Show Us Your Pedigree! The Heritage Thread.

[WH1]

According to the family historians all my ancestors got kicked out of Europe and sent to North America pre-1780. English, Irish and German. The German branch arrived in 1654. The English contingent were on the Mayflower (2 great....Grandfathers) and the Irish came over between 1750 and 1780. Fortunately my grandmothers on both sides were serious genealogists who documented the lineages with original documents starting back in the 30's and 40's.

 

[AmateisGal]

According to the family historians all my ancestors got kicked out of Europe and sent to North America pre-1780. English, Irish and German. The German branch arrived in 1654. The English contingent were on the Mayflower (2 great....Grandfathers) and the Irish came over between 1750 and 1780. Fortunately my grandmothers on both sides were serious genealogists who documented the lineages with original documents starting back in the 30's and 40's.

You're very fortunate to have all that documentation. My aunt has done some on our Italian side, but I think it only goes back to the late 1700s or so.

 

[Miss sofia]

In a nutshell. Mothers, Father was from Sicily, the family name reputedly means, 'belonging to the Emperor Nero, i.e servants. He was orphaned at a young age and sent to live with family in Malta. My maternal grandmother was actually born in Hull, her father was a Captain in the merchant navy, her mother unknown, although she is believed to have been of Italian/Irish extraction. I am currently researching this side of the family, although no records of my maternal great grandmother exist, which is not uncommon. My great grandfather actually saw action in WW1 and returned after the war to Hull to his wife, who had actually been told he was missing in action and had re-married! He took my grandmother and returned to Malta. My mother was born in Malta and emigrated to England in the early 1950's with her family.

My biological fathers family are Tuscan born and bred. We have traced their family as far back as the 16th century, where they comprised of minor aristocracy, gentlemen farmers and clergymen. Indeed my father himself carried on the family tradition and grew plants flowers for export and my uncle is a Monsignore. My father's second cousin has inherited the title of Count Tigli, although sadly he is childless and so far all the direct descendants are female.

My step father who raised me from a child, is of Irish origin. His father, my gramps, was orphaned in the early part of the last century and actually met his wife, my granny in the orphanage, where both sets of families grew up together, a rather lovely, romantic story. My grandfather remembers living as a child in the East End of London, although he remembers little of his parents, other than his mother died in childbirth and his father remarried, but sent him and his two sisters to an orphanage. No records exist that i can find, of my great grandmother and father, again this was not uncommon for the working classes, especially among the irish immigrant population.

 

[Dubya]

^ That's a fantastic history of your family Miss Sofia! And to trace some of them back to the 16th Century too!

 

[Miss sofia]

Thanks love. The Italians god love 'em are largely quite provincial, excluding the masses that migrated, so there sside of the family was pretty easy. It also explains why most of my family are a bit barking!

 

[Vintage lover]

My biological father was supposedly of strong German ancestry, and my mother has Spanish and Italian roots.

 

[scotrace]

Still Austrian.

 

[PADDY]

The Middleton's have been a fairly average middle class family through the centuries. I personally am Ulster-Scots (from the North of Ireland) with Welsh blood and some English.
My Grandfather served in the Great War (Gallipoli), my father and uncles in WWII. We have a family oil painting of my Great Grandfather's tall ship in the 19th Century which he sailed around the world.
We had a John Middleton (we still have two in the family as John & William have as names traditionally run through the family over centuries) who was a soldier from Scotland and became the 1st Earl of Middleton in the 1600s. Plus there's a painting of him hanging in an Irish Castle in my home county in Northern Ireland.
But until April 2011 very few people had heard of my family to be honest.

 

[GHT]

Thanks love. The Italians god love 'em are largely quite provincial, excluding the masses that migrated, so there sside of the family was pretty easy. It also explains why most of my family are a bit barking!

Did you know, and having East Enders in your blood, you probably do, Barking is the last stop on the district line going east. The stop before is East Ham. It's long been an East End expression to refer to someone as "East Ham" gesturing with a hand circling the temple. Meaning that they are one stop short of Barking. (mad)

 

[Lily Powers]

My parents had decidedly English roots. I learned later that I was adopted and that my birth parents had Greek and Irish roots. When I met my birth father, he certainly had the Irish in him - ruddy complexion and red, red hair. My birth mother's roots appear to be Canadian and English/Scottish, so I'm not sure where the Greek slipped in.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I've done a little geneological research, mostly on my father's side. That half of me is as English as tea and crumpets. My mother is Spanish (grandparents were from Spain) and I know nothing more than my grandmother would tell me. Which wasn't much. She didn't exactly celebrate diversity.

 

[earl]

The Middleton's have been a fairly average middle class family through the centuries. I personally am Ulster-Scots (from the North of Ireland) with Welsh blood and some English.
My Grandfather served in the Great War (Gallipoli), my father and uncles in WWII. We have a family oil painting of my Great Grandfather's tall ship in the 19th Century which he sailed around the world.
We had a John Middleton (we still have two in the family as John & William have as names traditionally run through the family over centuries) who was a soldier from Scotland and became the 1st Earl of Middleton in the 1600s. Plus there's a painting of him hanging in an Irish Castle in my home county in Northern Ireland.
But until April 2011 very few people had heard of my family to be honest.

View attachment 15699

What part of N. Ireland? I, too, am of Ulster-Scot origin on my dad's side. Have been able to reliably trace that branch back to around 1750 only. At that time they were in Ballintoy Parish, County Antrim. Interestingly, my brother and I were the first in our line to not become farmers going back to 1750 and no doubt beyond. My mother's grandparents on her mother's side came from Norway. Don't know anything about his side but do have his wife's genealogy going back to late 16th century Norway. Earl

 

[newsman]

Our family history is full of people who didn't always comply with the standard.

The name comes Germany/Belgium and works its way through Scotland. We consider ourselves Scots even though there was conflicting issues with who, what, when, where and how as there some English mixing. But the first of our family we know of came to the colonies long before the war via England with a slight spelling change. That's dad's side. We've been here every since.

My mom is French. Her dad was French and that line goes back pretty much to the days when France became France. There is some interesting history there regarding the shifting of national lines in the Med. region. Grandmom was Italian. That side of the family is still there and spans the border. The Italians speak terrible French with the other side. It's really quite strange.

 

[Shangas]

Almost certainly 100% Chinese.

Both my grandfathers were born in southern China in the early 20th century (ca. 1907 for my dad's father).

Both my grandmothers were Peranakan/Straits Chinese living in the British Straits Settlements.

In all likelihood, we'd trace our roots back to Canton Province or Hong Kong Island. But that's about all I know.

My surname in Chinese is one of THE most common Chinese surnames ever. It's like the Asian equivalent of 'Smith'.

 

[kyboots]

Dutch via New Amsterdam.

 

[Young fogey]

My heritage

I'm at least half-WASP (ethnic English; early American settlers), as in my sisters could join the DAR if they wanted to. Some of this is Southern.

Conjecture, based on my Google research: the last name is distorted German. Family was Lutheran in Germany; settled in Pennsylvania about 300 years ago and went west with the pioneers, ending up mostly in the Pacific Northwest, my grandfather's home. There are Mennonites and Amish with similar last names to mine; a high-school teacher telling me that was the first clue I had to my name's heritage. There is a prairie town with that name, though I understand no distant family remains there.

I'm a quarter Spanish. My father grew up speaking it. I know it but am not fluent.

 

[Justin B]

My Family Is mostly Irish, with a smattering of English in the 400 some years my Mom has researched back...and one Native American. Soldiers the world over for as far back as anyone can tell. If there was blood shed someone of my relation has been there.

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

I submitted my DNA to 23andme and got my ancestry profile back. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to seriously sit down and try to trace all the relatives and ancestral lines. My ancestors settled in the American South via West Africa back in the 1600s. I have a lot of work to do and reckon this will be a lifelong project.

 

[VisforVictory]

Quite a mix here. On my father's side, the Hermanns (with variants on double/single consonants over the years) are from Wurttemberg; there are Brookleys/Brockleys from Hesse-Darmstadt; Weckerleys from Switzerland; the Wills from Scotland; Stelles from Ireland; Hopkins & Thompsons, presumably from England. On my mother's side, there were Polskis from Poland; Strelzins from Kiev; Garbers from Latvia.

My father's side included at least five Civil War vets, all of whom I only recently discovered despite my father and I being obsessed with the Civil War. Thomas Will, Scottish immigrant, was killed; Joseph Weckerly was wounded and died a year after the war. Lt. George W. Hopkins was dismissed for whoring and drinking in Alexandria, VA. Beyond them, you have death by train accident, dropping a lit oil lamp, drowning, getting hit by a garbage truck, and an accident in a steel mill.

We're a proud people...!

 

[Nick D]

On my father's side the furthest back I've gotten is a master sculptor from Poitiers, around 1600. My surname is related to the field of Poitiers, so this ancestor is well after the battle of 1356 but I like the connection.

On my mother's side, my earliest ancestor in the US immigrated from Canada, immediately joined the Union Army, and was with Sherman during his march to the sea. I may have a connection to Raphael Holingshed, the chronicler who was one of Shakespeare's sources, but I need to do more digging for that.