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.
My father's family tree consists entirely of R.C. Irish families from various parts of Ireland. One of those families, however, arrived in Ireland ca. 1603 as Protestant colonists, but they soon intermarried with native Irish R.C. families and their English origins and heritage were not sustained.
My mother's family is more complex. Her father's family were Presbyterians from Co. Tyrone, their name is not a native Irish one and they are likely to have at some point been introduced as Protestant settlers during the Plantation of Ulster, either from southern Scotland or England.
Her mother's father's family were a mixture of early Dutch and Huguenot families who settled in New Netherlands colony. After the American Revolution two of the descendants of these families moved into the new English-speaking settlements of Upper Canada (Ontario), and there they intermarried with the descendants of a Palatine German family who came from very close to the area they had lived in in the New York colony. Her mother's mother's family were a Scotsman who married a woman of mixed white and African ancestry who was probably the daughter of some of the freed slaves that the British refused to leave behind at George Washington's demand but took to Canada in a convoy along with white people from NYC.
My sister had her DNA analyzed by Ancestry, and it came up with 67% British Isles, 17% Scandinavian, 11% Western European and some small percentages each of Iberian Peninsula, Finnish, and Asia Minor.
The great-great-grandparents whose name I bear we know came here from Manchester in 1863. There is another English thread that goes back to Massachusetts to the 17th century. The majority of my ancestors--no one before great-grandparents--came here from The Netherlands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That doesn't seem to match the DNA results at first glance, but from what I read, The Netherlands was populated by people who came down from the Scandinavian regions plus there were Saxons there, the same as the British Isles, so they may all be entwined.
Half German, 1/4 Finnish, and the other 1/4 is Irish and English. None of my ancestors were in America before 1885. I think that's when my grandfather and his family came over from Germany. My grandmother's family came over in 1890. They went west from New York, settling in Illinois first and then permanently in southern Minnesota. My mom went north to the Twin Cities to find work and met my dad there.
My dad's dad's family came from England and Ireland through Canada, and then down to the Cities. His mom's folks came over in about 1906 from Finland and ended up in northern Minnesota. My grandmother was orphaned and brought to the Twin Cities where she met my grandfather and raised up my dad after she was divorced. My parents moved around the Midwest for a bunch of years and my mom is now living a little north of the Cities. I left home and continued west, first to California and then to Washington state. If I could go further west, I would, but the Pacific Ocean is right there.
I'm 100 percent American(Born in Washington DC) My mother's side of the family: Mainly German, although you can find we originate on the boarder of Denmark and Germany by way of Sweden.
My fathers side is African American with Afro Brazilian. They also have Native American(cherokee) and Irish American in their blood(my dad's great grandfather was half Irish Half African American. So Technically I'm
Paternal grandfather's father: English, Irish. If I can ever get beyond my dad's great-grandfather I'd bet it'd be just as interesting as the maternal side. However, searching for a John Taylor anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon between 1820-1850 is nightmarish. Paternal grandfather's mother: English, German, possibly French, Welsh. Paternal line stretches back to late 1600s Virginia, includes Tidewater aristocracy and several veterans of the Revolution both in the direct and collateral lines, and includes at least two ways we're related to George Washington through the Ball family.
Maternal grandfather's father: paternal line stretches back to the 1600s to a tiny place in Norway above the Arctic Circle, farmers all; those were some tough people. The ancestors that came to the US were South Dakota pioneers. Maternal grandfather's mother: The eldest American-born Norwegian son married a Scots-Canadian (who came to America via Quebec) whose family has only been traced as far as Glasgow in the early 1800s - wish I could pursue this line more from where I'm at. I'd like to know if my Stuart line has any collateral connections with THE Stuarts or anyone else interesting. Scotland's history fascinates me.
Both of my grandfathers had a thing for Irish Catholic women, so I'm half (plus a little more from Dad's side) Irish, then pretty much northern and western European mishmash.
I'm a quarter Irish-- County Kerry and maybe Cork
...a quarter German-- Hanover and Hesse-Darmstadt
...a quarter Baltic German and Pomeranian with some Polish/Kashub traces (Prussian, Lithuanian?)
The rest is a murky mix of English, New Netherlands Dutch, Huguenot Walloon, Scottish and
some Ukrainian-Russian-Hungarian-Balkan threads....great grandpa...is that you?
My paternal mother was a Mackintosh from Scotland in 1742. My paternal father was of Irish stock by way of Canada in 1871. I don't really know about the other two, except one was the daughter of a German immigrant from Schleswig and the other was descended from Massachusetts Bay settlement from England by 1670. I've only followed the Mackintosh line, back to the 1300s in Inverness.
Mostly English, as in typical of a current native, with a bit of Scandinavian thrown in for good measure. This fits with what I have on paper, too.
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.
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.
