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My family history is: Dad's side: grandfather is from Scotland (and has Faroese ancestry), grandmother is from Western Norway. Mother's side: grandfather's ancestry is Norman-French (came to the States in 1800s), my grandmother's is mostly Spanish and French (all post-Civil War immigrants).
English and Scots-Irish; yes, I would say that as a whole, we are mutts. But we are proud mutts as most of you may know by now. Our family's ancestors were here from the beginning...the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, right on down the line.
I should mention though that we have a lot of Southern Europeans, many of whom only arrived in the past 60 years. Italians, Greeks, Croatians.etc are pretty common in certain parts of the cities. In more recent years we've also received an influx of Poles and Russians. Funnily enough, there are more people of German ancestry than I expected yet people with German surnames are not that common. There seem to be a lot more German sounding place-names in Victoria and South Australia, so maybe they are mostly there.
That comes from people changing their names when they came here so as to fit in with the dominant anglo-saxon culture. My husband's grandfather was a Weaver, but he said his grandfather came from Germany as Webber and changed it to Weaver to make it more English sounding.
That comes from people changing their names when they came here so as to fit in with the dominant anglo-saxon culture. My husband's grandfather was a Weaver, but he said his grandfather came from Germany as Webber and changed it to Weaver to make it more English sounding.
Location: East St. Paul 651 forever (or North St. Paul) .
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Quote:
Originally Posted by katygirl68
That comes from people changing their names when they came here so as to fit in with the dominant anglo-saxon culture. My husband's grandfather was a Weaver, but he said his grandfather came from Germany as Webber and changed it to Weaver to make it more English sounding.
When some of them got processed on Ellis Island sometimes the name was changed against their will.
If the OP is stating that Aussies are more "Purebred" than Americans, he's obviously not read much World History. Since the first humanoid stepped off the continent of Africa, we've migrated, interbred, conquered, migrated some more, interbred some more, bla bla bla.
Just being "purebred" British is not saying much. Do you mean the Celts? Their origin was the Hallstatt culture of France, Germany, Austria. Saxons? Germany. Roman? Normans? Picts? Angles? Danes? Iberians? Jutes? Northern African? (In no particular order.)
If one wishes to fancy themselves "purebred", a $98.00 genetic test will blow all the theories out the window.
I don't know, maybe. He just told me about it. I never saw the spelling of the name. Does that mean Weaver in German, or was it just the closest sounding phonetically?
I don't know, maybe. He just told me about it. I never saw the spelling of the name. Does that mean Weaver in German, or was it just the closest sounding phonetically?
Yes.
There are around 250 000 people named Weber, only around 100 named Webber.
It's not exclusively Scots Irish in the south but that's the large majority for native white southerners, I'll give you English and French though. But outside of New Orleans, the south just doesn't have the same diversity of white ancestry that the NE and midwest has- Italian, polish, ashkenazi jew, Irish Catholic, German etc. Native white southerners just aren't as diverse.
While the Scots-Irish certainly were strongly represented in the south, those of English ancestry were more numerous. The French came from various backgrounds: early Indian traders and explorers, Huguenot refugee families and individuals (who intermarried with English and Scots-Irish families within two generations), and Acadians. They were fewer in number everywhere in the early south except in Louisiana.
There were also the Irish - not Scots-Irish, but Irish. Some came to Maryland for religious freedom rather early and intermarried with Catholics of English ancestry.
Germans (mostly Protestants) were in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (and around Williamsburg) quite early, and were also in North Carolina (the Moravians of Salem and the Lutherans of the Blue Ridge, who migrated via the Great Valley Road from Pennysylvania and Virginia), in east Texas (mostly Catholics), as well as in central and northwest Arkansas early on (also Catholics), as well as in Kentucky (again, Catholics) by the 1840s or before.
Many contemporary white southerners are also part Indian, mostly from the "Five Civilized Tribes" (so-called in the early 19th century), whose members frequently intermarried (Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole).
There were also a good many Ashkenazi Jewish families in the early south, mostly German and mostly found in places like Charleston and Savannah early on, then throughout the south somewhat later - many became very successful in the mercantile business. Intermarriage in these families has increased, but was rare in earlier times.
Southerners whose families lived in the south for several generations are often more diverse than might be initially thought. My own family, the earliest of whom were documented as arriving in Virginia around 1648 and the latest of whom arrived in Philadelphia in 1790 (and promptly left for North Carolina), includes (in descending order of approximate percentage) English, Scots-Irish, French, German, Scots, Channel Islander, Irish, Welsh, Swiss and possibly Indian background. This is pretty typical of early-arriving Southern families like mine.
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