On 2002-09-15 08:30, Loren wrote:
Unverified descendant of The Dread Pirate Roberts. However I can scale sheer rockwalls with no ropes, fence both right and left handed, and fight giants quite well…
Loren
Loren, you forgot “and out-think a Sicilian when death is on the line.”
Both my mother and father’s sides come from England way back (came over to the U.S. in the 1600 and 1700’s), but I think there’s some French waaaaaaaay back in there somewhere. Also, Chief Massasoit (of the first Thanksgiving) is my 10th-great-grandfather.
Loren was the inspiration for the storys about Zorro. (As a matter of fact, he’s been known to cruise around town in a wide-brimmed black hat and mask.)
Well I know at least one branch of my family’s been here forever, my maternal grandfather is decended from one of those Hessian mercenaries that fought with the british in the American revolution.
Guess he liked this place enough to stick around, hm?
On 2002-09-15 14:02, Chuck_Clark wrote:
On 2002-09-15 13:15, burnsbyrne wrote:
This is amazing to me. I live and grew up in Cleveland. All my friends had a parent or at least a grandparent who was born in the old country. Irish, Italian, Croatian, Slovenian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Ukranian.
It’s strange to me to meet people whose great grandparents were born in North America although logically there would have to be many of them.
Mike
That’s what is so totally amazing. On one hand, I can exhaustively document my dad’s family, the first immigrant of whom arrived in North America in 1633 and farmed just down the road from the Pilgrims, the last of whom fled the Potato Famine (or perhaps a few indignant fathers) around 1850. On the other side, although born an American citizen, I’m an immigrant myself. Most US Americans are mixtures of some sort, often many sorts. The surprise isn’t that we sometimes squabble - its that we get along at all.
Actually, I seem to recall reading somewhere that quite a lot of those Hessian mercs either deserted in order to stay or liked the place so much that they eventually emigrated after returning home.
My wife’s 5x-great-grandfather was a musician with DeGrasse’s French fleet that helped the Americans at Yorktown. He liked it so much that when the French fleet prepared to sail for home, he deserted and hid out in Philly until they were gone. Afterwards, he moved to inland North Carolina and made his living as a cabinetmaker.
edited for spelling
“But still there are so many things that I have never seen.
In every wood in every Spring there is a different green.”
B. Baggins
[ This Message was edited by: Chuck_Clark on 2002-09-15 17:24 ]
“Loren was the inspiration for the storys about Zorro. (As a matter of fact, he’s been known to cruise around town in a wide-brimmed black hat and mask.)”
Ah yes Tony, those were the days…Back when all a man needed to fight injustice was a sword, a mask, and cajones of steel.
Not like today, where one needs an entire legal team, and perhaps a sympathetic message board moderator (sigh).
I’m as belgian one can be. It’s seems unusual here to have your whole family born in one country, well mine did. My ancestors might have been Celts though.
Next thing you know, some of you will try to win a land war in Asia. You just never learn.
As for me. . .
Some significant part of my blood is Irish (came to America during the early years of the famine and they all died in the American Civil War or earlier, only the American born kids survived) which had blood that remained undiluted until one generation before me,
German imigrants ariving in America via Scotland before 1700, which managed to fight in every conflict on the continent and all conflicts with the U.S. Government since that time (With the exception of the Spanish American War). Some how nearly all these soldiers managed to live through the wars.
Austrians,
Swedes,
more Germans,
Jewish Chocolate Merchants from Spain (I’m quite glad the inquisition didn’t have time for them),
More locally,
A Creek Indian princess,
and a Delaware Indian princess.
Probably a few other in there that I don’t know about yet. Welcome to America.
I’ve never done any geneological research, but I have an Irish sounding name, and so do most of my relatives. All the ones I’ve met were born in America, though. My parents are not very good historians, and neither were my grandparents. None of them would tell the same story the same way twice. It made for an interesting, if somewhat fuzzy view of our family’s past.
my maternal grandfather was born in Vietnam. His mum was Vietnamese, but we don’t know if she was a native Vietnamese or a CHinese from an earlier wave of Chinese settlement of Vietnam.
we apparently have Mongolian blood on my father’s side from ancient times, since he claims a double/split toenail in the little toe (which he has) is a Mongolian genetic trait. Recorded family history, however, indicates that our ancestors were just Han Chinese living in China up till my grandad left China.
I play all kinds of music, not just Irish, on my whistle; I just like having a portable instrument to adlib on.
depends how far you go back - Americans seem to have alot more interst in tracing their ancesters back 3-400 years.
Mum’s Irish, Dad’s 3/4 English (debatable)1/4 Scottish, I’m born and bred in Wales, so I say I’m Welsh. It’s easier and explains my accent.
My ancesters are mostly mountain folk stretching back into the early 1700’s. They spread all through the appalachians from New Hampshire’s (the Allen’s of the Green Mountain Fame) to the Smokey’s of Tennesee and the Carolina’s. We had a fair number of … ‘excentric’ folk, including an uncle who worked as a high risk teamster in the 1800’s hauling Nitro through the mountains for the mining companies.
It appears most were Scotts, English, Welsh, and Irish or mixes from the Isles that just didn’t fit into 17th century England. My dad did some work on you geneology and found that in each generation, you’ll find maybe 5 percent imigrant infusion. The records dwindle to nothing in the early 1700’s although it is clear that most of them were British Isles folk, but there are few record of any actual imigration, just that they were living in the mountains.
My theory is that these folk that moved into the mountains, did so to break with their past lives. They had worn out their welcome in the British Isles for whatever reason (social, criminal, spiritual, econonomic, political) and sailed to the colonies leaving their old world behind.
Father’s family is from Missouri through Kansas; mother’s family is from Arkansas through Oklahoma. That’s all I know, although the prevalence of English, Scottish and Irish surnames indicates a lineage connected to several different flavors of British Isles miscreants.
My mother is italian. My father is a mix of Irish, Russian, Polish, and German. It makes me, well, no particualer nationality. But I look more irish than anything else . . . fair skin, blue eyes, auburn hair. More like my grandfather on my fathers side, and I carry that proudly.
I was subjected to all sorts of tales of my father’s irish past as a kid, some true some, well, a little tall. Supposedly, my great great great grandparents(after having some decendents to leave behind) went west and were ambushed and killed by indians. My great great grandfather died like a true irishman . . . in a bar brawl in Hackensack, NJ. They named a street after him - Lawrence Street - which, if you look on a map, you can find. Now, if this street was really named after my great great grandfather, who knows? It’s still family ledgend.
My great grandparents along my mothers side (Mothers mothers parents) jumped ship from Denmark to get to here (US).
Along my fathers side my grandmother researched it back, and I branch into the Burlingame lines in England.
Along my mom’s side, her dad was John Wilson Laughlin, his dad was John W. Laughlin, and while I have not researched it yet, indications are somewhere in Ireland and/or Scotland as an origin. (I’m named for them, btw…my name is John Wilson Paitel, Aodhan is my dance/performing name).
