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I'm not judging, I respect everyone's right to their own opinion and choices. Some people may genuinely not care about their ancestry, and that's fine with me.
Well, there's the answer to your question. We don't know because we don't care that much, and we see little reason why we should.
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I don't think the point of knowing one's ancestry is to somehow change one's own life. I think the point of it, at an aggregate level, is to understand what the root of American culture and origins are, because they are not indigenous to this place.
People came from a wide variety of places, it's not like there's a single 'root' of 'origin' and 'culture'. And those of us who were born here *are* indigenous to this place. We don't need to know where our ancestors came from.
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The more people who care and investigate the more we know about that.
So what? Why should we care? If you want to 'investigate', then go for it. The rest of us are busy with other things and don't give two rips about it.
Being born in a place doesn't make you indigenous to that place.
Also 400 years is a drop of sand in the complete span of Human History. Anatomically Modern Humans have been around for 100,000 years. 400 years is 0.4% of that. That means that for 99.6% of that time (at least) the ancestors of non-Native Americans have been somewhere else.
Also noone is really so busy that they can't investigate their ancestry if they wanted to. It's not really that difficult.
Now you ARE skating dangerously close to making a value judgement. I get that genealogy is your passion -- it's mine, too -- but that doesn't make it a priority for everyone. Nor should it. And I beg to differ with your assertion that nobody is too busy to research their family history. Some people really are that busy and don't have much time for anything other than working, eating, and sleeping. Up to very recently, genealogy has been a very elite hobby. The internet has begun to change that, but it's still not a universally-accessible avocation.
My focus in researching my family history is to place it in the context of American history. That doesn't mean that I don't see myself as a citizen of the world, but four hundred years, even if it is a drop in the bucket, is more than enough for a lifetime of study. I've spent the last eight years intermittently researching the descending lines of my gg-grandparents' family. I don't have the capacity for or the interest in delving into which tiny English town my tenth great-grandparents sprang from. I know that at least two of them came here as Puritans. That's enough. I'm more interested in what happened AFTER they came to these shores, and I want more than just names and dates to put on a fan chart. I mean, for goodness sake, just a six generation tree contains 64 direct ancestors, and the numbers get frighteningly huge from there. At twelve generations, you're looking at 4,096 direct ancestors. I'm not going to live long enough for that!
Last edited by randomparent; 07-08-2018 at 11:01 AM..
I had always been told that my ancestry was Ireland, Scotland, England, and Germany, with a smidgen of Native American.
I even had some family names from those countries.
Then I had a DNA test done: 51% Southern Italy, some Ireland, Some Scotland. No Native American.
I may try another test from a different company and see what comes up.
In the meantime, I have very little interest in the (mostly false) family ancestry.
If you are actually interested in the Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam, read Russell Shorto's book The Island at the Center of the World. It is a fascinating peak back in history and an education on how the government that was set up there was influenced by the Iroquois and later influenced our Constitution.
I live in New Jersey (another Dutch stronghold, and I am of Dutch descent) and worked in lower Manhattan all my life, which is where the city first began. There are still whispers of the Dutch colony in street names and places like the small park called Bowling Green, which was a market site. Wall Street, famous as the center of our country's finance activity, was named that because it was originally the northern border of the town and the governor had the citizens build a wooden wall to keep out the native people, who came by in the night regularly and took the wood from the wall for firewood.
Nieuw Amsterdam was set up for commerce, not for religious purposes as were some of our other early settlements. The first Jews arrived there in 1654 seeking asylum from the Inquisition in Brazil, and their congregation still exists, as well as their early cemeteries.
I am in Albany a lot (originally named Fort Orange), as well, and the Dutch heritage and history there is very strong. They even have a huge Tulip Festival every spring.
Former U.S. Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, is a rare example of a born Brooklynite with colonial Dutch ancestry, whose family stayed in Brooklyn despite the city being overwhelmed and deluged with other very different races and ethnicities.
My apologies if earlier posts have come off judgemental in tone. To me it seems very natural to want to know where one's ancestors came from, in a similar way to one wanting to know the origins of the English Language as spoken in the US and of the American Political and Legal System.
DNA tests are another story. They tend to often describe distant ancestry rather than recent ancestry, ie. Someone whose ancestors immigrated directly from Britain will get 20% Scandinavian and African Americans whose direct (involuntary) migrant ancestors were from the West African littoral will see 20% Southeastern African/Bantu due to migration histories connecting the two regions. I understand why this happens, but I'm not sure the companies making these tests explain this very well, leading some people to believe the narrative of their family history contradicts their actual ancestry when it doesn't necessarily
i am the only one in my family born in united states, my brother three years older was born in london. so why do i not know my mom british side, well one when mom died , my brother threw away the family tree that went back to 1400.
I don't think every American lives without ethnic restraint evidenced by racial discrimination being a number one social problem for so many minorities.
Genealogy is the embodiment of Curiosity and for me turned into a love for history. If one is indifferent or not seeking knowledge then one is limiting their growth and less likely to understand the world around them except for what some TV anchor deems relevant for you.
Knowing history is important to help ensure we don't make the same mistakes over and over again.
The research I did for 16 years brought me deeper into historical facts that most people would never find out unless they did the digging. I would never have guessed I would end up so interested when I took it in school. I had no interest then at all.
My apologies if earlier posts have come off judgemental in tone. To me it seems very natural to want to know where one's ancestors came from, in a similar way to one wanting to know the origins of the English Language as spoken in the US and of the American Political and Legal System.
A lot of people have no interest in that either. It seems to me you're just having difficulty accepting that not everyone is interested in the same things you are.
I’m trained in history and it has been interesting to see how my ancestry fits into the world events since about 1295, which is the oldest date I’ve reached with any confidence. I have some named ancestors who died in the Black Plague and some who sailed with Dutch explorers, a couple heads of state, a Mayflower passenger, a commandant at Ft. Orange, disciples of Anne Hutchinson expelled by Puritans from Boston, Revolutionary soldiers and Civil War soldiers, a couple of Irish gangsters, somebody clad in dark mystery who was running from the Czar, and a bitter old man who was shot by his daughter in law in broad daylight with witnesses (she was acquitted). This is all on my mom’s side. We seem to have a pattern of being religious dissenters over several hundred years. Unlike some families, military service or rank was never a big thing. On my dad’s side we mostly grew barley and waited for the next invasion (Teutonic Knights, Lithuania, Poland , Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France, Prussia, Russia, etc.). Nothing much changed except the religion going back and forth. It is all interesting and with this, and with about $2.00, I can get a cup of coffee.
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