to forget that is what makes us unique.

Of course there are a lot of exceptions, but for the most part, Americans are united by the rule of law and that the law binds us to an ideal that transcends ethnic and religious hereditary.

[LeftInTX]

98. Sounds like a very good movie

Eli Kazan went to lengths to make it as authentic as possible.
Thanks, I'll try to find the DVD.

[WCGreen]

105. TM runs it a couple of times a year...

I run through the listings every two weeks or so to see if there is anything worth watching.

[jannyk]

33. Standby on Braniff Air

From London In 1980.

[loyalsister]

41. Wow - Braniff

That's a blast from the past!

[Ron Obvious]

47. Braniff

Hey, I moved here by flying from Amsterdam Dallas on Braniff in 1980!

The flight was mostly empty and it set up unrealistic expectations about what international flying was going to be like for the next 30+ years.

[jannyk]

69. Our flight was almost empty too

but we flew Thanksgiving Day - 27 people on a 747 it was heaven!

Ahhh, those were the days - walk up to the gate an hour before the flight, pay $100 and you're on. We'll never experience the like again.

[JaneyVee]

35. Russia, France, Spain.

[OldDem2012]

36. European....

* From England in the early 1600s (to include Jamestown, VA), and 1700s to Massachusetts
* From Holland in the early 1600s to Virginia
* From Germany to the Virginia Germanna Colonies from 1714-1717
* From Scotland to Northern Ireland in the mid-1600s, and as Scots-Irish from there to Philadelphia in 1730
* From Tuscany in Italy in 1773 aboard the Triumph to Virginia to Monticello to work for Thomas Jefferson

[Jennicut]

40. My mother's grandfather came to Ellis Island from Italy.

I found his records from then, his ticket. He had a few more kids born in America, one of them was my grandfather.

My father's mother's family came over in the 1600's from England. Crazy Puritans. Ended up in Connecticut. The Auger family. http://www.houseofnames.com/auger-family-crest Eventually, one relative bought some land along a lake in Old Lyme, CT and then kept in in the family for a hundred years. My parents still have the property, the rest was sold off.

[JustAnotherGen]

42. good thread

Last edited Thu Feb 21, 2013, 05:01 PM - Edit history (1)

My mother is all European. Lace Curtain Irish, German Jews, German Protestants, French

My father was black (died a couple of years ago). We know our great great great grandfather was sold down the river from VA to Alabama. That's the earliest we can trace our slave ancestry. His father was a mixture of Black and Seminole Slaves. His mother was kind of like me. Black, Cherokee, Scots-Irish.


I like to tease my immigrant husband that he is actually (say it out loud ten times :chuckle an Aborigine From Italy! He's 100%ethnic Calabrese - can trace everyone in his family back to the 8th century Southern Italy - at that time part of Greece.

[loyalsister]

44. Thanks!

My mom traced our history pretty far back. She discovered a Protestant minister in Maryland on my grandfather's side and a Catholic Bishop in Ireland on grandma's. No wonder I'm an atheist who doesn't like conflict.

[independentpiney]

48. My paternal grandfather came from what was then Austria-Hungary in 1914 at 13 years old

with an older cousin. Ethnically he was Slovak, but from an area that's still a part of Hungary. Four years after arrival he was in France with a US Army artillery unit, and thankfully made it back. My grandmother came from the same area

My moms European side is from England in the 17th century and Hesse, Germany in the early 19th.
My 3rd great grandmother is listed as Black in an 1870 Alabama census, and I don't know anything further back on that line.

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

50. It's been hard to track down.

The male ancestor on my father's side may have been sent to the colonies for stealing a pig. Or not. There's been some trouble tracing the family line to before the Revolutionary War, but candidate points of origin have been in England, Ireland, and Wales, all in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. My father's mother moved with her family from Rumania when she was six, near the turn of the 20th century. My mother's father's line came from Sweden in the late nineteenth century. My mother's mother's line is uncertain. I guess we know that none of my matrilineal great-great-grandparents were immigrants, but there is no information available beyond that point.

[northoftheborder]

52. England, Ireland, Scotland as far as we have genealogical records.

Earliest in the 1600's to New England; others arrived in the next two centuries and those that we have records of migrated to the southern states and then into the southwest. Some were escaping poverty, a few banished by famiiy because of some scandal or misbehavior, and/or petty crimes. Many fought in the Revolution and the Civil War.

[Blaukraut]

56. On a plane from Germany in 1985, so I'm right off the (flying) boat, I guess

My hubby's American and his ancestry is much more fascinating than mine. lol

[loyalsister]

60. Right before the end of the Cold War

Was that your motivation?

[Blaukraut]

67. No, necessity. Hubby was in the Air Force and got an assignment back to US.

We didn't really want to leave Germany, but the Air Force doesn't ask your opinion on the matter. We eventually got stationed in Italy and then Germany again, but the final assignment was back to the States, where we eventually retired from the military.

[blueamy66]

57. Great grandparents came from Poland, Ireland and

Germany.

[tblue]

58. Slave ship, Immigration from Greece (just guessing/it was rape), and as a WWII war bride

Just your typical American family.

[Chisox08]

59. Well my ancestors were kidnapped from the homeland

dragged over here in chains and was bought and sold as property. I also have some ancestors that were already here when the Europeans arrived.

[loyalsister]

64. I once saw a bumper sticker that said

"US out of North America" Despite my majority European ancestry, I can appreciate that sentiment.

[Blue_Tires]

85. +1

[hobbit709]

61. On a DC-6.

[Jersey Devil]

66. Croation grandpa jumped ship, joined US Army

and went to fight in France, where he met my grandmother in Brest, France, who followed him back to NYC and landed at Ellis Island in 1918. He had been a cook on a Croatian merchant vessel. That was on my mother's side.

On my father's side, my grandmother, born in Brooklyn, had parents who immigrated here from Naples Italy in the 1880s. My grandfather immigrated from Calabria, Italy.

[sufrommich]

70. My Dad's side came here before the American revolution

from Cornwall,England.My Mom's side came from Italy and Finland ,from Italy to Canada in the early 1900's and from Finland to Michigan in the 1800s to work in the copper mines in the U.P.

[Freddie]

101. Cornish also on my Dad's side

A lot more recently, great-grandparents came here in 1886 from Crowan, Cornwall. Found some fairly close (2nd and 3rd) cousins still there while doing family research, it's neat to talk to them on FB. Moms side is PA Dutch farmers from Germany in the early 1700s.

[sufrommich]

102. It's nice that distant relatives now can

get in touch with each other through the magic of the internets. My Uncle is now Facebook friends with some of our relatives who still live in Cornwall.

[Broken_Hero]

75. on my mothers side

they were all ready here, in NW British Columbia/SE Alaska. With my fathers side, they immigrated from Denmark in the 1800's. Most of my fathers side went across the US, and made the PacNW their home.

[loyalsister]

76. That's quite a hike your dad took to find your mom

nt.

[Lebam in LA]

77. Mothers side of the family

arrived from England very early. They were not on the mayflower but the next boat over so we can trace them back to the earliest settlers. All were Quakers. Very interesting stuff. We can only trace dad's side of the family back to about early 1700's from Scotland. My daughter is still searching records.

[wandy]

78. Funny you should ask.......

I had a relative that was into finding out about these things.
My Mothers side of the family immigrated to the US from northern Italy in the early 1920s.
Life being what it is, a few years ago, I darn near was sent on a business trip to what was my Grandmothers home town. The people I was working with actually knew people who had the same last name as Grandmother's madin name. I was assured I would find a 'cousin' or two.
It is my Fathers side of the family (Polish/Ucraian/Mongolan who knows!) that gets interesting. That side of the family appeared on Ellis Island in the early 1920s apparently out of thin air. No passage records, no prior history.
It was fashionable at the time to 'Americnise' the sir name so even citizen papers are 'iffy'.
A funny aside. The family name did not end in 'ski' but at one time was 'Americanised' to end in 'ski'. Go figure.
My best guess for my Fathers side of the family would be from Tralfamadore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tralfamadore
Who knows, I might even be related to Kilgore Trout.

[Cleita]

79. My American dad, whose ancestors arrived from Holland and other parts of Europe

before the American revolution was working in an American owned mine in Chile. He married a Chilean woman, my mother, had me, born in Chile, and brought me and his wife here just before I turned two years old. I was always considered a citizen and traveled on an American passport, but I had to take the same oath for citizenship that immigrants take before I was twenty-one years old to confirm my loyalty to the USA I guess. This kind of created a problem. Because, I had to renounce my Chilean citizenship before I was twenty-one, the Chilean government doesn't recognize my renouncement saying I wasn't of age to make such a decision and it resulted in me having dual citizenship. I don't claim my Chilean citizenship though, nor do I vote in their elections or pay taxes to them for that matter. However, my mother did have some Mapuche ancestry in her so I do as well and that makes me a descendant of a First Nations people as well.

[loyalsister]

84. citizenship complications...

One argument for the ERA that I heard an advocate make was that it would benefit men re: citizenship of their children born overseas. If they weren't married to the woman, the child had to be naturalized. But that wasn't the case for women. Your situation was less complicated but still highlights the difference.

Obviously there is no way to seriously cast doubt on citizenship of a child born to an American woman. When it is doubted because of gender it is discrimination. I know a woman whose mother was French and her father was a soldier in WWII. She was not automatically recognized as a citizen because her parents weren't married when she was born.

[liberal_at_heart]

80. Ireland, England, Spain, and Cherokee

[oldhippie]

82. Both sides of my family came in 1710 .....

... to the Hudson River Valley during the Palatine Immigration from Germany. The blood line has stayed pretty pure through the centuries. There may be a little English blood in the mix, but I can trace both family's male line back to Germany in the 1600's. Most of the lines of descendants of the 13 children of Matthias Kuhnz are still in the original area of the Livingston Estate.

[livetohike]

83. My Dad was born in Czechoslovakia and came here in 1929

horrible timing - he was 5 years old. His father came here (Pittsburgh area)earlier in the year because he heard that the steel mills were hiring. I don't know if he saw recruitment posters or this was word of month. He started working and saved enough money to have my Dad and Grandmother come over six months later.

My maternal Grandparents were also born in Czechoslovakia. My Grandfather came here at age 16 and worked for the railroad.My Grandmother was sort of a mail order bride. She never met my Grandfather. Her Uncle was here and told my Grandfather that his niece would "make a good Slovak wife". So my Grandfather sent her money to come to America. My Mom was born here.

My Grandmothers knew each other from their days as school girls in Czechoslovakia. When they learned that they only lived one mile apart, they started visiting each other. Dad came home from serving in WWII and that's when he met my Mom. He drove over to pick his Mother up from visiting and that's when my parents first met each other.

So I am a first generation American.

[catbyte]

86. Asian land bridge eons ago along with some French Canadian Irish in the 1800's.

[BainsBane]

87. Mayflower

as indentured servants on my father's side. !9th century Irish immigrant on my mother's side.

FYI: The Irish weren't considered white when they came to America. They were seen by the British and Americans as a separate and inferior race. It was only the great waves of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe that gave xenophobes new targets.

See How the Irish Became White http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095

[loyalsister]

94. Thanks for the rec.

I just ordered it. It sounds like an interesting read.

[WCGreen]

88. On my mothers side...

Sometime, from the paternal side, in the mid 1620's and then the early 1800's on her maternal side. Irish, Scottish and German, mainly on this side

My Dad's folks on both side came over in the late 1890's, he was third and I am fourth generation. Polish, Russian and German, on this side.

[Blue_In_AK]

93. My ancestors were Quaker and came over with William Penn.

We allegedly have Native-American blood on my mother's side, back a few generations, but no one has been able to verify. It seems likely since my mother and her eight brothers and sisters were all brunette or at least had more pigmented skin than my relatives on the paternal side.

My dad's ancestry has been traced back to 1400s England. My mom's side is more murky and since she passed away in 1954 and I lost contact with that side of the family, I'd have to go to Ancestry.com or somewhere to trace it. Something I'd like to do, but haven't gotten around to yet.

[loyalsister]

96. It's about ancestry

I was born here as well. But I wouldn't have been if my great - great grandmother, etc. had not come here from Ireland.

[KamaAina]

99. Fairly recently.

Only one ancestor predates the Ellis Island era, a Dutchman who had made it to Ohio by the 1850s.

[a la izquierda]

100. All of my family came from Ireland, Italy, and Spain...

during the 20th century. I'm second or third generation, depending on the person. My dad's family is Irish, and my mom's is Spanish and Italian.

If I go back far enough, I have Scottish, English, French, and Swiss ancestors. But none of that matters, as "Italy" didn't exist in the 19th century. Some of my Italian ancestors have fairer hair than most of my Irish ancestors.

I love geneology. I've traced my husband's dad's family back to early 16th century England. His family was noble, but his great-great,etc. grandfather was a second son and had no inheritance, as far as we can tell. He went to Virginia...I think my ancestors were probably peasants.

[smirkymonkey]

103. I am a originally a New Yorker and the Dutch and English side of my

family were here early (my mother's side - New York was settled by the Dutch and English). My father's side - the Italians - came over through Ellis Island around the turn of the century and originally settled in Little Italy in New York and then moved upstate. They learned English pretty quickly and moved up the ladder. We have come pretty far in just 3 generations. I would love to go and search out my roots someday.

[loyalsister]

104. It's interesting what people learn when they do that research

My mom has done a pretty extensive project and our whole family has really enjoyed her results.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

106. Puerto Rican...

...so my Mom and Dad both came over on Eastern Airlines flights from San Juan to NYC. That was easy.
On my mom's side we think if we go back far enough we end up with a slaveowner from Haiti who fled after they threw out the French.
On my dad's side, they started out from Corsica, an island that now belongs to France but is inhabited by folks who are actually ethnically Italian. This was part of a push by Spain to prevent rebellion against them after Bolivar: they invited immigrants from other Catholic European countries to move to their remaining colonies to keep them from doing the same, the logic apparently being divide and conquer.
Which is ironic, since some of PR's most ardent nationalists wound up being the Corsicans who landed there as a result.
All of the above makes the point that the US ain't the only melting pot: most of the Western Hemisphere is all mixed up.

[loyalsister]

109. "All of the above makes the point that the US ain't the only melting pot"

Excellent! That's is a new perspective for me.

[chieftain]

111. Famine Irish

Our ancestors left County Roscommon in Ireland in 1847 or "Black '47" as it is still known. This was the height of the Great Hunger. They came to North America on a coffin ship and landed at Grosse Isle on the St.Lawrence River. From there they walked to Missouri where others of the family had already settled.

Great idea for a thread.Thanks.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_ships

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Isle,_Quebec