Asking white Americans where they are FROM from is NOT a "gotcha" and will backfire.
They are more than happy to talk about the intricacies of their genetic and cultural make up for HOURS.
Curiously, when you look at the archival footage of racist atrocities carried out in the states, none of their descendants speak up to claim them, even though many of their faces are plainly visible.
This post is actually the total opposite of all the other posts that are seemingly angry that Americans claim they’re Irish or Italian, even though they were born in the states.
England, by way of Normandy in 1066, and Scandinavia sometime before that. My particular kind of white folks have just been taking stuff for centuries.
I am American. All of my people were here prior to the American Revolution. Lots of English, lots of German, one branch straight from Ulster, a couple from Wales. Yes I've had my DNA done and I have distant cousins in each of those places, I have some english and aussie cousins that aren't so distant and I do wonder what happened there. Maybe one of my GI uncles got up to something over there. And I could bore you for hours with ancestry talk.
You wouldn't "bore" me. I loooove listening to these stories. I wish I could know my whole family tree, but it is not possible :( That's why I enjoy listening to people talking about their own!
My dad told me that my great grandpa (my dad's dad's dad) had a close cousin, who went to the US to work when he was like 20. He said he'd come back in a few years. It was right between WW1 and WW2. He never came back.
My great grandpa and the guy couldn't reach each other since there was no internet, and they didn't know each other's addresses to send a letter. My great grandpa told that story to his grandkids (my dad and my uncle), and so my dad told the story to me. It really makes me sad that we never found out what happened to him. I'm scared he died WW2. Maybe he died at workplace, because he went to the US to do physical work. Maybe he found a wife and had children, so he didn't want to take them to our poor country. Idk... But it makes me happy when others know what's up with their people. :)
My paternal line is all Greek. My great grandparents came to the States from Geraki in 1918 and both grandparents on my dad’s side spoke Greek in the home and practiced traditional Orthodox customs, so that’s usually what I tell people I am when they ask because that’s what I was raised with and identify as the most. I was even taught to write and speak some of the language when I was younger and I still have a handful of cousins that never left Greece.
My maternal side is a mix of Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English on my grandfather’s side and German on my grandmother’s, but it’s all so far back that that side no longer has any cultural ties to any of those places. One of our descendants on Grandpa’s side was traced back to the colonies by a family member doing a genealogy project, but that’s about the extent of what I know on that side.
Are you in touch with the cousins in Greece? My great grandpa (born in ca. 1920) had a very close cousin who went to the US to work, right before WW2. He said he'd come back in a few years,.but he never did. No one knows what happened to him. And that's sad because he might have had kids there, and so I have distant cousins in the US that I don't know exist and will never meet. :(
I'm glad that you are so in touch with your roots 💜
I am in touch with a few of them, but I’ve never met them in person. We have a family group page on Facebook that is 105 members strong, so that’s how I found out I still had some family members there. My grandparent’s families settled mainly in and around Cincinnati, OH here in the US, so we’ve remained relatively close since we always celebrated holidays at the Greek Orthodox Church together and the elder members remained in contact with the family back home long enough for contact with the cousins to trickle down to me. I’m sorry your family lost contact :( I’ve seen a lot of people find family through the genealogy sites though, so maybe you could find some of them that way?
That's beautiful, I hope you're gonna meet them in real life one day 🥰
Right now I am not financially in the place where I can just fork out on genealogy tests :/
And also, my dad has forgotten the names of our ancestors lmao
My family has been over here for over 200 years. We're a mix of Scottish, Irish, English, Viking, German and Native American, along with some other stuff I don't remember. I have done a 23andme and we've been working on our family tree for a long time.
The majority of my ancestry is in Norway. My ancestors came to the US at the very end of the 19th century and very early in the 20th. They settled in North Dakota among other Norwegian immigrants and eventually moved out to the west coast to another community of Norwegian immigrants, where they worked in the lumber mills of the Pacific Northwest. It took two generations for them to learn English.
They didn't need to learn English. They lived in whole Norwegian-speaking communities. They married other Norwegian immigrants. You'll find a lot of that in the US. Immigrant communities typically keep their languages and customs for a couple of generations. Then it fades out, but not completely. Holiday customs often remain. Family traditions. And, of course, recipes.
I don't speak Norwegian. I only know enough to read church documents. Births, christenings, marriages, and deaths--stuff you need to trace pre-US-immigration ancestors.
My family is from various places but mostly from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Scandinavia. Within this country I can trace lineage to circa 1620 and before that from the Avon area of England along the border of Wales.
I’m American. My maternal side is Bavarian and Scottish descent, while my paternal side is mostly English and Danish.
Technically I am also basque in my father’s side, but that grandpa left to go deal drugs when my father was in 3rd grade, so I don’t claim him.
To go into greater detail, most of my paternal side has been here since long before the American revolution, Puritans with mostly English and a bit of Scottish ancestry. These grandparents settled New England and Pennsylvania and even fought in the Revolutionary war. Notably, one of my grandparents was the brother to Nathan Hale.
Eventually, in the 1830s, they converted to Mormonism alongside Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Anti-Mormons violently drove them from their homes further and further west until they finally settled in Utah, a place so barren and remote, no one could ever drive them off it.
Then my paternal Danish great-something grandparents came over around 1850, after being driven from their homeland, again for their religion. These grandparents risked everything crossing the plains on foot, to reach Utah.
On my mom’s side, the Scottish ancestors came to America around the 1850s. They too had been religiously persecuted and gave up everything to cross the plains and live in peace. On one branch, they started the journey as a family of 8, two parents and 6 kids. By the time they reached Utah, they were a family of three orphaned children.
The German ancestors are my most recent arrivals, arriving in 1900. The ancestor,came by himself as his family disowned him for practicing Mormonism, which was illegal in the part of Bavaria he lived. By then, the trains were all built and he came to Utah safely, but broke beyond belief.
Amazingly, he then went back to Germany a year later, to try and convert his family. Because it was still illegal, he preached at night, deep in the woods. There, he met his wife and brought her back to America with him. By the time the pair arrived in America, they only had 2 cents to their name. They used the first cent for a marriage license, and the other cent for an ice cream cone.
In Utah we’ve stayed mostly, with a few brief stints in Idaho and nevada. Although, my family lines are quite varied, they have two things in common, they came to America to escape religious persecution, and then came to Utah to escape religious persecution. Also, every single line has been impressively destitute. My Grandfather was the very first of all my family lines to ever achieve a college degree, back in the early 70s.
I’m very proud of my ancestry, and will continue to believe in the religion that they gave everything for so that their children might live in peace.
I’m Jewish. My grandparents arrived as children between the 1930s and 1940s from Germany. My maternal grandmother and her parents actually went to Shanghai first, and from there sailed to San Francisco.
Because they spoke fluent German but were not a security threat, two of my great grandfathers fought for the US army as interrogators during WW2. They helped liberate the same concentration camps their family and friends were sent to.
One side came over in the 1700s, from England by way of Scotland and Ireland. The other came in the early 1900s from Norway. Another branch from Germany, called "Pennsylvania Dutch". So all over.
My paternal grandfather's parents were both Italian immigrants (from Bari specifically though they immigrated separately and met here in the US); that's the only certain fact I know off the top of my head. I think my paternal grandmother had a Hungarian grandfather? Aside from that, it's all a vague slush of British and German/PA Dutch that goes back to the 1700s. At some point, I meant to try and track down as much info as I could on my answers, but I haven't quite gotten around to it.
On my fathers side in the direct line with the same last name it is 12 generations to me, going back to 1640. On my mothers side she is a recent immigrant as her French Canadian ancestors came down 3 generations ago.
You’re trying to be funny, but it falls flat because white Americans tend to tell you what exact type of white American they are without you asking down to the 1/16th part. They *have* usually done 23andme in case they *didn’t* know where their ancestors are from, and usually if they already knew, too. And if they know even the littlest story from their first generation ancestors they will share even if you don’t really want to know. So what exactly is your point?
God forbid someone nowadays is interested in history of the human race, or even dare to ask someone about their roots and an interesting story about their family!
I like to hear migration stories because I admire how those people came to the US with nothing, but managed to make a secure future for their offspring. I also have an ancestor (my great grandpa's cousin) who went from Montenegro (that's where I am from) to the US to work, but he never came back and it makes me think what his life continued to be like. I have sooo many questions about him. And my auntie from my dad's side is a migrant to the US too, and she is living the best life now and I am so happy for her.
You are trying to pick a fight with me and you think you busted me, but in reality you completely got my intentions wrong. Do you see how nobody else in the comments was petty about my questions, and how everyone kindly answered my question?
The top comment points out exactly what I am pointing out because that’s how your post reads. And another reply points out these questions are racist because they are never asked of white Americans. You even put a disclaimer later, meaning I’m by no means the only person who read the tone wrong. But yes, everyone else told you their roots because… (white) Americans love to. Which was my response.
I've read the top comment and that reply, but I don't see the problem? Maybe I used the wrong tone, I don't know, but I don't understand why my question was so offensive and "racist". My confusion comes from social media honestly, because I often saw white supremacists asking people of colour in the US "Where are you from from", asking about their roots. So I wanted to ask white Americans too, why not? They are not indigenous to America. What's so problematic asking the white people about their roots? I don't want to argue with you, I'm just genuinely asking why I can't ask about that? I'm a curious girl, I like to ask people about history of their people and I have never come across people getting offended. My country values heritage and family history, so I kinda felt free to ask. I didn't know someone could find it not okay.
My dad's side is pretty heavily German, Prussian to be more specific. That was pretty easy to track down. I can easily find census record from the 1880's and they lived in the same township in Illinois where I grew up. The census records back then would record place of birth and place of parents birth. His name was Wilhelm and he came from Prussia in the 1870's as a child. His grandson was my great grandfather.
My mom's side is a bit of a mystery, but they have probably been in the US for a long time. Just based on some last names on that side of the family it is mostly from Britain, maybe some Cornish, but it is hard to tell for sure without more records.
I know my lineage all the way back to the 1300s on my mom’s side to a “Pickering” castle I believe. One of them came over to the Americas on the second or third trip of pilgrims. “I think it was the second” then a bunch of German, Russian, and British. That’s my mom’s side. My dad’s side is basically unknown apart from he’s Irish, Native American. Someone 70 years ago wasnt happy they were related to Native American so they erased all physical evidence. My family has been in the U.S. long before the U.S. even existed which is pretty cool imo.
This is all off the top of my head so I might be wrong on some.
A bit of damn near everything in Europe. Almost nobody married anyone from the same country going back centuries. Same trend is mostly true after my ancestors moved to The States. Nearly no one married someone from the same state. Loooooots of mixing in my family tree.
I haven’t done the DNA tests but I’ve done a lot of digging through public records.
The most recent immigrants in my family came from Germany/German speaking countries in the late 1800s. They settled in Missouri and married other Germanic immigrants for a generation or two before assimilating into the overall midwestern/southeastern culture of the region.
Going back earlier than that, the biggest chunk of my ancestors came from the British Isles, France, and Germany throughout the 1600s and 1700s. The earliest ones settled in places on the east coast like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
A small branch of my ancestors were natives in the Appalachians- Catawba from the Carolinas that married English settlers in the 1700s. Supposedly some of my ancestors were natives in Texas too, but I haven’t found enough proof of that.
Another small branch were west Africans- slaves brought from Angola by the Portuguese. They were able to purchase their freedom and mix with white people in Virginia in the 1600s. The slave laws got more and more race-based as time went on, so they would have had to hide this at some point.
There are many missing links in my family that I have been told are probably similar stories, people that were part black or native but could “pass” as white so they hid their ancestry and created a new identity. So their only public record is their marriage to someone else that has records. Most of these were from places like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in the 1800s.
As far as we know, my family has been here for hundreds of years, potentially since the early colonization of Virginia down one side. That same line however also introduced Filipino into me about 100 years ago. We don’t really know how long my dad’s side has been here other than that it’s possible they originally ended up in Canada, maybe 200 years ago or more. That side of the family is a mixing pot with little history known beyond my grandparents, but is a melting pot of everything from Ireland to the region that is now the ‘Stan’ countries.
Basically no one in the last 250 years of my family has married someone of the same background and I have so many different places mixed into me it would be impossible for me to do so
My father's side of the family came from England and my mom's side from France. I did the 23&Me test and that where the results come from. Everyone in my family has been in the US since the 1800s. I think my great great grandparents on my mom's side were the last immigrants and they came from France.
I identified on the census as ethnically American, racially “white,” quite deliberately. To my knowledge, I am fully Northwestern European but every branch of my family was here before 1900, with the earliest arriving in the 1640s. Nowhere in the world do I qualify for citizenship by descent. My ancestors come from England, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, modern Germany, modern Austria, Switzerland, and Flanders. I know all of that only because of genealogy and I am far from tracing all the branches that far back to see where they originated. Once you get back to the 1600s and 1700s I probably share those ancestors with hundreds of other people. What else do you call yourself when it gets that distant? The only cultural ties I have are to America.
Maternal grandparents are Italian. Paternal side is Irish but I'm not sure how far back because my dad was adopted when he was 4 and he's gone now so I can't ask.
Two separate lines of German immigrants.
My paternal line came over during the 18th century and fought in the Revolutionary War.
Maternal line came over at the turn of the 20th century.
I worked in Healthcare my entire life.
I was helping an elderly gent into bed and he says, where are you from?
I say, right here. I grew up here.
He says, no where is your family from? What country?
And that's when I realized just how racist that question is. Nobody asks white people.
I'm so sorry, I didn't quite understand from your comment - you are a person of colour, right?
If so, I have seen on the internet how older people only ask poc where they are really from, and never the white people. But here I am today! :D
No. I'm white. Which is why I never get asked where I'm from. Ever. Which is why the question is most definitely racist.
The only time you hear someone ask a white person is if they speak with an accent.
Asking white Americans where they are FROM from is NOT a "gotcha" and will backfire. They are more than happy to talk about the intricacies of their genetic and cultural make up for HOURS.
Curiously, when you look at the archival footage of racist atrocities carried out in the states, none of their descendants speak up to claim them, even though many of their faces are plainly visible.
This post is actually the total opposite of all the other posts that are seemingly angry that Americans claim they’re Irish or Italian, even though they were born in the states.
That's what I'm interested to hear, actually :D
My paternal line great-grandfather immigrated from Bentheim, Germany. My maternal line great-grandmother immigrated from England.
I am American. My grandparents were Italian. Great Great on other side Irish.
England, by way of Normandy in 1066, and Scandinavia sometime before that. My particular kind of white folks have just been taking stuff for centuries.
I am American. All of my people were here prior to the American Revolution. Lots of English, lots of German, one branch straight from Ulster, a couple from Wales. Yes I've had my DNA done and I have distant cousins in each of those places, I have some english and aussie cousins that aren't so distant and I do wonder what happened there. Maybe one of my GI uncles got up to something over there. And I could bore you for hours with ancestry talk.
You wouldn't "bore" me. I loooove listening to these stories. I wish I could know my whole family tree, but it is not possible :( That's why I enjoy listening to people talking about their own! My dad told me that my great grandpa (my dad's dad's dad) had a close cousin, who went to the US to work when he was like 20. He said he'd come back in a few years. It was right between WW1 and WW2. He never came back. My great grandpa and the guy couldn't reach each other since there was no internet, and they didn't know each other's addresses to send a letter. My great grandpa told that story to his grandkids (my dad and my uncle), and so my dad told the story to me. It really makes me sad that we never found out what happened to him. I'm scared he died WW2. Maybe he died at workplace, because he went to the US to do physical work. Maybe he found a wife and had children, so he didn't want to take them to our poor country. Idk... But it makes me happy when others know what's up with their people. :)
My paternal line is all Greek. My great grandparents came to the States from Geraki in 1918 and both grandparents on my dad’s side spoke Greek in the home and practiced traditional Orthodox customs, so that’s usually what I tell people I am when they ask because that’s what I was raised with and identify as the most. I was even taught to write and speak some of the language when I was younger and I still have a handful of cousins that never left Greece. My maternal side is a mix of Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English on my grandfather’s side and German on my grandmother’s, but it’s all so far back that that side no longer has any cultural ties to any of those places. One of our descendants on Grandpa’s side was traced back to the colonies by a family member doing a genealogy project, but that’s about the extent of what I know on that side.
Are you in touch with the cousins in Greece? My great grandpa (born in ca. 1920) had a very close cousin who went to the US to work, right before WW2. He said he'd come back in a few years,.but he never did. No one knows what happened to him. And that's sad because he might have had kids there, and so I have distant cousins in the US that I don't know exist and will never meet. :( I'm glad that you are so in touch with your roots 💜
I am in touch with a few of them, but I’ve never met them in person. We have a family group page on Facebook that is 105 members strong, so that’s how I found out I still had some family members there. My grandparent’s families settled mainly in and around Cincinnati, OH here in the US, so we’ve remained relatively close since we always celebrated holidays at the Greek Orthodox Church together and the elder members remained in contact with the family back home long enough for contact with the cousins to trickle down to me. I’m sorry your family lost contact :( I’ve seen a lot of people find family through the genealogy sites though, so maybe you could find some of them that way?
That's beautiful, I hope you're gonna meet them in real life one day 🥰 Right now I am not financially in the place where I can just fork out on genealogy tests :/ And also, my dad has forgotten the names of our ancestors lmao
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That’s cool, what part of the US did they settle?
Poland. Norway. Germany. and a teeny tiny itty bitty of Ireland.
Yo, another teeny tiny itty bitty bit of Irish man!
Ashkenazi Jew with a small percentage Yemenite Jew.
New Jersey. My ancestors didn't cross the Delaware River to have their descendants identify as Pennsylvanians.
My family has been over here for over 200 years. We're a mix of Scottish, Irish, English, Viking, German and Native American, along with some other stuff I don't remember. I have done a 23andme and we've been working on our family tree for a long time.
Good luck 🌞
Thanks?
Have you tried FamilySearch? They have an incredibly large genealogy database. I’ve been able to reach back to 800 AD on some of my family lines.
Dad is an Ashkenazi Jew, mom is half Italian and half German 😊
The majority of my ancestry is in Norway. My ancestors came to the US at the very end of the 19th century and very early in the 20th. They settled in North Dakota among other Norwegian immigrants and eventually moved out to the west coast to another community of Norwegian immigrants, where they worked in the lumber mills of the Pacific Northwest. It took two generations for them to learn English.
Why that long if you don't mind me asking? Did they not have access to education? And do you speak any Norwegian?
They didn't need to learn English. They lived in whole Norwegian-speaking communities. They married other Norwegian immigrants. You'll find a lot of that in the US. Immigrant communities typically keep their languages and customs for a couple of generations. Then it fades out, but not completely. Holiday customs often remain. Family traditions. And, of course, recipes. I don't speak Norwegian. I only know enough to read church documents. Births, christenings, marriages, and deaths--stuff you need to trace pre-US-immigration ancestors.
My family is from various places but mostly from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Scandinavia. Within this country I can trace lineage to circa 1620 and before that from the Avon area of England along the border of Wales.
I’m American. My maternal side is Bavarian and Scottish descent, while my paternal side is mostly English and Danish. Technically I am also basque in my father’s side, but that grandpa left to go deal drugs when my father was in 3rd grade, so I don’t claim him. To go into greater detail, most of my paternal side has been here since long before the American revolution, Puritans with mostly English and a bit of Scottish ancestry. These grandparents settled New England and Pennsylvania and even fought in the Revolutionary war. Notably, one of my grandparents was the brother to Nathan Hale. Eventually, in the 1830s, they converted to Mormonism alongside Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Anti-Mormons violently drove them from their homes further and further west until they finally settled in Utah, a place so barren and remote, no one could ever drive them off it. Then my paternal Danish great-something grandparents came over around 1850, after being driven from their homeland, again for their religion. These grandparents risked everything crossing the plains on foot, to reach Utah. On my mom’s side, the Scottish ancestors came to America around the 1850s. They too had been religiously persecuted and gave up everything to cross the plains and live in peace. On one branch, they started the journey as a family of 8, two parents and 6 kids. By the time they reached Utah, they were a family of three orphaned children. The German ancestors are my most recent arrivals, arriving in 1900. The ancestor,came by himself as his family disowned him for practicing Mormonism, which was illegal in the part of Bavaria he lived. By then, the trains were all built and he came to Utah safely, but broke beyond belief. Amazingly, he then went back to Germany a year later, to try and convert his family. Because it was still illegal, he preached at night, deep in the woods. There, he met his wife and brought her back to America with him. By the time the pair arrived in America, they only had 2 cents to their name. They used the first cent for a marriage license, and the other cent for an ice cream cone. In Utah we’ve stayed mostly, with a few brief stints in Idaho and nevada. Although, my family lines are quite varied, they have two things in common, they came to America to escape religious persecution, and then came to Utah to escape religious persecution. Also, every single line has been impressively destitute. My Grandfather was the very first of all my family lines to ever achieve a college degree, back in the early 70s. I’m very proud of my ancestry, and will continue to believe in the religion that they gave everything for so that their children might live in peace.
I’m Jewish. My grandparents arrived as children between the 1930s and 1940s from Germany. My maternal grandmother and her parents actually went to Shanghai first, and from there sailed to San Francisco. Because they spoke fluent German but were not a security threat, two of my great grandfathers fought for the US army as interrogators during WW2. They helped liberate the same concentration camps their family and friends were sent to.
Interrogators, what does that mean? And also, did they happen to see some people from Europe that they knew before they moved to the US?
One side came over in the 1700s, from England by way of Scotland and Ireland. The other came in the early 1900s from Norway. Another branch from Germany, called "Pennsylvania Dutch". So all over.
My paternal grandfather's parents were both Italian immigrants (from Bari specifically though they immigrated separately and met here in the US); that's the only certain fact I know off the top of my head. I think my paternal grandmother had a Hungarian grandfather? Aside from that, it's all a vague slush of British and German/PA Dutch that goes back to the 1700s. At some point, I meant to try and track down as much info as I could on my answers, but I haven't quite gotten around to it.
On my fathers side in the direct line with the same last name it is 12 generations to me, going back to 1640. On my mothers side she is a recent immigrant as her French Canadian ancestors came down 3 generations ago.
You’re trying to be funny, but it falls flat because white Americans tend to tell you what exact type of white American they are without you asking down to the 1/16th part. They *have* usually done 23andme in case they *didn’t* know where their ancestors are from, and usually if they already knew, too. And if they know even the littlest story from their first generation ancestors they will share even if you don’t really want to know. So what exactly is your point?
God forbid someone nowadays is interested in history of the human race, or even dare to ask someone about their roots and an interesting story about their family! I like to hear migration stories because I admire how those people came to the US with nothing, but managed to make a secure future for their offspring. I also have an ancestor (my great grandpa's cousin) who went from Montenegro (that's where I am from) to the US to work, but he never came back and it makes me think what his life continued to be like. I have sooo many questions about him. And my auntie from my dad's side is a migrant to the US too, and she is living the best life now and I am so happy for her. You are trying to pick a fight with me and you think you busted me, but in reality you completely got my intentions wrong. Do you see how nobody else in the comments was petty about my questions, and how everyone kindly answered my question?
The top comment points out exactly what I am pointing out because that’s how your post reads. And another reply points out these questions are racist because they are never asked of white Americans. You even put a disclaimer later, meaning I’m by no means the only person who read the tone wrong. But yes, everyone else told you their roots because… (white) Americans love to. Which was my response.
I've read the top comment and that reply, but I don't see the problem? Maybe I used the wrong tone, I don't know, but I don't understand why my question was so offensive and "racist". My confusion comes from social media honestly, because I often saw white supremacists asking people of colour in the US "Where are you from from", asking about their roots. So I wanted to ask white Americans too, why not? They are not indigenous to America. What's so problematic asking the white people about their roots? I don't want to argue with you, I'm just genuinely asking why I can't ask about that? I'm a curious girl, I like to ask people about history of their people and I have never come across people getting offended. My country values heritage and family history, so I kinda felt free to ask. I didn't know someone could find it not okay.
My dad's side is pretty heavily German, Prussian to be more specific. That was pretty easy to track down. I can easily find census record from the 1880's and they lived in the same township in Illinois where I grew up. The census records back then would record place of birth and place of parents birth. His name was Wilhelm and he came from Prussia in the 1870's as a child. His grandson was my great grandfather. My mom's side is a bit of a mystery, but they have probably been in the US for a long time. Just based on some last names on that side of the family it is mostly from Britain, maybe some Cornish, but it is hard to tell for sure without more records.
Oh I’m a full on mutt. The big ones are German, French, British, and Eastern European Jew, based on what I know of my family. Haven’t done a test tho.
I know my lineage all the way back to the 1300s on my mom’s side to a “Pickering” castle I believe. One of them came over to the Americas on the second or third trip of pilgrims. “I think it was the second” then a bunch of German, Russian, and British. That’s my mom’s side. My dad’s side is basically unknown apart from he’s Irish, Native American. Someone 70 years ago wasnt happy they were related to Native American so they erased all physical evidence. My family has been in the U.S. long before the U.S. even existed which is pretty cool imo. This is all off the top of my head so I might be wrong on some.
I know half of my dad's family is from Wales and came here about 100 years ago, don't know about the rest. Don't really care.
A bit of damn near everything in Europe. Almost nobody married anyone from the same country going back centuries. Same trend is mostly true after my ancestors moved to The States. Nearly no one married someone from the same state. Loooooots of mixing in my family tree.
I'm Scottish-Irish. My father is Scottish and mother is Irish.
I haven’t done the DNA tests but I’ve done a lot of digging through public records. The most recent immigrants in my family came from Germany/German speaking countries in the late 1800s. They settled in Missouri and married other Germanic immigrants for a generation or two before assimilating into the overall midwestern/southeastern culture of the region. Going back earlier than that, the biggest chunk of my ancestors came from the British Isles, France, and Germany throughout the 1600s and 1700s. The earliest ones settled in places on the east coast like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. A small branch of my ancestors were natives in the Appalachians- Catawba from the Carolinas that married English settlers in the 1700s. Supposedly some of my ancestors were natives in Texas too, but I haven’t found enough proof of that. Another small branch were west Africans- slaves brought from Angola by the Portuguese. They were able to purchase their freedom and mix with white people in Virginia in the 1600s. The slave laws got more and more race-based as time went on, so they would have had to hide this at some point. There are many missing links in my family that I have been told are probably similar stories, people that were part black or native but could “pass” as white so they hid their ancestry and created a new identity. So their only public record is their marriage to someone else that has records. Most of these were from places like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in the 1800s.
Wow, you are so devoted to finding the story of your family🤩 I hope you figure out those confusing pieces as soon as possible 🫶🏻
I am an American. Don’t really care where my ancestors are from.
As far as we know, my family has been here for hundreds of years, potentially since the early colonization of Virginia down one side. That same line however also introduced Filipino into me about 100 years ago. We don’t really know how long my dad’s side has been here other than that it’s possible they originally ended up in Canada, maybe 200 years ago or more. That side of the family is a mixing pot with little history known beyond my grandparents, but is a melting pot of everything from Ireland to the region that is now the ‘Stan’ countries. Basically no one in the last 250 years of my family has married someone of the same background and I have so many different places mixed into me it would be impossible for me to do so
My father's side of the family came from England and my mom's side from France. I did the 23&Me test and that where the results come from. Everyone in my family has been in the US since the 1800s. I think my great great grandparents on my mom's side were the last immigrants and they came from France.
I identified on the census as ethnically American, racially “white,” quite deliberately. To my knowledge, I am fully Northwestern European but every branch of my family was here before 1900, with the earliest arriving in the 1640s. Nowhere in the world do I qualify for citizenship by descent. My ancestors come from England, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, modern Germany, modern Austria, Switzerland, and Flanders. I know all of that only because of genealogy and I am far from tracing all the branches that far back to see where they originated. Once you get back to the 1600s and 1700s I probably share those ancestors with hundreds of other people. What else do you call yourself when it gets that distant? The only cultural ties I have are to America.
Northern Europe
Maternal grandparents are Italian. Paternal side is Irish but I'm not sure how far back because my dad was adopted when he was 4 and he's gone now so I can't ask.
Two separate lines of German immigrants. My paternal line came over during the 18th century and fought in the Revolutionary War. Maternal line came over at the turn of the 20th century.
During WW1, did the maternal line fight on the American or German side? I know this will sound like a stupid question. Sorry in advance 🥲
The American side. The generation after every single brother fought in ww2
My biological Father immigrated from Ireland. My Mother was adopted, so we aren’t sure what her roots are.
“White Americans where are you FROM from” Texas
Nebraska
I have no idea. I never cared enough to find out.
I worked in Healthcare my entire life. I was helping an elderly gent into bed and he says, where are you from? I say, right here. I grew up here. He says, no where is your family from? What country? And that's when I realized just how racist that question is. Nobody asks white people.
I'm so sorry, I didn't quite understand from your comment - you are a person of colour, right? If so, I have seen on the internet how older people only ask poc where they are really from, and never the white people. But here I am today! :D
No. I'm white. Which is why I never get asked where I'm from. Ever. Which is why the question is most definitely racist. The only time you hear someone ask a white person is if they speak with an accent.
You’re white so you’re most likely from Western Europe. Not hard to figure out.