A very beautiful ancestress of mine attracted a member of the local nobility (Austro-Hungary) and his family took exception to the fact that she was Jewish. She and her family were given ‘notice’ to get themselves out of town by his family.
Or
A ancestress of mine managed to get herself pregnant by a member of the local nobility. She was paid off by his family (or blackmailed them) to get passage to America with her family.
One way or the other, we beat the dust of that place from our shoes and never went or looked back.
The rest of it? All a mystery. There are some connections to Belorussia and my surname comes from Alsace. I also have someone who may or may not be a cousin in Marseille.
My ancestors came over too long ago for us to have maintained contact, but we do have some interest in the Old Country.
My first Irish ancestor to come over was a Potato Famine refugee. Others came in the 1870s. But we don’t know what towns, or even provinces, they came from, and their names are much too common to be easy to trace. But my mother and brother have been back to Ireland, and one of these days I’d like to go myself.
My Swiss ancestor came over around 1864, but although his name is rare and we know the general area he came from we haven’t been able to track down any family records on the other side. However, I have visited the area, and have been to what we jokingly call our “family castle,” owned by people of the same name (spelled slightly differently). They are probably something like our 10th cousins.
The Germans, who probably came before 1850, might be traceable but we haven’t attempted that yet.
Other than one grandmother, who came from England as a child but rarely could be persuaded to talk about it (all I know is it involved a single mother with mental problems and my grandmother going to work at age 9 doing odd jobs after school to keep some money coming in), all the rest came from the old country in the 17th century and bummed around untill they ended up in the Ozarks for a couple hundred years. Then they all escaped to California in the late teens & early twenties, avoiding the rush a decade later.
My immigration story is unusual. My father’s family came to Canada from France back in the seventeenth century. My grandparents moved from southern Quebec to northern New York back in the twenties. So our family journey to America was a two hour drive. And obviously there was no big difficulty in reversing the trip.
No, but I wish we did! The earliest anyone came over was in the 1840s, so it wasn’t horribly long ago; I’m certainly not descended from anyone who came over on the Mayflower. Just your average peasant fleeing from poverty.
My paternal family arrived at the 1st Colony at Jamestown in the early 1600’s and that is where my last name came from. I have done extensive genealogy work on the rest of branches almost all are 300 - 400 years old even if you don’t count the few Native American ancestors. I think this is the old country for me but I could count England and Scotland if you go back far enough. There are obviously no family ties back to Europe but the church where my Jamestown ancestors got married in the late 1500’s (St. Dunstans) is still in use and in good condition in east London. I always wanted to go there and plan to someday. They supposedly still have the marriage records. My family is about as American as you can possibly be however and no other country has any direct cultural relevance to us.
It does make a difference. My cousins took me to their great-grandmother’s apartment, now vacant, the place where my grandmother stayed on a visit in the 30s. Amazing. Just one big room, with all the cooking done over a fire outdoors.
Also, I was able to visit a first cousin of my grandmother’s, now dead, who gave me some pictures she had been sent of my grandmother as a girl. That’s one of the most amazing moments of my life to date: meeting an elderly, illiterate woman in a remote mountain village in Southern Italy and finding that we (well, Grandma anyway) were remembered, and meant something to her.
We’re not close, obviously, and there’s a bit of a language barrier (my Italian is bad, their English mostly non-existent), but because of those experiences I really feel a connection to the place, something I don’t think you can get just visiting the general area.
My paternal grandparents came from a God forsaken jekwater town in Sicily where the people and barnyard animals lived under the same roof. They went back to visit once and that was enough to remind them they never wanted to go back. They were intent on becoming American to the extent that they refused to teach my father to speak Italian.
My maternal grandmother came from Ireland and was poor as all hell so she holds no love for the place.
My maternal grandfather got the hell out of Germany as a young man sometime after WWI and was pretty damn glad he did.
So no, no ties to or love of the old country from them. I’d be interested to go check it out though.
My father’s family actually moved back to the old country for a year. My father met all those aunts, uncles and cousins, but he and my uncle always said that was the most miserable year of their lives (and my uncle saw combat in two wars!) Whenever we asked our grandparents, parents or uncles about the old country, they all said “if we had liked it, we would have stayed there.”
Most of my genes are German, but both sides of my family have been here for several generations now. Well, one of my great-grandfathers stowed away to get out of Germany, but he was the most recent immigrant, coming here in the 1880’s I believe.
No contact with anyone in Europe, although I’ve seen my surname on both sides of the borders of Germany and France.
This. All my grandparents came from England. I went over and met a distant cousin and we went through London and found the places where my mother’s father had lived (well, the ones that weren’t destroyed in the war). I have a diary of my grandfather’s from 1919 with pictures showing him and my grandmother picknicking in the grassy fields overlooking the English Channel. I have genealogies of various branches going back to the 1600s on one side. It really does help, I think, to know where you came from, how one generation influenced the next. Finding out that my grandfather’s mother was Jewish suddenly revealed a whole new aspect to his politics and reading and life, and raised more questions about why and when he and my grandmother came over…
Nah, Shagnasty is just an old family nickname but but not my last name. My great X grandparents were Richard Pace I and Isabelle Smythe from England. Visiting the ‘Old Country’ for me is mainly just going back to Virginia which I adore and only a long car ride or a short plane flight. The Pace Paines plantation is still there from the 1600’s. It is very convenient and most Americans have it a lot harder to see roots going back a few hundred years in person.
This is how I feel too. My grandmother was from the Caribbean and I went to the island on my honeymoon. My mother was emailing me telling me I should really drop in on a household of elderly distant cousins. Whereas I was thinking “I’m a newlywed and have nothing to say to a bunch of octogenarians who don’t even know who I am”.
I keep getting contact requests on Skype - of all media - from Americans who share my family name and are trying to connect with distant relatives. I see no reason to respond.
Americans seem to be much more into genealogy that Europeans in general from what I have gathered. It is one of the most common hobbies here and some people spend decades on it. Most of them really are genuine. The fact that their families just came into being as they know it 50 - 150 years ago with little context leaves a lot of questions unanswered that they want filled in. You may not understand it but even hearing from someone with their last name from the other side would be charitable and very welcome. If you did know any common facts, they would be thrilled. They aren’t out to scam you. They just the barest of connections with that bridge to fill in missing pieces.
That’s probably true although it has increased hugely in popularity in recent years in Britain and Ireland. My dad was into it when he was young in the '50s and '60s. At the time I think some people thought he was stone mad. My sister-in-law is studying it now part-time and has contacted various distant relations in the Americas and elsewhere. Shows like WDYTYA? (which has British and Irish versions too) have helped increase awareness and interest in the field. My better half is tracing her Irish ancestors but unfortunately the link to Ireland has a very common name. He wasn’t Paddy Murphy but he might as well have been for all the help his name is in tracing where he came from. She has it down to the county now anyway.
My mother has been doing family genealogy for over 30 years now and has produced volumes of work on her family and my father’s. Most of the German, Dutch and English main trunk of the family emigrated to the US in the mid 1800’s, so there is little to draw us back. In fact ‘Old Country’ might be more like Upstate New York and Kent County Maryland at this point.
Her latest and greatest thrill was discovering a link to Stephen Hopkins who apparently came to Jamestown, went back to England, then returned on the Mayflower. Oh, and he shipwrecked on Bermuda at some point (before it had been colonized) and had to help build a new ship.
At 80 Mom has decided to return to volunteering at the local university for the first time in 5 years or so (she used to be a regular) which is an indication of her improving health, a fact I am insanely proud of.
Funny, I was thinking a more appropriate response would be, “Are you nuts? Odessa isn’t even in Russia.”
The three cities you list may have been part of the Russian Empire when your ancestors were born there, but they haven’t been part of Russia since around 1919.
But truly they’re barking up the wrong tree: though I have a slightly unusual surname, there are probably a million or more people in the world who share it.
Anecdote: I was once waiting for a long-haul flight and heard my name over the speakers. I thought I was going to be upgraded. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that there was someone else on the flight who shared my first and last names and they wanted to verify the ticket hadn’t been double-sold.
I was vaguely amazed, but the other ‘me’ was absolutely beside himself. Then he sought me out on the plane and wanted to chat for ages. And I was thinking “I have nothing to say to you - we have nothing whatsoever in common!”
I regret that’s also how I feel when Sindy or Barbara _______ sends me a request saying “Hi! We have the same last name! Let’s become Skype buddies!” :curmudgeon: