This morning on my way to work I was thinking, “Ancestry.com, who gives a shit?”.
Does it really matter where your ancestors came from? I live in the US. I was born in the US and so were my parents. I can figure that out without tracing my lineage. Therefore I identify myself as being American. I know I am actually North American as well as my brothers from another mother in Canada and Mexico.
How does it affect me that my past started from some dude in Ireland, Germany, or The Congo? Why is that important to some? Other than maybe a scholarship if you can verify Native American ancestry.
I understand it has huge importance if you are an immigrant or your parents were immigrants. What does it really matter if you know that your parents were born in the same country that you reside in and were citizens at the time of your birth? Dual citizenship withstanding.
I also understand kids want to know their Grandparents and probably Great Grands (maybe Great Great Grands, but I doubt it.), but why beyond that?
I want to know. Maybe I’ll change my mind and really look into my ancestry. Who knows?
My ancestry occasionally comes up when people want to learn more about why I look the way I do. “Where are you from?” can have two meanings.
Sometimes I wish I could give these curious individuals a percentage breakdown, like how some people know they are 25% X or 50% Y. Instead I just say “I’m black with a few Scots-Irish in the woodpile somewhere.”
I was always vaguely interested in that stuff, but not enough to pay for it. Some people get a lot of pride out of being told they’re related to a king, or Revolutionary War veteran or something. Other people are either racist or have some racist-inspired ideas about how your ancestry shapes your character (Germans are born leaders, Chinese are clever – I don’t know exactly because I don’t buy into that stuff). At some point, it’s basically a horoscope: “Oh, I’m unsuccessful in life because my great-great-great-grandfather was a horse thief!”
But it’s also fascinating. I’ve discovered some fascinating things about my relatives from researching it. Like my grandmother’s real given name, for instance. Or that my great aunt had the money to finance my grandfather’s purchase of a store from a divorce settlement, where her husband – a successful gynecologist who wrote textbooks on the matter that are still in print today – left her for his nurse.
It’s also an age thing. As you get older, you become more interested in finding out about relatives.
Absolutely. My mother and aunt are just now really poking in to the Ancestry.com stuff, and learning about their grandparents and great-grandparents. As they do, we are trying to practice more Slovak customs around holidays. Since my mom’s mom was a first-generation American, she (grandma) spoke Slovak and cooked Slovak dishes and practiced Slovak customs and by doing all of these things today with me, it brings my mom and aunt closer to their mom. And also closer to their cousins who’s parents were grandma’s siblings who also practiced these customs.
On my father’s side the family is one more generation removed from the “old country” and it wasn’t as much a part of their daily lives. But it is very interesting to at least see pictures and read about where grandpa’s grandparents came from. It tells the story of how I got to be here.
Ancestry is pretty big in places like Cleveland where tons of people are descendants of recent immigrants. It’s fun to keep the heritage going.
I don’t find this to be true at all. As I got older I came to have zero interest in my ancestry. I’m not sure why; I grew up in a home and on a farm that had been in my family for four generations so maybe the fact that I lived surrounded by ancestors in a way means that I knew a lot about it at an early age and just got bored? Or don’t feel like there’s much new to learn?
Yes and no. I am adopted and don’t know my nationality of origin. Well, my mother was white but clearly papa was something else. It would be nice to know why I look the way I do- mostly because I have been asked about it my entire life- but other than that, I’m not that bothered.
I like history in general and so love hearing about my (adoptive) family’s past. It makes no difference to me about nationality or their great family traditions (Jewish). I find it a bit puzzling that so many people cling so tightly to the origins of generations past as to consider themselves _____ - Americans. If you and your parents were born here you’re American; period(IMHO of course).
I’ve been interested enough to pursue this to some extent. I’m not sure what drives it, there are no heroes or villains that I’ve discovered in my family tree.
One item of interest has been to know whether I am related, and to what degree, to a fairly large extended family who has the same (unusual) last name that I do. I have corresponded with a couple of them, but no-one can prove it one way or the other until someone goes to Germany to track down those ancestors to see if they were brothers or not. It isn’t particularly important, more a matter of curiosity.
I suppose there is some vanity in it, if I am strictly honest with myself, in the sense that these people are important to me because they are related to me. If they weren’t related to me I wouldn’t care two pins about them.
One other observation: knowing something about my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives helps me to understand my parents better. Going back further than that doesn’t probably bring much to that particular party though.
Exactly! I do the things I do because my parents taught me to do them. Would it matter if my parents ancestors were Russian? Right now I don’t give a rats ass if somewhere my lineage devolved from Ghengis Kan (which most people probably have some link too).
Why should I be concerned where my Great Great Great Grandma came from?
I’ve always been interested in my ancestry out of pure curiosity. I would ask grandma and great gram questions, but neither had much to tell. I never keep in contact with my biological father so therefore, I know little about his side of the family. I only learned a few years ago that my grandfather had a VFW named after him. Kind of interesting.
My husband proudly says he is 50% Italian and 50% Finnish. I guess I would also like to be proud of where my family are originally from.
Maybe some people need it to feel some kind of identity, I don’t know. I’m not even puzzled why people are concerned (if by “concerned” you mean curious)where their ancestors are from, I just find it kind of, er, interesting when they wear it like some kind of badge of honor.
It’s my connection to history. If you have no interest in what was going on in the world prior to the birth of your parents, then it really doesn’t matter. But if you want to feel connected to events that happened many decades or centuries ago, it’s really helpful to know how your family fits into the big picture. Even if your family were just farmers or peasants, they were farmers or peasants in a particular time and place, speaking a particular language, under a particular ruler and set of laws. It’s not so much about their particular ethnicity (although often ethnicity is a huge determinant of what their lives were like and how they were affected by historical events), it’s about their place in the world, and how you came to be in the place you’re in today.
When the results of the 1940 census were released, my sister and I spent hours combing through them to find our grandparents. This year at Passover, we started discussing the information we had identified, and the whole family ended up in front of the computer, looking at these records and going back in time to exactly where our family was 70 years ago. This lead to further discussion of the family history, and our connection to particular places and events.
Not everyone feels connected to their past. But for me, it’s a huge part of who I am, and helps to fill in the picture of my identity.
My ancestors were brought to the US, Central America and the Caribbean on a boat ride and a lot of what was going on before that trip is kind of lost. Ancestry gets kind of murky around great-grandparents-ish, and it doesn’t really matter to me. Recently a friend and I were talking about marriage and changing last names, and I brought up the idea of picking out a new last name to share, which she thought was a decent idea, but then you’d lose any ethnic ties to your last name. As someone who’s never had any, I don’t really see what the big deal is. Sure, I’d be curious to know in a sort of “Huh, so my great, great, great grandpa was a fisherman in Sierra Leone,” but it really is just mildly interesting trivia. Not caring much about your personal ancestry doesn’t mean “you have no interest in what was going on in the world prior to the birth of your parents.” You can find history interesting without needing to create a personal connection to what happened.
I know I am Polish on one side and that has mattered to part of my family a little bit. My other side doesn’t even know themselves what they are. My ancestry has very little impact on my life.
Most people don’t lead particularly interesting lives. It’s just one more distraction in a sea of them. I don’t think the desire to know more about one’s ancestors is any more or less noble than chilling out in front of the television or pc. I don’t have a problem with genealogy, but I’m less interested in my own than I am in next week’s Game of Thrones.
I’d like to know about my family before they left Poland. I’m pretty sure they were peasants based on the sepia photos I’ve seen. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter, but I’d still like to know who they were and why the decided to emigrate.
Unfortunately, the original immigrants and all of their children are dead. In the smattering of family lore passed down, we’ve lost any memory of where in Poland they started from and what family, if any, remains in the old country. I’ve tried some searches myself, but without much success. So it will remain a mystery. Whether I discovered the family tree contained criminals or royalty, it wouldn’t change anything about me and my life, other than topics of small talk.
My husband’s family doesn’t care at all. They don’t know when their people came to the states or where they came from, other than one set of grandparents had a German surname. When I was newly married into the family, I asked, just making conversation, and they seemed perplexed that I’d bring it up. Each to his own, I guess.
It may not be important, but it could be interesting. Your ancestors were a significant factor in what you are today. It might not be something to be proud about (not everyone’s ancestor was the King of England; some were the charwomen who cleaned the royal toilet), but it makes you distinctive.
There is a quote from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, which unfortunately I can’t find right now, so I will have to refer to it from memory. The quote is from Pooh Bah, who is Lord High Everything Else in the town of Titipu. He makes a speech where he proclaims his innate worth because he can trace his ancestry back to a bit of protoplasm in the primordial ooze. This great, long ancestry makes him, he thinks, the most noble fellow around and gives him great personal pride.
So that is one extreme. I don’t personally know anyone who carries it that far. It’s hard to see, except in the case of inheriting property or titles (in places that have such things), where one’s ancestry makes any real tangible difference. And yet to many people their own ancestry can be very interesting.
I think one reason why it might often be an interest expressed by older people is that they only have time to pursue it after they have retired.
It’s a fairly interesting hobby, mainly, as it has the elements of both mystery story and treasure hunt. As far as it mattering, it does to me. If I had never taken it up as a hobby, I would never have connected with a first cousin (son of my father’s sister) that I never knew I had. We’re now good friends, and I helped him with his own family roots on his father’s side. I think it also matters to the other people I’ve helped connect to their families over the years, including a young woman who was adopted.
I respond to threads about ancestry, but otherwise don’t make a point of talking about connections to various people and historical events. So the OP doesn’t “give a shit” about it. So fucking what?