Quote:
Originally Posted by Docere
Very much true. English ancestry is greatly undercounted. About half of white Americans apparently can trace their ancestry back to the colonial era, and the vast majority of whites then were of British ancestry.
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Most white americans are pretty mutted-up these days.
I did a family tree project back in school, and my maternal side had been well-documented by both grandparents, they could trace all their ancestors back to mostly german (southern catholics) and a few french (alsace-lorraine) immigrants to the US back in the 19th century, post-colonial days.
On my paternal side, my grandma was 100% irish catholic potato famine immigrant lineage, and my grandfather was mostly the same except for his maternal grandfather, all we know about him is that he came to chicago in the 1870s as a young man from a farm in vermont. We assume he's probably from colonial yankee stock, and thus my lone likely ancetral tie to colonial america.
It's interesting how my immigrant ancestors mostly stayed within their immigrant groups up until the baby boomer generation, when it all got blown up.
My german mom married an southside irish boy.
One of her brothers married a mennonite, another married a jew, another an Irish girl from the east coast, etc.
My irish dad married a german northsider.
One of his brothers married a puerto rican, another married the daughter of chinese immigrants, and so on.
my wife is 100% italian-american, she can directly trace all 8 of her great grandparents back to italy/sicily, so no yankee in her.
our kids have a pretty good trace of their european roots, except for their one great-great-great-grandfather from that farm in vermont (99% chance he was all or some yankee).