Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Same here. Most of my ancestry is Dutch (with a little English from which I get my last name). We did have a small windmill on our lawn--it was popular in the town where I lived where most people were of Dutch descent, and I plant tulips. But I don't speak Dutch and I don't have a pair of klompen and I'm not going to eat raw herring dipped in salt!
----
You can easely detect if you are Dutch.
You only need to see your head reflected on a mirror.....if you see a kaaskop, then you're Dutch.
Started researching my ancestors about 10 years ago. My Mom insists her great-grandmother was Cherokee but according to everything I have found she was from England. ????
Started researching my ancestors about 10 years ago. My Mom insists her great-grandmother was Cherokee but according to everything I have found she was from England. ????
Incorrect family lore is not uncommon. It's still possible you do have a Cherokee ancestor, but perhaps your mother was mistaken about which one it was.
I had been told all my life I was Native American and never believed it until I started digging through my family tree.. of course I started 11 yrs ago and never found anything. But one day we went to Cherokee and was walking around and I had an Indian Chief come up to me and ask if I was Indian I of course said um I duno. He said you should check your family history..your bone structure in your face tells the truth. So I had a DNA Test done and it came back saying I was 1/8 Native American. Which left me wondering, So of course this prompted me to start asking questions.. I ask My mom and as she always said yes we do somewhere..lol I ask my dad and he insisted his Grandmother..my Great Grandmother was Cherokee.. so I dug some more.. and FINALLY Finally found what I had been looking for all these years.. I found 3 lines on his side that are Native American.. I was so excited. So I am Cherokee, Shawnee/Cherokee, Cherokee/Powhatan-which was the Virginia Algonquians..and of course he is also English and Irish Gotta love History..
My mom side so far there is no Native American.. which leaves her a bit disappointed, but I am still digging so maybe someday Ill find it on her side to. But she is English, Irish/Scottish, French, German/Prussia, Swedish, Norwegian..lol I'm not sure if theirs room for Native American in there.
I think the main reasons people has problems finding their Native American side is due to the fact that back then families would put them as White in census and hide the fact that they were Indian because they were ashamed of it.
The Irish/Scottish sounds like it is Scots Irish who aren't Irish but Scottish. I think there is where Americans get a bit confused and think they are Irish. A lot of Americans who think they are Irish when they research find out that they don't have Irish ancestry but Scottish.
i think the "irish" thing is just ignorance. i grew up in a town where very few people ought to have been Irish. Yet, an awful lot of people called themselves "Irish" because they didn't understand there was a difference between Irish and Scots-Irish, and they hadn't done any reading to figure it out.
As far as the native american thing goes... thats a touchy subject for some people on this board.
Both these ancestries have some degree of "mythology" behind them, native americans and celts, that people really become attached to. Being English or German is not so sexy.
To the people of this site: Please remember that just because the DNA is not expressed on your genetic test, does not mean you don't have an ancestor who was of that nationality. Genetic testing only goes back so far, so if you do have a story of an Irish, Scottish, or Native American ancestor it could be that he, or she is so far back in your line that their DNA is no longer expressed. Don't just assume that your parents, and grandparents lied to you. Perhaps, they were told the same thing by their parents. An ancestor who lived in the 1600's would, most likely, not show up in your DNA.
Last edited by greateridea; 08-23-2014 at 11:44 AM..
The topic about people claiming "Cherokee ancestry" has come up on this board before. It seems it's pretty common in certain parts of the US (especially the South) for family lore to include stories of some Cherokee ancestor, which may or may not be the case.
...An ancestor who lived in the 1600's would, most likely, not show up in your DNA.
Wow...this ^^^ is soNOT true!
Mutations do occur in DNA strains, (which can alter results) but that does not mean that a person's basic genetic structure is completely changed. My husband who has traced his ancestry back to the 1700's connected up with other researchers following the same line. After comparing DNA samples from everyone in the group, they found that out of the 7 tested, 1 had 4 mutations, 3 had 2 mutations, 2 had 1 mutation and 1 was an IDENTICAL match out of 67 alleles and this was a relative my husband didn't even know when he started the research. It turned out that their ggg-grandfathers were brothers who were born in the early 1800s.
We are who we are because of our DNA...not in spite of it. Good grief!
RVcook
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.