Where does you ancestors come from?, Origin Options

[Kleerance]

North America is based on immigrants. That means that all North Americans actually comes from another place (if you go back long enough). I'm just curious if you people know your ancestors origin. I know there were a lot of scandinavian people who left to this "land of plenty" during 18th and 19th century, and I think many of them settled down in the mid-west. (Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas, Colorado). So many of you have kinship to people with guts and an adventurious spirit. (Not bad )



My own family is basically farmers and fishermen from each side. And I have roots to Sweden as I have 2 great-grandmothers who is Swedish.



So - do you know where your ancestors originally came from?

[steel]

Tracing one's roots is a fascinating journey. Been working on my family's history for over 30 years, yikes!

The thing a lot of folks don't think about is how many ancestors we have as we go back the generations. It's exponential. In other words, with no adoptions or other things to complicate it:

parents - 2
grandparents - 4
great grandparents -8
g g grandparents -16
g g g grandparents -32
g g g g grandparents - 64

You're not even getting back very far at your g g g g grandparents, probably born somewhere between 1790's - 1850's, yet at that point, your lineage contains 64 people to trace farther back, doubling again the farther back you go.

It's a shame then that some people only focus on their surnames, Jones, Smith, etc. That's one little stream, in a mighty river that makes up each one of us.

My lines that I know of, a couple came from Schleswig-Holstein in the 1600's, several are from England in the 1600's <-- all of these came to america late 1600's to early 1700's, one line so far from Ireland early 1800's, and etc. All european for now.

However, genealogy is tricky, because what you research may not be, probably is not, totally true. Every generation has some family skeletons in the closet, some minor -- Johnny was adopted and we never told him, Aunt Susy had those four kids already when she married Uncle Fred and now the kids think they are all descended from his line. Some pretty awful -- use your imagination. So what we think is our line probably has a curveball in it somewhere, lol.

Good topic. Thanks for posting it.

This post has been edited by steel: 07/03/07 10:24am