How much do you relate to your heritage?

My word, Mame. My oldest sister has compiled a family tree that you wouldn't believe. Virginians are big into heraldry.

Actually, I enjoyed finding out that my mother's side of the family had a castle in Wales. I'm the only one in my family with "Ragland" in my name.



The main reason that I like looking at my ancestors and their background is for medical purposes.

I relate as far back as early Twentieth Century, with particular interest in the Great Depression, and the 1960s. After that, I may be somewhat interested, but not really involved.

All hail the mighty Picts!

http://www.donachiesociety.co.uk/

I reckon I get a good bit of my character (and all my colouring) from the Irish side of the family.

My family have been here for years (I have no particular interest in genaeology), but I certainly felt quite at home in Ireland.

I'm like totally there in Wolf's Hole Az;

We relate strongly to our heritage in my family. Well, some of us more than others. My mom's family is (Tuscan) Italian. My great grandparents came from the same river valley near Lucca, immigrated to two different parts of America (Chicago and Worcester). My grandparents met through mutual friends (a motherland connection). And my grandfather's sister married a guy from the Santini clan of NYC (Seven Santini Brothers clan - movers). The Santinis came from up the valley in Italy (also not far away). Very tight-nit community. It sticks with you. Or as I said above, it's stuck with some of us.

Unfortunately, less is known about my father's side of the family. We have Scottish, German, and English.... maybe some Irish. We found immigration papers from a German relative, but little else of much evidence. Some of our ancestors had a town in MD named after them. With such a diffused and uncertain historical accounting, it's hard for any of us to get 'into' those ancestors.

I was told as a child that I was 15/16th irish, the last 1/16 being welsh. Now I distrust that - bet there's some scots in there.

I relate more to my father's irishness than my mother's, a long story.
In any case, I wasn't raised in an irish enclave past the start of my teens -
in California, irish was just one more group...

But, my earlier childhood was pretty thick with it, as Father Peyton (Rosary Crusade, Family Theater) was a friend of my dad's and my mother was forever having missionaries to dinner at our house.

I don't care much about geneology - a little, but not for all the who's whos. I'm glad enough to know that my father's family came over in the famine years from county mayo, and don't mind knowing my grandfather on my mother's side was a tailor. Drunken tailor, but, hey. Learned fairly recently - because a friend is a geneology nutto - that my father's father was an attorney. Gee willikers. That was around the turn of the twentieth century.

I'm almost more interested in married-into-family. That is, my mother's brother married an interesting woman, who became my loved aunt... who had previously been married to the editor of a magazine called College Humor. They had interesting friends, including Scott and Zelda for a bit. (He died, tb). And one of her brothers worked on the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. But hey, they weren't totally irish.....

Irish/Welsh from Belfast.

My great great uncle was John Brown the abolitionist. Can you imagine being raised in the segregated south with that lineage. My mother forbid me to tell anyone. I did anyway and was always getting into it with the bigots.

I was a natural for the civil rights movement

If your heritage was living in the U.S. anytime after Columbus, I relate very well to your heritage.

American history fascinates me. My own heritage was lost in the mist of time. So, with all four grandparents coming to the U.S. in the late 19th century (the only intelligent thing I believe they ever did), the U.S. and its history became my heritage.

But, I can relate well to anyone's heritage. If you're a proud whatever, I can be too.

I'm not sure we're all just like leaves on a tree, and the illusion is that we are separate individuals.

yeah Irish

Like (most) other Europeans, I'm just following the parental line, which dates back to 1287. (Grandmother's, father's side, family is a bit older.)

Walter - I find it fascinating that you loose track at any point. Europeans have kept such meticulous records. But, I guess even they have their limits (the 13th century!).

Actually, the limits clearly are where and how the sources are stored.

So (I've only transcripts of the sources) I can relatively completely follow the family's history from earliest 17th century onwards - there's a lot in chucrh books and archives.
The earlier sources are testimonies etc to be found in monastry archives.
(All now in the state archive.)

In my case, it's a bit easier, too, because my ancestors were free peasants (farmers, as the might be called in the US), and the hamlet they lived in until 18th century got their name.

I've given copies of all my stuff to someone from the Westphalian genealogical society - he wants to write about it ..... since years.

Re: How much do you relate to your heritage?

I was born in The Netherlands and moved to Canada in 1956 at the age of 5.

To be quite honest, I never think of my heritage. Perhaps I was too young. My sister, who is 3 years older than myself, has more memories of life there than I have.

My parents, when the family moved to Canada, made the conscious decision to only speak English in the home, so my sister and I would have an easier transition in school.

That is really common, Reyn. I've taken Italian and Spanish classes with children of people who came here and didn't speak their native tongue to their kids for that reason... 30 yrs later, we're all in school together.

It's kind of weird being over here and having no history. Sof like being adopted, I suspect.

Hmmm. My family history is pretty dim. I mean, we know some names and where people came from and when they came to the United States (from Switzerland in the 17th or 18th century, from Sweden sometime before the Civil War, from Scotland sometime in the 18th or 19th century, from Poland in the early 20th century, with some ragtag remnants bits from England and from (we think) the Cherokee nation in there). But as far as being in touch with it -- well, my grandmother's parents came from Poland, but all that was passed down to her were a few words and a cuisine she couldn't cook at home because my grandfather had had part of his gut removed in the Army and could only eat bland food. Still, she made and we continue to make piroshkis every Christmas and dip them in thin tomato-and-lemon soup.

But I don't really think of my heritage as being where the folks came from, as pretty much everybody's past is tied up in the migrant American experience. Nobody before my parents' generation ever had a profession, everybody before my generation was born in a different state than their parents were, and everybody looked to move on to somewhere better. Both sides of the family moved out to California after WWII to pick fruit and build roads and whatnot.

And this bit of history -- pretty typical for a kid born in CA in the 1970s -- is my heritage.

In our family of three siblings, I have shown the most interest in genealogy. I was able to track our family history going back three generations from Hiroshima. The city government provided us with our family history, but it was written entirely in Chinese calligraphy that most contemporary Japanese are unable to read. Luckily, my brother had a professor friend from Japan who was able to translate most of it into English.

Our great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were samurai. Our grandfather went to Hawaii as a newly wed in 1893, and my father and two uncles came to California in 1917-1918 to find work.

We have many cultures in our family today including Burgess, Kikiloi, Smaldone, Albino, Lawrence, Lum, Wong, Reed, Battistone, Cooper, Pedro, Hietbrink, and Printer.

I keep in touch with my Hawaiian relatives regularly by email, and hope one day to meet up with them.

That doesn't surprise me, CI, that you're in touch and will be in touch. That is representative of the person I met in SF. And good on you.

There's a branch of my wife's family that has been in Hawaii for some time. They were living on the end of some old money around WWII, about half of them in southern California and half in Hawaii. There was a family boat that had made the crossings with different groups a number of times. They're really regular folk now, but there was a period of high living that established the family pretty well in Hawaii since the 1910s or so. Weird people, from what I've seen of 'em. There's a decent chance your people and my wife's people may have crossed paths at some point.