Two of my maternal great grandparents immigrated to America during the Irish Potato Famine, the other two were Pennsylvania Dutch, so their families came from Germany before then. My father’s parents both came from Sweden, and Andy’s paternal grandparents came from Finland. His mother came from New England and was a member of the Mayflower society, so her folks came a long time ago, but they were still immigrants.
I often say, “We’re all a bunch of nuts” — for a lot of us it’s also true to say, “We’re all a bunch of mutts.”
November 28, 2017
Welcome to the club.
Hurray for genetic diversity. 🙂
I guess I would prefer to say that our nation is largely descended from immigrants instead of being “a nation of immigrants.”
My Goad ancestry goes back to the mid to late 1600s in Virginia. Another was there in the early 1600s at Jamestown, but he went back to England and, later, emigrated to New England. On the other hand, my Tesar great-grandparents were born in the former Czechoslovakia. And everyone else came between the two extremes in time.
An Algonquin-French Canadian (metis — mixed race) ancestor (born near Montreal) defected from French Canada (around the Detroit area at the time) to the English in New York after her brother, Louis, was murdered on the orders of French Canadians. Louis was a trapper and guide who was acting as a emissary to “western” (to them) tribes.
So I guess even my first native American ancestor to live in what became the United States was an immigrant. 😉
Well said! 🙂
And thank you for telling us your family background. I always think that’s fascinating.
Yes, we are all mutts.
Some of us are Heinz 57 mutts
And some proclaim to be designer breeds…. still mutts.
I love mutts.
To say they are building a wall to keep out immigrants isn’t really true though.
It’s just the Mexican immigrants he wants kept out.
He also wants to keep out Muslims. And he’s cracking down on H-1B visas, except for the foreign workers at his golf courses.
I live in the Southwest, on land that was essentially stolen from Mexico. It’s a mess.
Oh yes! Definitely Muslims too!
I just meant the wall…
And the wall would be showy, but probably not work. Sigh….
Even the American Indians’ ancestors were immigrants at one time or another. Which is why I don’t understand why it is so hard for us to respect one another.
Humans evolved to compete with other groups for resources. Cooperating with your group and excluding others was apparently a good survival strategy for a long time. I find that sad.
My family is firmly British going way back, but of course there are millions of people with foreign connections somewhere along the line (Jenny comes from an old Irish family). Which is why I’m baffled by all those anti-immigrant fanatics who imagine you can somehow “cleanse” the country of immigrants. There would be about five people left.
Yes, that’s the point. I’ve been watching some British reality TV, Escape to the Country and some cooking/baking shows. I’m impressed by the ethnic diversity.
I’m living what was the colonies – but my descendants appear to have some all from many parts of the UK, Scotland, Ireland at some point in there long ago lives…
How many immigrants have you had from non-UK, Europe?
we now have oodles of different migrants but they probably aren’t originals as such, although many Indians and Chinese came earlier – for reasons usually not to do with taking up territories. They came for the gold, they came to be vegetable gardeners to feed society and many them came to be retailers. It was quite common to find that the owner of the fruiterer was India (some came from Fiji, but most came from the Indian continent)…why they came I don’t know but maybe it was just a way up some ladder – easier than their own countries…