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Not trying to be controversial -- but that is an interesting question to ask and it goes to the heart of diversity and our multi-national ancestry.
It REALLY struck me when the person who was presenting, who, throughout the training basically read every single white person the riot act, said that. I had always kind of thought about what it was like 4-5 generations ago, but not if my great-great-great-grandparents were considered white, just that language and maybe work would have been hard; not that they were seen as "less than."
Yes my self-perception did change. When I started doing genealogy I discovered my fathers family had a direct ancestor in Jamestown colony. They were all farmers as far as I can tell, lower middle class economically. Mothers family hard to trace from Ireland, late comers.
I also found my father's direct ancestors lived only 17 miles from the plantation that Frederick Douglass was born into and escaped from and wondered what I would have done if he or anyone else running from enslavement came to my door asking for help. I hope I'd give food and shelter, are ethics situational or is the law situational?
MY DNA is 99.5% British Isles, a bit of German and Hugeunot.
I gained more awareness of how much was taken from indigenous who lived on this land 30,000 years before white settlers arrived. So much wrong was done to them and slaves imported here. My ancestors came here and displaced tribes who owned these places. Genealogy makes me "feel" history more in my heart, before it was just names and dates.
Because of my parents economic situation I assumed most of my ancestors were also poor. I was very surprised how many were wealthy and prominent.
I have found that in my tree too. I would like to know where in the hell the money went!!
It actually makes genealogy easier if you had family members who were wealthy or prominent. They left a bigger paper trail for you to follow, full of details. For example, one of g-g-grandfathers in the early 1800s gave his new bride (a second wife after he was widowed) a wedding gift of $5,000 in silver. (Probably about $250,000 in today's money.) He then gave the community $10,000 to build a new school. (About a cool half million.)
But I have found one group of cousins in my tree who are truly super-wealthy. I refer to them as the "Beverly Hillbillies." Back during the Civil War (1860's) my g-g-grandfather and his brothers served in the Union Army. One of the brothers (Andrew) died of pneumonia in a field hospital. Andrew was married and had two daughters. About 13 or 14 months after Andrew's death his wife remarried. By the 1890's that branch of the family had moved west to be dirt farmers in Oklahoma, including Andrew's daughters (my blood cousins.) The daughters eventually married and settled with their new husbands on farms outside of Tulsa.
Then they struck oil on their farms. One of the daughter's husbands had enough foresight to create an oil company from that initial strike. Through the oil company he bought literally millions of acres of land across eastern Oklahoma and north Texas in the 1890's!! He got in on the ground floor of the first OK/TX oil boom. Everywhere they drilled there was a gusher.
I said that wealthy family members leave a paper trail... This branch of the family appeared in a book on the history of Oklahoma, published in 1910. They were the wealthiest family in OK in 1910--worth about $800 million in 1910 dollars. (Probably $10 or $12 billion in 2021 dollars).
Through my research I know that branch of family is still loaded. About 20 years ago they finally sold the oil company to ExxonMobil for $60 billion. I think we need to bring back an old family tradition: Distant cousins marrying distant cousins. For that kind of loot I would marry a 4th or 5th cousin.
My sister recently had her DNA done. So I'm assuming mine would be a close match to hers.
I am part American Indian. In my head, it's a big deal, and I know a lot about my Cherokee history. And yes, many of them are on the Dawes rolls. That said, it's only 3% of our of our DNA. We also have some German DNA. That's also 3%. But I know nothing about our German ancestors. I have no idea who that came from...was it my mom's side or my dad's? Not even one little clue. Well, no, I have a suspicion that it might've been my GGreat grandfather's wife's side of the family...simply because I know so little about her, except being the mother of my great great grandmother, on my dad's side. But I don't know for sure.
Anyway...I don't relate to the German side at all....but I know so much history about my Native American side...and there's a lot of pride there, and a lot of stories, etc. Yet...it's the same percentage...just 3%
My sister recently had her DNA done. So I'm assuming mine would be a close match to hers.
I am part American Indian. In my head, it's a big deal, and I know a lot about my Cherokee history. And yes, many of them are on the Dawes rolls. That said, it's only 3% of our of our DNA. We also have some German DNA. That's also 3%. But I know nothing about our German ancestors. I have no idea who that came from...was it my mom's side or my dad's? Not even one little clue. Well, no, I have a suspicion that it might've been my GGreat grandfather's wife's side of the family...simply because I know so little about her, except being the mother of my great great grandmother, on my dad's side. But I don't know for sure.
Anyway...I don't relate to the German side at all....but I know so much history about my Native American side...and there's a lot of pride there, and a lot of stories, etc. Yet...it's the same percentage...just 3%
Your ties to your German ancestry could have been affected by the wars with Germany. There was a particularly anti-German sentiment in the US during WWI. Many downplayed their German roots during this time. The German names of families and even towns were actually changed to avoid connections with Germany. While the largest single ethnic group in the US today is German, it is not especially prominent for its size.
The only new nugget I found was that I was named after my great grandmother. She went by Christine, and that’s my middle name, that part, I knew, but I found that her actual given name was Susana Christina and my name is Susan Christine. Wouldn’t you think that someone might have bothered to tell me that?
If I had known, I would have carried the name forward with my daughter.
Yes -- the naming thing popped up in our family, too. My uncle, the only boy in that generation, was given the middle name Frear but nobody seemed to know why except that his dad's middle name was the same. Turns out it is a family name going clear back to the 1640s to a Huguenot immigrant who fled France and settled in the Hudson Valley. That part was forgotten but the name was passed on. None of the cousins carry the name and none knew enough to consider passing it on.
No, but it was very interesting. Always been particularly drawn to the UK and its culture in particular to the point I moved there for four years (and loved it). After that, settled in Italy for a year. Loved it. Out of all the other countries I've been to, my favorite was the UAE, where I became interested in Arabic culture, to the point of learning Arabic. My results were 98 percent Western European (78 percent UK, 20 percent Norway), 1.5 percent Italian, .3 percent Arab and .2 unidentified. Very compelling.
It did fill me with pride though. I love European history and culture, am very proud of what it's accomplished, and am very proud to have come from it. Guess that makes me a White supremacist.
My sister recently had her DNA done. So I'm assuming mine would be a close match to hers.
I am part American Indian. In my head, it's a big deal, and I know a lot about my Cherokee history. And yes, many of them are on the Dawes rolls. That said, it's only 3% of our of our DNA. We also have some German DNA. That's also 3%. But I know nothing about our German ancestors. I have no idea who that came from...was it my mom's side or my dad's? Not even one little clue. Well, no, I have a suspicion that it might've been my GGreat grandfather's wife's side of the family...simply because I know so little about her, except being the mother of my great great grandmother, on my dad's side. But I don't know for sure.
Anyway...I don't relate to the German side at all....but I know so much history about my Native American side...and there's a lot of pride there, and a lot of stories, etc. Yet...it's the same percentage...just 3%
That's only 6% of her results. Now I'm just nosy, what was the rest? Remember that Ancestry defines German a bit differently as in a region, so it could be a bit Austrian, it could be a bit Hungarian and it could even be a bit from the Netherlands. My mom has a lot of Eastern Europe and Germanic even though she's basically 75% Czech and 25% Swedish/Irish. (Her father was 100% Czech and her mother's father was Czech and her mother's mother was Swedish/Irish).
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Back during the Civil War (1860's) my g-g-grandfather and his brothers served in the Union Army. One of the brothers (Andrew) died of pneumonia in a field hospital. Andrew was married and had two daughters. About 13 or 14 months after Andrew's death his wife remarried. By the 1890's that branch of the family had moved west to be dirt farmers in Oklahoma, including Andrew's daughters (my blood cousins.) The daughters eventually married and settled with their new husbands on farms outside of Tulsa.
