Having my 23andMe results show I’m 2.1% Ashkenazi jewish was an absolute delight for me. I’ve narrowed the candidates for that ancestry down to 1 of 4 great great grandparents.
I didn’t mean disturbing because of me not having some Jewish backgound. I meant the chart was made so that my mom’s family didn’t have to ride a special train car. That’s pretty disturbing.
WWII played a big role in my history. My mom was a German war bride of an American soldier, and my dad’s family were Latvian displaced persons who came to America to work on a farm in Michigan.
I can confirm this is an issue for more than a couple of Central European countries. You unearth your ancestors’ birth register or baptismal certificates and realize they are stamped or issued in 1938 or 1939 on the basis of a law mandating that everyone’s lineage be documented.
Yes, disturbing.
I do actually. I even know where they are all buried. In fact, when I’m put in the ground I’ll be next to my maternal grandmother’s mother.
Seven of the g-grandparents were born in this country. One was born in Germany. He stowed away on a ship to get here, at the age of sixteen. he’d been about to be drafted into the army and didn’t feel like being cannon fodder for Bismarck while he was unifying the Germanies.
Actually, less than I’d anticipated. I only barely got to know my paternal Great Grandmother, and she was the only one left by the time I came around. I think some of my relatives tried to do some genealogical digging, mostly records. Well, apparently GGMa was not very well liked and she didn’t like anyone back either. A lot of what was assumed to be true (some family names, etc.) turned out to be not factual or maybe mistakes so there were some dead ends and disappointment. Add to that the stoic Swedish ancestry I come from, and none of us are talkers or story tellers anyway. What I’ve heard is that GGma came here in her 20’s by herself from Sweden, but that’s all I know about her early life.
Now, my Great Aunt Ethel (mom’s side) was another story. She was a flapper, army nurse, school nurse, lifelong home owner in a tough neighborhood, world traveler and single lady, though she had a sweet beau named Bill in her 70’s. She drove a 1970’s Nova. She was 16 years senior to my grandmother and they never really got along.
Almost nothing, just bits and pieces. I’m third-generation Canadian; all my grandparents were born on this side of the Atlantic. But I think that all of their parents immigrated. The Museum of Civilization in Ottawa had a big diorama at one point of horrid-looking berths on a boat, filled with dirtied-up and rag-wearing mannequins, and on a trip to the museum, I was told that some of my great-grandparents made a similar journey.
My mother’s side is mostly Scots, from the Borders area. She recalls her grandmother speaking with great distain about “heelanders” (and also apparently an aphorism about never biting off the bottom point of an ice cream cone because there might be a fly trapped in there…and then I wonder why I’m messed up with that kind familial wisdom making its way down the generations). My mom went back to Scotland about seven years ago for the first time in decades, and visited some country house where her grandfather had been the groundskeeper at the turn of the last century. She then brought back approximately 7.8 million pictures of the house and the grounds and (seemingly) individual flowers and insisted I look at them all until my brain tried to leave my body.
My dad’s side is German/Irish. I know basically nothing about that side except that the German bit hails from the Black Forest region, and my dad always wears an orange sweater on St. Patrick’s Day.
My paternal great-grandfather was a leather worker who made harnesses and the like until the factory burned down and he took a job at Gardner Denver. They lived across the street from a firehouse and he used to go play pinochle with them. When they had to go to a fire they’d call my great-grandmother up to ask her to watch what was on the stove and she’d run over and do so.
My paternal grandmother’s father ran a grocery store.
My maternal great grandparents? If you know, please let me know.
IIRC my mom said that my great-grandfather fought in the US Civil War. Then he came home, couldn’t find a job, so he went and fought again. [That seems mighty odd during war time but that’s the story I heard.] I don’t know if he saw much action, really. I have seen an ancient photo of him…from back when funerals took place at home. You cleared the dining room table for use as a bier or whatever. There he was, photographed in his open casket.
One of my great grandfather was a leader of the Italian Communist Party and was assassinated by Mussolini’s henchmen in 1922. He met Lenin during his exile in Swiss in 1908 and my grandfather (6 years old) played on his knees.
My great grand parents on my father’s side were all Mormon pioneers. Some of them immigrated from Britain and traveled to Utah, others descended from Puritans who arrived in the 1600s and settled in New England. I have ancestors who were accused of witchcraft at Salem, captured by Indians, owned slaves and founded cities; one was the first governor of New Hampshire.
My favorite is Thomas Leffingwell, woodsman and friend of the real life Uncas, sachem of the Mohegan tribe. Leffingwell saved the Mohegans from a siege by competing tribes, bringing them food and supplies by canoe under the cover of darkness. For this, the Mohegan granted him a large tract of land, where he founded the city of Norwich, Connecticut. It is said Leffingwell was a prototype for Hawkeye in James Fenimore Cooper’s Last Of The Mohicans.
Not much. One GGma was a debutante from New Orleans. She traveled home to recover from illness but died on the return trip and was buried at sea. My GMa a toddler was with her and in the care of strangers until they reached NY.
The other Ggparents I know of worked in a “great country house” in Penn. when fox hunting was a thing. she was a cook and he took care of the horses and dogs. I believe the land is still a country club b of sorts for equine pursuits.
Another set from Canada were very poor, their children scattered to foster homes or adopted out. My mother was shocked when her granddad showed up one day at the door wanting to see her. He was not white to her recollection. She had a little knowledge of him and had met him before as a child when her family would visit and bring stuff to the poor relations who lived in a camp in the woods. I’ve heard that Branch was mixed race, English Scottish/ African /Native American we don’t know.