Hello TCSers!

Throughout the school year, my life drawing teacher has left us with a lot of things to think about, not just about art, but about life and appreciation. One of the things that hit home for me was talking to our parents and grandparents (especially those who made the migration to our current country) and hearing from them the entire story, including the bad and scary things they're hesitant to tell us when we're young.

So... What's your origin story? How did you and your family get to where you are today?

My dad's mother's father (great grandpa) and his wife came to Canada following his father, though I don't recall the year. He sponsored over a bunch of family members bit by bit, along with some family friends from Hong Kong and China. During this time, there was a lot of conflict with the Communist party and neighbours of my dad's side of the family (some Vietnamese as well, whose descendants we're still friends with) were joining the Communist party's army. They were brutal in destroying property and detaining or beating people. Some were serious about their commitment to the ruling party, and some were in place to help their friends and families get out of China.

I'm told that my grandfather swam from southern China to Hong Kong during the night to avoid getting caught, and boarded a boat bound for Canada with no more than $100 in his pocket. He was an avid swimmer when he was alive, and the gap of water isn't an impossible distance, so I toss back and forth in my mind whether or not it really happened. It sure does solidify the image of my hero grandfather though!

My dad came in 1959 and lived with my great grandparents, and then my dad sponsored over my mom and her family in 1987, I believe. My aunt had more ease coming over because she came for school but the rest of the family came as dependents of their sponsors.

It's hard for people to really discuss the origin of their family because they have two parents who both had two stories of their own. In any case, for mine, here's an overview of the four main lines:

Paternal grandfather: Irish immigrants about a hundred years ago, became farmers/coal miners in West Virginia. My grandfather was a POW in WW2. When he returned after many years of lost contact with his family, his wife had given up and remarried. He met my grandmother and the rest is history.

Paternal grandmother: half Dutch (unknown when they arrived) and half Native. Poor laborers in West Virginia. 

Maternal grandfather: German land investors, lived a few generations in Pennsylvania and then arrived in Ohio to buy cheap land around 1900. The story goes that my great-grandfather left PA to hide a criminal record. They started out owning several square miles of farm land. Between the Depression and the war, their property whittled down to 80 acres that my grandfather inherited. It went to my mother and she ultimately sold it all.

Maternal grandmother: English/German immigrants who lived in Kentucky for many generations. My grandmother went to the big city in Ohio to find a better life, and that's where she met my grandfather. She ultimately went back to Kentucky for retirement and insisted that she be buried with her people.

What I know.

Maternal side: 1. Welsh, British army, stationed in Virginia in 1609. Moved to Canada during the American Revolution.

2. Emigrated from Devon UK in the mid 1800s.

Paternal side: No clue, but have been in Canada for generations.

My family is primarily a product of the big wave of immigration from Europe (Germany and Ireland) to the U.S. that started in the 1880s, though some (maternal great-grandfather) had relatives who immigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1860s. One paternal great-grandfather immigrated from Mukden, China (now Shenyang) and married a first-generation American of German/Anglo-Irish descent. They both died in their early 30s, so I don't know much of their history, other than that he was a railroad worker and died in a trolley accident, and she died in the Spanish flu epidemic. Their son (my grandfather) married a first-generation Irish-American. Although my grandparents were born in the U.S., my maternal grandmother had older siblings born in Germany to a German father and Irish mother. Her second husband (my step-grandfather) was from Belfast, so there was always a bit of a European flavor to the family.

Intermarriage is the family tradition, so we now have all races and just about every religion except Hindu. Several of us, including me, have foreign spouses (my husband is German and of German/Hungarian descent; in our case, I'm the foreigner, since we live in Germany).

We are primarily German on both sides of my family. My great-grandfather married a Cherokee woman, so we do have a bit of Cherokee as well.

what i know is I'm Italian and Welsh from my dads side and I'm German and Lithuanian from my moms side.