Show Us Your Pedigree! The Heritage Thread.

[scotrace]

This can apply to not only Americans. So many nations now have significant populations from someplace else that it can apply to most anyone.
So: what "extraction" are you? And what do you feel you have gotten from those roots?

Mine is mostly Austrian, from the Italian/Austrian border (Tirol), which explains having an uncle Guido. Also German, some French. I have inherited all the family recipes, along with a fondness for a good drink with friends. And what's the line? "I have already given him the best table, knowing he is German and would take it anyway..."
German ancestors came to America in 1709. Austrian in 1902.

So.... what are you?

 

[KAT]

im not american ..so ill be quiet..good for you

:whistling (but i cant wait to see who got german heritage)

 

[Nathan Flowers]

.

Almost completely English on my father's side. Came to America in 1656, been in Marion, SC since 1741. I haven't really inherited anything from what I can tell, other than a desire to own land along Catfish Creek. I found out that the land my wife and I recently bought was previously owned by my great-great-great-great grandfather in the 1780's. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to get back the original grant (2000 acres), so we're settling on 4 acres of our own.

Mother's side is English and Scots-Irish.

 

[AtomicBlonde]

My fathers side of the family is almost completely German. Our last name was Weiss, but was changed to Wise at some point.

In Spotsylvania county, Virginia in the early 18th century Governor Spotswood imported 2 waves of highly skilled German immigrants to the area, one set in 1714, and another in 1717. My family came in with the second wave. (The Garrs) This area of Virginia still has quite a bit of German influence if you know where to look. A lot of the German families migrated to Culpeper and Madison Counties later on in the century... and you still see very German names in those areas. The Utz's, the Clores (changed from the German Klaar... the Clore family in Madison has been making furniture since the 1830s, and its BEAUTIFUL stuff.) and also the Yagers (changed from Jäger). The Madison Germans went on to found Hebron Lutheran Church, which today is the oldest Lutheran church still being used for Worship in America. http://www.germanna.org/church.html
Ok, enough of the random history lesson...

Anyway, so I'd say most of my family is German with little bits of English (Blackwell) and Scottish (Anderson).

-Jess

 

[MelissaAnne]

I'm a mixture, that's for sure!

My paternal grandfather is Italian, my paternal grandmother is a German from Russia. http://www.ahsgr.org/

Maternal grandfather was Polish and maternal grandmother was Scots-Irish.

I know more about my paternal grandparents than maternal. My great-grandparents came from Italy in the early 1900s. I've been mostly exposed to my Italian and German heritage with food and celebrations. Anyone ever heard of butterball soup??? It's a great recipe from the Germans from Russia.

 

[fortworthgal]

I'm pretty much Irish-English. My mother's family is a mix of Irish-English, came to the US in 1620. My father's side is Irish, came to the US in the early 1900s.

 

[decodoll]

I'm a quarter Danish on my mother's side and a quarter English on my dad's side. My maternal Gramma's parents came over from Denmark in the early 1900's, and my paternal Gramma met my grampa during WWII and moved back to the US with him after the war. The other half, I don't really know. They've been in the United States a lot longer. What I've gotten from my roots... well I have a passion for chocolate (Denmark has the highest per capita consumtion of chocolate in the world ), and I like meat pies, mushy peas and tea over coffee.

 

["Doc" Devereux]

:whistling (but i cant wait to see who got german heritage)

I've got some Hanover...

 

[RedPop4]

I'm a mutt.

My mother's family, both sides, came from Sicily around 1900, give or take a few years. Some aunts and uncles were born there, my grandparents, though were born here. Both families were from the same area and listed the same town as their point of origin...Alia.

My father's side, there's another story. The name is Bender, that's supposed to be German, but they were here for who knows how long, as some were Mississippi Baptists, great-grandmother was Leake. My grandmother's side had German, Scottish (my Great-grandmother McQuillen.....got a kilt using the McQuillen, McQuillan name to determine the tartan) and Dutch.

My kids have even more.

Anyway, about the only cultural points I got was a deep Catholicism from the Sicilian influence, a love of pasta, and a keeping of the St. Joseph's Day traditions that are prominent here among New Orleanians.

 

[Pilgrim]

I'm a mixture of Welsh (last name Powell, which is about as Welsh as you can get) with Scots, Irish, British, and a bit of American Indian mixed in from one of the tribes in the Northern Missouri area.

My wife's family is a mixture of British and Russian-German.

 

[Big Man]

Most of the lines I have been able to document on my father's side of the family came from Scotland and Ireland ("Ulster Scots"), with some Germans in there as well. The earliest date in America I can document from my Father's side of the family is around 1700.

Most of the lines I have been able to document from my Mother's side of the family are fairly well split between England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. I have one line on that side I have been able to document back to King Malcolm of Scotland (I guess that makes me about 1,000,000,000th in line for the throne - right?). The earliest date in America I can document from my Mother's side of the family is around 1680.

I consider myself to be mostly of "Scots-Irish" extraction, and believe I have inherited a trait that is typical of the Scots-Irish: "I am fiercely loyal to the government ... as long as it serves my purposes." Or at least that's what one of our Doctors from Ireland here at the hospital said about me.

 

[KAT]

well I have a passion for chocolate (Denmark has the highest per capita consumtion of chocolate in the world ), QUOTE]

LAND OF CHOCOLATE IS GERMANY just my 2 cents to this topic
im 130 % german
Im more Kraut than Sauerkraut ever will be
Auf Wiedersehn

 

[KAT]

[QUOTE="Doc" Devereux]I've got some Hanover... [/QUOTE]
now thats cool

 

[mysterygal]

on my mother's side, they are pure German, my father's, grandma is Scandinavian, and my grandfather is Greek

 

[Brad Bowers]

On my maternal grandmother's side, I'm German, English, and Scotch-Irish. I have an ancestor, Heinrich Weidner, that came to America in 1741 and settled in North Carolina. His namesake son Anglicized the name to Henry Whitener and settled in SE Missouri, shoeshineboy's neck of the woods, in 1804-05. A bunch more of my ancestors come from the other German families that settled in the area. On the English side, Wallace Caywood came to America in 1830, and his son Alfred, my great-great grandfather, married a girl named Mary Catherine Stewart, whose family came over from Dublin in 1835.

I know next to nothing about my maternal grandfather, Theodore Shea. According to my grandmother, they were married for a week in March 1940 in Kansas, she became pregnant in that week, they had a fight, and he ran off, never to be seen again. He supposedly went back to his family in Canada, then joined the RAF, and was shot down July 7, 1941. The little research I have been able to do, I haven't found his name listed among the RAF members killed in action. My mother has always believed that they never really married, and it was a cover story for my grandmother being an unwed mother. She hasn't been to Kansas to dig for a marriage certificate. My grandmother was a chronic liar, so we'll probably never know the truth about my grandfather. We don't even know if his name is real.

On my paternal side, my grandfather's family came from the England/Scotland border region, and my grandmother's side came over from Sweden in 1851.

And that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about my family!

If any of you WWII folks have some research ideas about my supposed RAF grandfather, I'd appreciate hearing them! Hmm, maybe I should post this as a question in the WWII area.

Brad

 

[Naama]

so, well, thats a hard one, so my maternal grandma parents came from bohemia, what's now the czech republic (I think) but was a part of austria for some time, how or why they came to austria, god knows.... From my maternal grandfather, I don't know much about him or his but that he was jewish. My father comes from turkey but they are actually kurds. So yeah, I'm pretty much mixed up I guess

Naama

 

[Slate Shannon]

I'm German/White Russian on my mother's side, and mostly German with a wee bit of Irish on my father's side. I really wish I knew more about my ancestors, but all of my grandparents and my father are deceased, so I can't ask them. One of these days (famous last words), I'm going to have to do some internet research and see what I can find out.

 

[Johnnysan]

It dates my folks, but they met during WWII when my dad was slogging North through Italy. My mom is 100% Italian from Verona and was born into an titled family at a time when there was still a monarchy and titles meant something. My dad grew up on a depression-era dirt farm in Terre Haute, Indiana and is a throughbred American, meaning that our anscestors came from everywhere else. His father's side was Welsh and the family was established here since well before the Revolution; his mom's lineage was predominantly Native American and presumably, her family was here a lot longer than that!

I inheireted my mom's love of finery and conversation and my dad's sense of self-reliance and steadiness. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the mix. For what it's worth, my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on April 11th of this year...proof positive that oppopsites DO attract.

 

[RedPop4]

Most of my family were too busy trying to better their lives, that they didn't have much time to discuss or remember history. My grandmother (maternal) died when I was three, so we got little history. My grandfather wasn't an overly smart man, and couldn't remember much.

My paternal grandmother was very florid, I taped her, but she loved to tell stories and we don't know what's true and what isn't.[huh]

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Scots, Irish, English recently. French if ye go back far enough (C12th i believe.) We came over wit da Normans ... One of my ancestors was one of Rob Roy's many many concubines ...

On the wife's side Scots & Malay.

bk