What nationality are you?

My dad was born in Russia. His family moved to Chicago when he was 10.
My mom was from another pla..... :ROFLMAO: well, actually she was born somewhere in the Middle East (she didn't tell us exactly where) Her daughter from her first (arranged) marriage was born in Israel. When she had that marriage annulled a few months later, she left her daughter there & moved to Chicago where she met my dad. My brother, sister & I were born in the U.S.
 
I am African American. According to my DNA test via Ancestry in order of prominence: primarily African from various parts of the continent, the Iberian Peninsula (probably Spain), small percentages from Europe (Finland, Ireland, Russia), India and Native American. What;s "funny" about this is that during a family reunion history presentation, we were told that the first ancestor they traced us to besides an African ancestor was a German slave trader...but Germany was not shown in my DNA results.

My grandmother told me her grandparents or great grandparents (can't remember which) were Indian (from India) and Spanish. According to her...her grandmother or great had long black hair and spoke no English. She was teased by the children because she couldn't speak the language. One of our historian cousins cited Cherokee Indian in our ancestry as well.
 
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I have absolutely no relationship to Ellis Island which is practically in my backyard. My ancestors all landed here long before it existed. I do have a book called stories of Ellis Island and it is about some of the people's experience in having endured it. Sadly, some even had their name changed because the officers their did not understand the language of a person so simply wrote phonetically what he heard. Not all had papers stating just who they were. But, most flourished and built this nation. When you look around you at some old buildings, etc., remember, someone came here for a better life and helped build that.
 
When my maternal grandmother arrived, she landed in Camden, NJ, which she said at that time (early 1900s) that port was as busy or more as Ellis Island. She came from a life of privilege and here worked at factories and later as a practical nurse, then back to factories. She went first to Philadelphia, where she not only worked but went to school to learn English. She was determined to conquer that first. NYC was next, as she worked hard to bring her parents, brother and two sisters here. Since they settled in NYC my grandma left Philly to be there. She was a marshall or something during WWII who went around making people turn their lights off. She loved the United States.
 

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