What are the origins of your ancestors?

My family is English on my paternal side. Emigrated from Staffordshire, England to Milton,Mass in 1634.

The story is more murky on my maternal side. Most definitely Scottish. First record in Providence, RI in 1648. Family story says the two brothers were pressganged in Scotland and jumped ship in Providence. We really have no evidence of that,but then we have no record of a legitimate passage either.
 

My mother was an off the boat immigrant and my bio father's parents were immigrants (per my mother) I appear to be 100% Eastern European with one little thing thrown in on my mothers side. Both my brothers were also born in Europe. My mother married an American GI.

In the end, who cares. I don't know anything about my father's side. People who are adopted like to yell about the medical history. I know little. I know my bio father died of some kind of cancer in the early 2000's.
 
I have traced my ancestors back to 1770 and still in America..Due to a common surname and a lot of misinformation on the free websites I have hit a brick wall...confused.gif
 

I've never had the desire to go back any further than grandparents and great grandparents and they were all from up in the mountains of Kentucky......I guess that would make me of ridge runnin' hillbilly ancestry. :)
 
My grandmother told a story of her great grandparents coming over on a boat together. The man was Indian (from India) and the woman spoke no English and had long dark hair. She wasn't sure of her nationality. At a family reunion, one of our historians said the relative the first non African ancestor our family traced back to was a German slave trader, sorry to say. A cousin sent me a DVD made by another cousin who is documenting our family history. I haven't finished watching it yet. Of course, I am mainly of African descent. About a year ago, I had my DNA tested on Ancestry.com This is the breakdown:
Different regions of Africa
European with the highest percentages from the Iberian Peninsula, Great Britain and Finland/Northwest Russia
Smaller percentages from Ireland and Native American (which surprised me because the historian also said we have Cherokee blood and my great grandfather looked like a Native American.
Trace regions: Eastern Europe and Southern Asia
 
My Ancestors​
I know there are people who can trace their ancestry right back to Adam and Eve. The traditional Creation story is very appealing to some, but I’m a skeptic. I believe in the beauty of the evolutionist story and this is how I think it might have happened:

Seven Million Years Ago
Og and I had just awakened on that hot African afternoon when Og looked over at me from his nest high in the acacia tree and said, “You know, it seems to me that the trees we nested in when we were young were a lot higher than this and we didn’t get all scratched up every day trying to build nest in these damn thorny acacias! What happened anyhow?” “Well Og”, I said as I put on my sage face, ”When we were kids, there were a lot more trees, and bigger too. Why, I remember granddaddy Hu saying…” Og wasn’t the most well mannered Ape around so he interrupted my story with, “Listen, I don’t wanna hear another of your granddaddy Hu stories, lets get our skinny butts out of this here thorny tree and go on walkabout, I’ve got a mighty hunger for fat, juicy, termite grubs and I see a mound yonder that looks promising…”

When we got on the ground, we were on all four feet and we couldn’t see anything for all the tall grass and weeds, so I stood up to get my bearings and to locate the termite mound. All of that talk about fat juicy termite grubs had me drooling! Og was a little nervous ‘cause he had seen a leopard prowling around the neighborhood last night and we both felt a little apprehensive about being on the ground, but a termite mound was worth it! We figured the thing to do was to stand upright and walk over there so we could see all around and watch for kitties and keep an eye on that termite mound too. It was a little tough walking on our hind legs like that, but it was worth it.

When we got there, we found that mound to be hard as a rock! How in the hell are we going to break into it? Og had the bright idea of getting a big rock and trying to smash it, so we tried that for a while. All it did was to chip off some sharp corners here and there and we still hadn’t broken in and while he was doing that, the rock bounced off and mashed my toe! Damn clumsy Ape! I found a long sharp rock splinter on a rock outcropping nearby and stabbed the mound a few times and that seemed to be working! Soon we had dug a big hole in the side of it and feasted on grubs ‘til we dropped! Well, not really, but we were full and the sun was getting low, so we raced back to our tree.

I learned a valuable lesson today, standing up for what you believe in and carrying a sharp rock, is the key to success!
 
I was born in Havana,Cuba but both my parents were born in North Carolina. Paternal side=German+Welsh, Maternal side=German/Swiss+Irish+...? ?= ancestor of "mysterious origin", being my g.g.grandfather.

That's the thing about doing genealogy on Southern families, some kinfolk get 'buried' deeper than others...:shrug:
 
My dad was born in Port au Prince Haiti (son of missionaries. Mother born in Littleton, Colo. Both sets of grand parents born in USA. Every one else from England, Scotland going way way back.
 
What interesting stories!!

My ancestry is Frisian/Dutch paternally and Frisian/German maternally. I have done some digging - one great-grandfather came over on a wooden ship in the 1850s, from Rotterdam to NY. I have his mother's coral necklace. Someone posted a LOT of family tree info on one of my ancestors on line - there was even a witch trial in 1500s Netherlands included! Very cool to find that tidbit.

After much digging I discovered that my maternal grandfather's family has been in the US since the 1700s but having a hard time finding details. I just always assumed they came over with the waves in the late 1800s but research says otherwise. Ancestry DNA say I am half "western European" and half Scandinavian with a drop or two of some misc. thrown in. So, Viking gal it is! My 100% Irish husband will tell you I am a hand full! ;)
 
My Dad's Mother emigrated from Switzerland when she was twelve. His Dad's tree traces back to a man who came over from England in the 1600's. On my Mom's side, who knows? Mostly northern European I suppose. Her maiden name is Welsh. Does it really matter? Every time you go back one generation, your number of ancestors doubles. By the fifth generation you have 32 ancestors. They could be from all over. I might be a direct descendant of Genghis Khan.

Don
 
Timetrvlr said:
My Ancestors​
I know there are people who can trace their ancestry right back to Adam and Eve. The traditional Creation story is very appealing to some, but I’m a skeptic. I believe in the beauty of the evolutionist story and this is how I think it might have happened:

Seven Million Years Ago
Og and I had just awakened on that hot African afternoon when Og looked over at me from his nest high in the acacia tree and said, “You know, it seems to me that the trees we nested in when we were young were a lot higher than this and we didn’t get all scratched up every day trying to build nest in these damn thorny acacias! What happened anyhow?” “Well Og”, I said as I put on my sage face, ”When we were kids, there were a lot more trees, and bigger too. Why, I remember granddaddy Hu saying…” Og wasn’t the most well mannered Ape around so he interrupted my story with, “Listen, I don’t wanna hear another of your granddaddy Hu stories, lets get our skinny butts out of this here thorny tree and go on walkabout, I’ve got a mighty hunger for fat, juicy, termite grubs and I see a mound yonder that looks promising…”

When we got on the ground, we were on all four feet and we couldn’t see anything for all the tall grass and weeds, so I stood up to get my bearings and to locate the termite mound. All of that talk about fat juicy termite grubs had me drooling! Og was a little nervous ‘cause he had seen a leopard prowling around the neighborhood last night and we both felt a little apprehensive about being on the ground, but a termite mound was worth it! We figured the thing to do was to stand upright and walk over there so we could see all around and watch for kitties and keep an eye on that termite mound too. It was a little tough walking on our hind legs like that, but it was worth it.

When we got there, we found that mound to be hard as a rock! How in the hell are we going to break into it? Og had the bright idea of getting a big rock and trying to smash it, so we tried that for a while. All it did was to chip off some sharp corners here and there and we still hadn’t broken in and while he was doing that, the rock bounced off and mashed my toe! Damn clumsy Ape! I found a long sharp rock splinter on a rock outcropping nearby and stabbed the mound a few times and that seemed to be working! Soon we had dug a big hole in the side of it and feasted on grubs ‘til we dropped! Well, not really, but we were full and the sun was getting low, so we raced back to our tree.

I learned a valuable lesson today, standing up for what you believe in and carrying a sharp rock, is the key to success!
Click to expand...

That was thoroughly enjoyable! Thanks for a very creative piece of writing.....made me smile.
 
Oooh, one of my favorite topics :)
3 branches of my family tree arrived here in the 1600s- two from the Netherlands, one from Africa. I suppose the Cherokees were always here. Also have ancestors who were Italian, British, French, and French-Canadian. One of my father's ancestors, not too many generations back, came from Ireland, but I'm not sure of the time-frame.
 
Biological father, full blooded Swedish. Don't know if he was born in Sweden. Mother, German, born in America. German Grandmother, born 1895, came to the U S A at age 15. She had quite an interesting background.
 
Half Polish, half Dutch.

My Polish grandparents came in by way of Ellis Island in 1910.

I don't know when my Dutch Grandparents came but my grandfather became a citizen in 1912.

My Ancestry.com DNA test came back 100% European evenly divided between east and west Europe, so there were no surprises there.
 

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