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In reply to the discussion: Romney only American family with 5 generations of no military service? [View all]Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)my family have been in America since the colonial era; my father was in the Navy, both grandfathers in the Army during WWII; a great-grandfather in the Army in WWI; I had ancestors on both sides during the Civil War (15th Kentucky Cavalry on the US side, and Georgia militia on the Confederate side); five generations including my father's with military service in four of them. And going back a generation further, my 3rd great-uncle was an officer in the US Navy who died aboard the USS Constellation in Hong Kong in 1842; another couple of generations further back and one of my 5th great-grandfathers was a lieutenant colonel in the Indiana militia during the War of 1812. And I have probably a half-dozen or so ancestors who served in the Revolution. So it seems kind of strange for someone with at least five generations of ancestry in the US to have only one ancestor who served in the US military (and deserted).