Question of the Day - Monday, August 24, 2020

[MoochNNoodles]

I'm going to try to squeeze this in real quick here. My DD begins her first research project of the year today. She has to do a short report on the Indigenous Peoples of our area. It's interesting to try to do this without the use of the library. At least there are kid appropriate encyclopedias online. The annual Pow wow was coming up; but that's been cancelled. The father of one of my mother's friends travels all over the area visiting schools and fairs to educate children about the native people of the area. It would be so great if she could learn from him; but of course he isn't able to do that right now either.


Do you know where your ancestors came from?



I have not done any DNA testing (and I'm not interested in it really) but 3 of my Grandparents were immigrants children and the other was the grandson of immigrants; so my family history isn't that far back. My family came from Italy, Germany, Poland and Greece. DH only knows some of his ancestry. They have been here for much much longer. But with that; there have been some very neat old photos that turned up in family possessions.

 

[klunick]

Not really interested in it either but my sister did one of those Ancestry tree things. I know we came from Ireland and Germany but other than that, nope.

 

[NY cat man]

On my father's side, the paternal line goes back to the Netherlands when they left in 1638; and on the maternal side to the lowland Scots in the 1700s. On my mother's side, they go back to Alsacian France and England, with some Irish thrown in for good measure.

 

[Jem]

I have not done the DNA testing but I know quite a bit about my ancestry. But our stories are quite interesting.
Mother's side: Mainly Irish and some English and French. Part of my Grandfather's side were Irish Traveler's/Gypsies. We also had a clan of "highway robbers", who were sent to Australia, when that's where you sent criminals. My Grandmother's side immigrated from France a few generation's back, and I am actually related to the Dionne Quintuplets.
Father's side: Mainly Scottish and French. We actually have a Family Crest and Plaid, and one of my ancestor's was a real Pirate! There are rumors that there is some royalty somewhere, but I haven't gotten too far into that part.

So yeah....I'm a decedent of thieves and most likely murderers....on BOTH sides....

 

[Elphaba09]

For the most part, yes. At least on my father's side. I know some about my mother's side, but not nearly as much, since most of my father's side kept a better paper trail.

My father's side has two significant branches. His mother, a Choctaw, and his father, a first generation American born to two Irish immigrants. I know my grandma could trace her line back pretty far, but I was 13 when she died and all of her stuff was taken by her other children, my father's step brothers. (My stepgrandfather left his sons everything, including all of Grandma's stuff and a sizable inheritance because, as he stated in the will, "The children from my wife's first marriage have never been mine." He mentioned appeasing my grandmother while she was alive. My actual grandpa died in a wreck when my father was very young.) We have relatives on the Reservations. I have not seen them since I was young.

I know that there was a prostitute, a circus employee, and lots of coal miners in my family. We also have a connection to William Wallace on my father's side. His side has the Scots and the Irish who came from Scotland. (They are not Scots-Irish. That is something completely different dealing with the Protestants. Mine are all Catholics.) The main Scottish side is the Ramsays of Dalhousie who fought under Robert the Bruce. The funny thing is that my husband's maternal grandmother is Clan Wallace. She was tickled to death when she found out that I am a Ramsay of Dalhousie. Even funnier still is that when she was young, she went to West Virgina to visit family in a town not far from the small town where my grandma and grandpa lived. Her family was friends with both sides ofmy father's family and they went to a picnic together.My grandparents had likely moved by then, but she does remember my grandmother's mother and asked if she was related to me. She had a very unique name and everyone in the area knew her because she was the local prostitute. (My grandmother was also one for a short time. It is how she met my grandfather!) She was well liked, despite the fact she was a prostitute. One of her rules was no married men. She would have known if they were because the towns in and around the area were pretty small, depsite the coal mines. It made the women like her more.

The circus emplyee was from the Irish Ramsays during the 20s/30s. She was my great aunt Oona, the tightrope walker. She left the circus and married a farmer she had met on the road.

 

[Elphaba09]

We actually have a Family Crest and Plaid, and one of my ancestor's was a real Pirate! There are rumors that there is some royalty somewhere, but I haven't gotten too far into that part.

Our Irish crest is a raven, and our Scottish one is a unicorn! My father has our tartan.

 

[Katie M]

I'm Irish and Hungarian on my dad's side, and Welsh/English and Dutch on my mom's.

I know that one of my maternal ancestors, John Hart, signed the Declaration of Independence. Another maternal ancestor, Edward Hart, authored the Flushing Remonstrance, which was the first declaration of religious freedom written in America.

Other than that, we really don't know much about our ancestors. Mom says we'll have to try to fix that one of these days.

 

[Willowy]

My dad's side is English/Scottish/maybe Irish exclusively. That's all we've ever heard about, that's what my brother's DNA test showed, and it's evident by our transluscent skin, lol. The farthest back he could find was an ancestor who got on a ship in Cornwall, but I guess Cornwall was a major port for anyone in the British isles who wanted to emigrate, so that's why we're not sure if my paternal grandfather's side is English or Irish. He looked like a Kennedy, if that means anything. My paternal grandmother was fully Scottish, and we are related to Margaret Atwood from her line. She actually looked a lot like Margaret Atwood.


My mom's side is full Euro-mutt. All kinds of mixing going on there. French, German, Irish. My maternal grandpa was swarthy, we thought maybe of Welsh background. But now we think his mother may have been Romany, because the DNA test shows some random Northern African ancestry, and her background is/was fully unknown. She married my great-grandfather when she was 16. We don't know where he met her. She ran away from her husband and babies when she was 20 (the babies were only 3 and 1) to go be an actress in Hollywood, but returned 5 years later and had another kid with her husband. And nobody knows what she did during those 5 years, she never talked about it. My maternal grandma's maiden name was French but her mother's maiden name was Irish.


My grandpa had all kinds of stories but nobody ever could believe anything he said, so we don't know which were embellished true stories and which were entirely false. But we now kind of suspect he ran drugs in Central America at least a few times. He had a small plane and lived somewhat beyond his means. . .

 

[MonaLyssa33]

I'm a true European mutt. My mom says our ancestors are from 10 different countries. I don't know if that is correct or not, but I do know that my ancestors primarily come from Germany, Norway, and Sweden, which is pretty much a huge percentage of the ancestry for many Minnesotans.

 

[DreamerRose]

My family history is that all my ancestors were in the US before the Revolution. The earliest, Christopher Branch, arrived in Virginia in 1622. Four or five fought in the Revolution, and two were officers in the Confederate army. I had Ancestry DNA done, which revealed that 97% of my ancestors were English and Welsh. The subgroup I belong to is Early Settlers of the Deep South.

Benjamin Eddins

 

[Winchester]

Primarily Germany with a bit of Native American thrown in for good measure.

 

[EmersonandEvie]

I have done an ancestry test, and it confirmed that I'm whiter than Wonder bread. Strictly northern European.

On my dad's side, we have an ancestor that was traced back to the 1600s Scotland, so that's pretty neat. His mom, my grandmother, had a very French maiden name. So there is Scot/Irish and French. Pretty sure there is some general English throw in on that side too.

My mom's side was German, English, and (she claims) Czech.

 

[Silver Crazy]

My fathers family fled to Wales, England and some to Canada during the French revolution...there is a whole province in France that bears the family name,
My mothers family comes from the family line of Abbotts from the churches in England and there is a family book that was started in the 16th century and is still going now.
My father come to Australia after having his ship bombed during the second world war and came here to recuperate from injuries ( he was about 17-18) and ended up staying and my mums family came here when one of the great grandfathers retired as an Admiral from the English navy and was gifted land here as part of his retirement deal.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

My family history is that all my ancestors were in the US before the Revolution. The earliest, Christopher Branch, arrived in Virginia in 1622. Four or five fought in the Revolution, and two were officers in the Confederate army. I had Ancestry DNA done, which revealed that 97% of my ancestors were English and Welsh. The subgroup I belong to is Early Settlers of the Deep South.

Benjamin Eddins

I suspect DH's family goes back nearly that far. I know pre-revolution because DH's grandmother would share the story about how her father was orphaned shortly afterwards. His name is on a statue in the town he helped establish and she was a stickler for the details of their local history. She even wrote a book. Correcting newspapers was practically a hobby. She never lost her sharp mind. I believe we have a family tree she sent us; but I don't remember how far back it went. I don't think it was that far or I'd have remembered.

 

[Lari]

My mom's done genealogy and we've also done DNA testing. My mom's side is Slovak, Irish, Bohemian and German/Polish (they were from the area that kept getting passed between the two countries). My dad is half Slovak and half Croatian, though a distant relative on that side traced one branch to Italy in the 1750s, when they moved to Croatia, which is kind of cool.

 

[misty8723]

Most of them. I've done extensive family history research and also DNA testing with Ancestry.com. Supposedly my ethnicity is England, Wales, and NW Europe 57%, France 17%, Germanic Europe 15% Ireland & Scotland 9% Portugal 2%. English and German is from my dad's side. English and French on my mother's side. I think the Ireland/Scotland is my father's the one line I haven't been able to follow further than ggrandparents,

 

[susanm9006]

Yes, I have been working on my family tree since the 70’s. The 50% of my DNA on my mothers side comes from Sicily. Both her parents were born there.

My fathers side is a little bit more complicated. His mother was mostly descended from pioneers who came to the US early, a couple on the Mayflower and many in the early years after. Mostly English and Scottish with a bit of French Canadian.

My father’s father has by far the most interesting background. Genetically on his side I am German, 5% African American and 3% Native American. My grandfather was born in 1896 but his family had been part of a mixed community of Native Americans, former and runaway slaves and German settlers for more than a hundred years before he was born. After having helped the US in both the Revolutionary war and the War of 1812, the Native Americans, mostly Oneida, Stockbridge and Mohegan tribes were “allowed” to sell their New York land and purchase land in Wisconsin, with the Brothertown nation, as they called themselves, moving to Wisconsin in the 1830’s.
My African DNA is pretty interesting too since I come from three different areas of Africa, all high slave trade areas. This means that I probably had three different African ancestors who were brought to the US as slaves.

 

[Xraystyle]

My parents got me an ancestry test as a present a few years ago, but because I was living in Korea (and still am), I never got around to shipping it in. I have a little interest in it and would like to do it at some point, but a lot of the family tree stuff has already been done on both sides, including my great-grandma's biological nephew finding out about her and connecting our family where it had previously been a "dead link" so to speak since she had been adopted by Germans (she was Irish), so there's not a ton left to discover but the percentages.

I look almost identical to my previously mentioned great-grandma (I once over-layed my photo on hers and it was eerie how exact it was), so I'm guessing I got a big percentage of the Irish heritage, lol.

my dad's side is: Irish, French (Canadian), Swedish, and English
Mom's side: Black sea German, Irish, Portuguese, Austrian

The person who's done my dad's family tree traced the French bit all the way back to Louis XIV's sister, I believe, haha
My surname goes back to at least the US Civil War, probably further.
The Irish records were all destroyed when the Four Courts burned during the Irish Revolution, but I know what counties my family was from (Dad's side: Donegal, Cavan; Mom's side: Wexford, Westmeath.)
The Black Sea German stuff was interesting. They were ethnic Germans invited by Catherine the Great to settle around the Black Sea region (my people near Odessa in the Ukraine). When the Russians were like "you guys have been here for 200 years, maybe you should become more Russian?" The Germans said "nah, bro." and peaced out to North Dakota where they could continue being German. They only stopped speaking German in public around WW1 (for obvious regions). I find it interesting because my grandfather is anti-immigrant, pro-America for "Americans", anti-foreign language, etc etc...but like...his grandmother was an immigrant...his family still spoke smatterings of German when he was a kid...all our family recipes are German/Slavic recipes (recently discovered that what we call "cheese buttons" are just weird versions of pierogis...LOL)

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I know pre-revolution because DH's grandmother would share the story about how her father was orphaned shortly afterwards.

I meant Pre-Civil war. Not revolution.

 

[Mia6]

Paternal Grandparents-
GM mother from Birmingham, England
GP his gg grandfather from Germany

Maternal GP both immigrants
Grandma born in what was Yugoslavia
Grandpa born in Lithuania