Genealogy is a big hobby and I've traced most of my own and my wife's family roots. These go back to Colonial New England and places of origin in Britain, or in one case Hugeunots from France. A few more recent exceptions are my wife's German grandparents arr. 1868 and my own grtgrandparents arr. 1851 as Mormon converts in England.

bbqboy...ever been to Arrow Rock? Quaint historic MO village.

ozarksbill

I guess it might be different for a European, whose family has always been from there, to imagine an entire country (depending on how you look at Native Peoples) of people that are all from somewhere else.

On my father's side, mostly English, emigrated some in the 1600s, some later, first to what is now upstate New York. Then branches of the family ended up in southern Illinois and northern Wisconsin, primarily farmers; my grandfather ended up in Iowa as a photographer.

On my mother's side, German heritage, though I'm told there's Welsh and Pennsylvania Dutch (which is German, just been there longer, I guess) as well. My maternal grandfather's mother's family originally lived in what is now Alsace-Lorraine (France), but they were Germanic (and considered themselves as such). My ancestor left there for the U.S., where his brother already lived, to avoid serving in Kaiser Wilhelm's army. After a career as a cooper in New York State, the family somehow ended up as farmers in Nebraska. Except for that particular ancestor, I would guess that most of the other ancestors came here looking for a better life (as opposed to escaping famine or persecution).

All of mine were escaping as well as "going to". My Sicilian people were so poor that my grandmother remembered days when they would cook about 1-1/2 lbs of pasta for 5 or 6 grown people and the men would eat it all, leaving the women the starch water. So she said she would have to go "pick fruit" on those days. She never had to go to school at all- the schools were just for boys.

My father remembers eating nothing but oatmeal for an entire winter during the German inflation (pre-WWII.) My Grandfather left his wife and boys in Germany for 5 years trying to get them here- the first time. He was wounded in WWI and didn't want anything more to do with Germany.

My dad's side has been in America since before the Revolution...in fact, we have ancestors who fought in the Revolution, including one who fought on both sides! He was captured and about to be hanged for treason, but managed to escape somehow, and then went back to fighting for the Patriot side! That side of the family is mostly English and German. They settled first in Virginia/North Carolina, and then came over the mountains into Kentucky, where most of us still are. My mom's side we don't know as much about, but all of them were here way before Ellis Island. Her mother was Scotch-Irish and her father was part Cherokee. His great grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee.

I'm a first generation American. Both parents came here from Quebec in their teens. Canadian french was spoken at our house. English was a second language.

How exciting to read all your stories! Some day my great-great-grand-grand :) child will tell a similar story. I'll make sure to leave my memoirs!

There was a good thread on this topic a while back on the Europe board: http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=34539354

When visiting Ellis Island in 2002, I found my paternal grandfather's name on the 1924 ship manifest from Bremen, Germany. He was Austrian and emigrated here after WWI to escape the extreme deflationary economy. A year later, he brought his future wife here, who was from Nuremberg. They settled in Milwaukee, he obtaining a job as a skilled welder in an auto plant, prior to the Depression. They bought investment real estate from distressed sellers during the Depression, since they had money to invest, living very frugally and always employed. Later became quite well off when the real estate appreciated and lived a long and prosperous life.

I asked my Dad, who speaks fluent German, why we (the grandkids) were never taught to speak German, and he said Grandpa didn't want German spoken in the house, since "we were Americans."

My Dad also told me that US government officials came to the house to check out my granparents during WWII, looking for Hitler sympathizers. This was kind of shocking to me, since they hated Adolph as much as anyone.

What a cool thread!

My mother's family came from Italy...my great grandparents. They arrived on the Utopia from Naples to New York in 1886. But the Ellis Island info. starts in 1892, so I can't get the copy of the manifest. My grandmother lived with us and raised us, really. She spoke fluent Italian. But she would never would teach it to us, except for a few words here and there.

Her parents could barely speak English, but always made sure that my grandmother and her siblings did, because they were in America.

How I wish my grandmother would have spent more time teaching it to me. When I was little I would listen to her speak it with her little Italian lady friends and my aunts, never knowing what they were saying.

My father, on the other hand, was anything but Italian. His father was French and German (the French being Hugonauts). His mother was English and they had been here since the early 1800's if not earlier. My father's family was not close, so that ethnic side of me doesn't really resonate.

I grew up on the west side of Buffalo which was full of Italian immigrants. I had Uncle Tony's, Frank's, Joe's, etc. and they were always stopping by my house to visit my grandma, the matriarch of the family. Her mother, the one from Italy, always called me Charlie, because she couldn't pronounce my name, Cheryl. I have a beautiful scarf that she brought over on the boat.

The neighborhood I grew up in reminds me of the one of Satriale's in the Soprano's. There were a lot of wiseguys hanging around, some on my street. You just "knew" who they were. Many of my grade school friends' parents came from Italy and often had plastic on their couches, etc. Really. I had cousins like that, too. We had the flocked wallpaper in our living room.

I'm getting carried away......I guess you can tell which side of my family has the most influence on me!

Britain, indeed most of Europe, are also lands full of immigrants, and you don't even have to go back to neolithic times. Basic English history, from the Romans through the Normans, describes immigrants who just weren't welcomed as warmly or as recently as most of those who arrived peacefully in the US. Heck, even their royalty are German immigrants.

My father's family was in the colonies early enough for a direct great- (etc.) grandfather to have served in the Revolutionary War and be rewarded with several hundred acres of land in Virginia as payment for his service. (Land was the cheapest thing going then).

No one is quite sure why he left Ireland with a brother in the 1760s -- indentured servant? Criminal? Just a wandering foot? What's certain is that he was very poor.

My great-grandparents on my mother's side immigrated from Germany and Holland as children. My grandfather changed his name from Emil to William to assimilate, but everyone calls him Pete (no one knows why). And his wife, Johanna, didn't help his "cover" much.

Pete farmed with horses recently enough that my mother remembers it from childhood. BTW, I'm not yet 40, so it wasn't really "way back when."

:-)

My parents, like me, were from Western Pennsylvania, USA.

shorebrau, we have something in common. My paternal grandfather came to the USA by boat from Bremen. At Ellis Island, he was also listed as being Austrian. But he was not from Austria as we know it today. Back in 1907, when he left Europe he left from the Galicia province of Empire of Austria-Hungary. So, he was "Austrian" but there is nothing German about our family. His home town was Jaslo, now in Poland. My maternal grandparents came from the same region. Before that they were from L'viv, Ukraine.

Where/when I grew up, near Pittsburgh PA, ethnic identity was important. I knew that my friends were Polish, German, Italian, Serbian, Croatian, Ukrainian, Slovak, Hungarian, Russian, Lithuanian, even Macedonian. A melting pot of European immigrants in the Steel City. My grandparents became American as quickly as they could and taught my parents very little, if any, of the language from the "old country". I only know stada baba (old granny), pierohi (Poles call it pierogi), paska (Easter bread), holopki (stuffed cabbage), kolbasi (Polish sausage), Christos voskres ("Christ is risen" was the appropriate greeting on Easter Sunday at our Byzantine Catholic church; I forget the appropriate reply).

My Great, Great, Great Grandpa on my Dad's side was a stowaway on ship from Ireland. He left home at 12 alone and never went back. My Mom's grandparents on her father's side also came from Ireland. So,I have a bit of the irish in me!! All 4 grandparents were born in the US. (New York City).
My mother's mother was Pennsylvania dutch.
My inlaws both came to America when they were 18. One came from Austria and one from Romania. They met at a german dance. :)They spoke little german in front of their children and tried to be very american. All three kids had typical american names. My husband played soccer though and during a time when soccer was not really played here. He played other ethnic teams in the NY area. He is pretty good at it and now coaches our girls.
Funny, my husband and kids only know the curse words in german :)
Funny enough my parents also met at a dance, but I think it was a catholic type dance (Neumann dance) Something like that.
I grew up in the NY/NJ area and I grew up with the best ethnic food. I complain today that we are the immigrants to central VA area and so we don't have all that good food here :)

Mom's side...make claim of descendants of Pilgrims...Mom named Priscilla Alden, always says her Mother became historical instead of hysterical when she was born! Dad 1st generation American, family left Oslo Norway to homestead in North Dakota, what a shock that must have been! If geneology and family histories interest you I saw an ad for a TV special starting 2/1 on PBS called African American Lives."The series will profile some of the most accomplished African-Americans of our time, using genealogy and DNA to trace their roots down through American history and back to Africa." It sounded really fascinating!

My mom's family came over from England and France in the 1800's and in the case of my great-grannie (the early 1900's, my mome remembers her Cockney accent) and moved to Boston and NYC respectively, my Grandmother kept many English cooking traditions and often mixed the English phrases she had heard growing up with her thick Boston accent. My Dad's family came over from Germany around the same time and settled in Pennsylvania (I know less about their background) This is where they both remained until my Grandfather joined the army to get out of NYC (he grew up in tenaments in the Bronx), met my grandmother, and moved to Boston where my mom was born. Both my mom and my dad were relocated from the east coast to the midwest when they moved to Chicago as teenagers, that is where they met, got married and raised me.

I'm very proud to be 11th generation North American.
My family were Huguenots and left France to escape religious persecution in 1688. They arrived and helped found New Rochelle, NY ( having escaped from LaRochelle in France). There is a street named for my family in New Rochelle and also an historical museum that I'd love to visit someday.

Sometime after the War of 1812, my family then came to Canada to the Toronto area, where my direct descendent was the first reeve of Scarborough and the first postmaster. He was also intrumental in building the Kingston Road. There is a monument to the family in Scarborough and also a school named after my great, great ( not sure now many greats, I'd have to pull out the records) grandfather.

I love my family history and am very proud of the courage of the first one to leave France in 1688. He left with a wife and six children. Neither his wife nor one child survived the crossing. Five other children did.
I can't imagine what they endured. Not olny with the crossing, but having arrived a widower with 5 children.

I could have been wealthy if only the family had hung on to all that land in New Rochelle as well as Scarborough!!!

My Mother's family is from Bergen Norway and my Father's family is from Stockholm Sweden. They all settled in MN - big surprise!! My husband's family are from Germay and Scotland. We have been fortunate to have visited many relatives in Europe and they have come here to visit too. Very few of them (mostly a few older ones) did not speak English and we do speak a little of their languages too, so have had wonderful visits with them - love all the food they serve when we are there. I notice that every Sedish relative serves 7 kinds of cookies - wonder if that means something??

I wish I had been brought up bi-lingual. If I had a second language I would feel much better about going travelling. Here in the UK we are taught French/ German and /or Spanish in school but only to a basic level. Since we're in Europe our children should be taught other languages from a very early age. Wish I had been !!

Actually not all caucasians who are Americans are from England and Ireland. I'm 50% Slovenian, 25% Slovak, 25% Italian. I was named after my maternal great grandfather Stephan who was 100% Slovak and came over here the turn of the last century. He was a coal miner and I have a certificate that he was permitted to use dynamite while in the mine. He died in 1969 @ age 90 and I was 4 yrs old at that time and remember him just a tiny bit. They lived in Brownsville, PA area first for a few years then moved to Imperial, PA and stayed in this town for life. I now live in their home. It was made in the early 1920s - small 2 BD. Very unlike the huge new modern homes now.

Yes we are also all mixtures galore, but in my neighborhood growing up, the solid majority were families that were NOT mixtures and 1st generation. It was kid heaven and food paradise. In the forty houses that comprised my S shaped curving block of bungalows (20-30 feet frontage tops-84th St.)in Ashburn Southside Chicago- there were 287 kids residing. REALLY! We were the block with the most kids in all of Chicago for two years running circa 1959-60.

We had at least 4 families I can remember who had over 10. The average was about 7 and my Mom was the piker with 3. You no more "went" around with someone a year older or younger than you would shave your head. Many were directly from Ireland, from Poland, from Slovenia, from Lithuania, and from other Eastern European countries. At least half were totally Irish.

We had FOOD. And I took Irish dancing lessons until I was 14 and was good at it. I don't think one Mom on that entire block worked except for my Mom. And she only part time. We all went to Catholic school and there were 5 rooms for each grade with 60 kids in each room. You would not believe how many turned out to be CEO's, lawyers, MD's etc. One was the FBI agent who took the bullet for Reagan. Our reunions are phenomenal.

I wish that some could get to experience this sense of community now- because it was wonderful and it is mostly gone in the USA.

But all of us European immigrants and their offspring were mixtures too if you investigate. My Sicilian ancestors were invaded so many times, and my Mother has African hair type. She used to go to the Black beauty parlors because they did a better job for her. People don't stay put over eons, and the genes mix.

My guy does geneology and has found most of his relatives were back and forth between Germany, Austria and Russia because of different wars, recruitments, imported for jobs etc. for 100 years before 1939. The part of Europe they eventually settled in was contested between Austria/Czech. and other countries several times before and since.

In Chicago I just read that even with the strong Hispanic population growth, there are still a huge percentage of people that have at least 50% or more Germanic ancestry.