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.
The lines of my four grandparent's direct, past ancestors: 1663 from somewhere in East Anglia, England, 1736 from Inverness, Scotland, 1888 from Germany, 1892 from somewhere in Ontario, Canada. I can follow the Scottish line (my father's mother) back to the 1300s through a series of Highland Clan chiefs, before an eldest son migrated from Inverness to Darien, GA. I don't anything more about the ancestor's of my mother's mother from Germany, or my father's father whose family was probably from Ireland, before they came to Canada.
My moms side of the family left Spain and moved to Dominican Republic. I'm not exactly sure why they left Spain maybe they found a more promising future by starting fresh in another country? 2 of my great grandparents owned a plantation there. I was told that one of my great grandmothers was very racist and treated some people like crap over but they still respected her. I just don't get it if she didn't like a certain race why move to that country then?
The other 2 great grandparents I'm not exactly sure what they did over there but they all hailed from Seville Spain.
Now my dad is from Germany. He moved when he was in his early 20's. He was born during the time of WW2 so maybe one of the reasons he left Germany is because of the things he had to go through as a child? He never dated german women, he always preferred a woman from another country maybe it can be the whole guilt thing that some Germans had or could still have? I have heard that some people would rather become sterilized than be with their own kind so who really knows or maybe he just wasn't attracted to his own kind? He told me when he was a kid he saw one of the Russian soldiers shoot a german boy in front of him. He also told me how he would hear the sirens go off when bombs were dropped. If he didn't leave the city with my grandparents and his brother they would have been killed. They had to leave Berlin and head south. He said they were put in something like a concentration camp for a short time until they were allowed to go to the next town. They left Germany and lived in Austria for a few years then moved to Munich and then eventually went back to Berlin. They were a middle class family that became very poor for a long time. He said they had to live on just bread sometimes. One of my fathers uncles was a nazi but he died during the war. My father doesn't remember much about him. We have an old photo of his uncle in uniform somewhere and a bunch of other old photographs that luckily didn't get damaged or lost during those crazy times.
My paternal great grandfather was a carpet weaver in England. He was recruited to work for a carpet company in New England. They came by ship from England to NY in the 1860s.
My other relatives came from Sweden and Norway at about the same time. I do not know what the conditions were that caused them to come. They settled in MA. My Norwegian grandfather was in business, and my Swedish great grandparents were farmers. I believe a lot of the Swedish people in New England worked at a stone quarry in VT.
The lines of my four grandparent's direct, past ancestors: 1663 from somewhere in East Anglia, England, 1736 from Inverness, Scotland, 1888 from Germany, 1892 from somewhere in Ontario, Canada. I can follow the Scottish line (my father's mother) back to the 1300s through a series of Highland Clan chiefs, before an eldest son migrated from Inverness to Darien, GA. I don't anything more about the ancestor's of my mother's mother from Germany, or my father's father whose family was probably from Ireland, before they came to Canada.
I forgot the whys?
Scotland: he immigrated in 1736 from Inverness to lead a group of people who were sent to defend the new settlement of Savannah, GA from the Indians and the Spanish.
England: Not sure, but since they were late immigrants to Massachusetts Bay Colony and were from East Anglia, probably because neighbors, who had earlier migrated for religious and political differences, encouraged them. In the Colony, they changed their name and moved to an area about 30 miles west of Boston to farm.
Canada: To take a RR job in the US to set up his own company building RR locomotives.
Germany: No idea. I never met my Great Grandmother, who eventually settled in Little Rock AR.
The earliest of my maternal ancestors that I've traced were born in Virginia in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Family lore is that the original settlers were Welsh, Irish and English. That's feasible but so far unproven. I expect the initial group came for the opportunity to own land, mostly due to head rights. Land ownership was the driving force for many of the early immigrants.
My paternal grandparents emigrated from Poland in 1908 & 1912. Their reasons, although they met here, were similar - the opportunity for employment and they wanted to be American. The small village where my grandfather was born was constantly being run over by Germans, Russians or whoever happened to be on the march at the time. My grandfather was the last of his family to leave.
My paternal great grandfather was a carpet weaver in England. He was recruited to work for a carpet company in New England. They came by ship from England to NY in the 1860s.
My other relatives came from Sweden and Norway at about the same time. I do not know what the conditions were that caused them to come. They settled in MA. My Norwegian grandfather was in business, and my Swedish great grandparents were farmers. I believe a lot of the Swedish people in New England worked at a stone quarry in VT.
It may have been due to the famine 1866-1868 when many swedish farmers left the country for America.
Also Polish immigrant family here, or at least partly. Paternal grandfather immigrated from Poland shortly after the end of WW1. Family lore said he felt that after the war, things were still bad, and that they weren't going to get any better, but in fact would get worse. He sadly was correct. My late dad's oldest brother was born in Poland but the rest of the family was born in NYC.
Maternal side immigrated from Canada in the 50's after my mom married my dad & moved to NYC.
On this upcoming July 4th holiday, I especially want to honor & thank my grandparents for immigrating to America, a country of true opportunity. I am so very glad and proud to be an American!
More than half of my immigrant ancestors were Quakers, plurality Welsh but a diverse slice of western Europe, roughly 15% of my ancestry is Welsh. Europe hated them and considered them heretics. Many disowned by their families for being Quaker.
Indentured servants in the Virginia western borderlands, French and UK, mostly bought out of prison, petty crime, debt, vagrancy and vice. I guess they thought it would be better than jail even though the mortality rate in the area in the early 1600s was shockingly high.
Irish and African bonded labor in the sugar islands, location wasn't their decision, my ancestors were mixed "free people of color" with Irish surnames when they migrated to the mainland through the Carolinas in the early 1700s.
A few random traders that were in the southern Appalachians by the late 1600s, French, Spanish, Scottish. Not sure what their story was beyond immediate profit motive, not even sure if they were immigrants or the kids or grandkids of immigrants.
My native ancestors were already here but some of them were from several hundred miles north of the southern Appalachian area where my family ended up. They married Quakers and moved south in the late 1600s to early 1700s as part of a Quaker charity group that provided european style farming, spinning and weaving technology to indian nations with the stated goal of improving their ability to equitably trade with colonials. Secondary benefit of pissing off the other colonials the Quakers didn't get along with, only indians were eligible to apply to the charity, not other colonials, Quakers did passive aggressive well. It was popular, most of the time they had a waiting list a couple of years long.
My husband's family came from Holland originally with stop in England
They came in 1600s I think
My own side of the family came from England/Scotland and came about that same time, maybe little earlier--
I am not the genealogist--my sister has spent lot of time researching our family history
We originally came into the northeast and over generations migrated through Kentucky, Tennessee, and into Texas where my father's great grandfather homesteader...
He came on wagon train w/other members of his family--brothers and their wives...
My mom's family was from Georgia area--she met/married my dad in WWII when he was recovering from injury at military hospital in Atlanta...he was medic w/the Texas battalion.
Saw heavy duty in North Africa, Salerno landing, and Monte Casino...
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.
