Countries/Continents of Your Ancestors!

[CallmeChaCha]

Mexico, Mexico, Mexico. I've been able to trace one grandparent's ancestors back 8 generations (my 8 times great-grandparents) and they were all born in Mexico, and so far all from the same state to boot.

[GiGi]

My family is European -- England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France -- but I want to do DNA testing to see what other blood is lurking.

One of the popular genealogy sites has information on my maternal grandmother's family and one researcher traces the line to Germany and one traces it to Wales. I've contacted them and both are adamant they are correct.

[Bethella]

My family is European -- England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France -- but I want to do DNA testing to see what other blood is lurking.

One of the popular genealogy sites has information on my maternal grandmother's family and one researcher traces the line to Germany and one traces it to Wales. I've contacted them and both are adamant they are correct.

Ask to see their documentation, they should have actual documents to back up their claims.

[GiGi]

Ask to see their documentation, they should have actual documents to back up their claims.

[wildrose]

My father's parents were both from Sweden and I have the church records for their families back to the early 1700's. Luckily they did not move around much, but they had no imagination when naming their children, so it is easy to get mixed up with all the generations of Anders Anderssons and their sons named Anders Andersson. My mother's family is from England and there may be some Italian mixed in, but we have not had much luck finding any records for my grandmother's generation. No one can even remember when or where she was born and my grandfather left the family soon after the WWII, so there is no information on him.

[Peas n carrots]

Ask to see their documentation, they should have actual documents to back up their claims.

I corresponded by email with the gentleman who is claiming the German connection and he became very, very rude when I asked for documentation. He said did all the research, spent his own money, and didn't care to share. Alrighty.

[crazyforkate]

Any Icelanders/people of Icelandic descent here? I'm asking because Iceland has some of the most interesting and extensive genealogical data around, and have put a lot of work into maintaining them. My heritage didn't really interest me (except for the British stuff, and then it was mostly to figure out how I was related to the royals, haha) until I travelled to Iceland earlier this year and saw my features on everyone else! Would dearly love to go back and explore the areas where the ancestors lived.

My family settled in Manitoba, which is kind of Iceland II - most of the diaspora wound up there, and there are more Icelanders in Canada than anywhere else outside of Iceland. My mother's maternal grandmother was full Icelandic, and my mom remembers having to go to Icelandic school as a kid. We have charts that detail a whole bunch of -ssons and -dottirs for many generations back, though of course they dropped the naming system after coming to Canada. It's just really interesting to see your background spelled out in such detail. And Iceland is a super cool country!

Also, we're probably all cousins, just saying. So, fellow FJers, anyone else traced back to the land of ice and fire?

[LadyBlue]

The only lineage I know much about may not actually be mine, depends on if my bio dad's mom was cheating when she conceived him or not. If his "dad" really was his father, there's a 5th cousin in the US who has done tons and tons of research (he retired in the late 70's and apparently has done nothing but research since) who traced the family to one of the earliest groups of German settlers to the US. He managed to trace them to their ship leaving Germany to England and after that it's really hard to get anywhere, since Germany wasn't actually a single country that far back and apparently records in the area were destroyed in wars. There's a possibility that before that, the family came from France.

[RosyDaisy]

France and Ireland here.

[bea]

Ireland. West Clare, both sides of the family. Genetically, we're recent arrivals (I'm in the 2nd generation born in the US).

[FloraKitty35]

My mother's ancestors were generally your mishmash of the British Isles (Anglo-Irish with a couple of dashes of Scotch & Welsh) and probably Native American (Choptank Indian).

My father's were Hungarian (my paternal grandfather was an ethnic Magyar) and my paternal grandmother's family were Dutch and German.

[Geechee Girl]

I envy y'all's ability to trace your ancestry. That's way cool.

[Vivi_music]

Yay! Other genealogy nerds. Glad to see I'm not the only one on here. I love to do ancestry research. It makes me feel like a detective. :P

I've always loved genealogy but I was never willing to pay for a website like ''ancestry.com''. I don't have enough money to pay for that. So I was able to do some genealogy research only through websites run by other enthusiasts. It amazes me how some of you have diverse heritage compared to my family tree. On both sides, it's pretty much all French Canadian farmers. Of course, I was only able to do the male lines because it's easier. Sadly, genealogy through the women's families are harder to do on free websites. In terms of ethnic diversity, I found ancestor from Switzerland and their history is pretty interesting. The first couple immigrated to New France in the 18th century. They were both Alemannic Swiss (german speakers) and had to convert to Catholicism when they arrived. I was able to trace back all the way to the first settlers who arrived in the 17th century. One came from the South of France while the other family is from Charente-Maritime near La Rochelle.

[Bethella]

Yay! Other genealogy nerds. Glad to see I'm not the only one on here. I love to do ancestry research. It makes me feel like a detective. :P

I've always loved genealogy but I was never willing to pay for a website like ''ancestry.com''. I don't have enough money to pay for that. So I was able to do some genealogy research only through websites run by other enthusiasts. It amazes me how some of you have diverse heritage compared to my family tree. On both sides, it's pretty much all French Canadian farmers. Of course, I was only able to do the male lines because it's easier. Sadly, genealogy through the women's families are harder to do on free websites. In terms of ethnic diversity, I found ancestor from Switzerland and their history is pretty interesting. The first couple immigrated to New France in the 18th century. They were both Alemannic Swiss (german speakers) and had to convert to Catholicism when they arrived. I was able to trace back all the way to the first settlers who arrived in the 17th century. One came from the South of France while the other family is from Charente-Maritime near La Rochelle.

I'm not sure if this applies to Canada, but in the US many public libraries have subscriptions to Ancestry.com. You might want to check and see if your local library has access.

[SnazzyNazzy]

My maternal Nana was from England. She had a distant relative do a full genealogy on her surname. The relative that did it was super thorough, and even included jobs and other interesting tidbits. Then he had it made into a book and sent everyone with her surname a copy.

The REALLY cool thing, if you are a genealogy and/or history buff, is that the first appearance of my nana's surname, was in 1295. This book that her relative made went all the way from 1295 to the late 1980's/early 1990's. Sadly, the book was either lost or thrown away, after my granddad died. I remember reading it before he died, and never finding it after my nana died.

[browncoatslytherin]

i'm really wanting to get into genealogy myself. my line is a little muddled, but it's mostly straightforward. going off of what i've been told: scottish, irish, norwegian, with a jewish flair somewhere in the mix (not sure where). however, one of my great-great grandfathers (something to that effect) owned a plantation in the south and knocked up one of his slave girls, and the child was apparently so light that his wife passed the child as her own. nobody knows which of their children was the illegitimate one, though, so i'm not sure if that's the line i ended up coming through or not. *shrug*

[keen23]

Family lore always said that one of my maternal great-great-great-grandmothers was Algonquin and married a French trapper. However, Ancestry DNA tests have shown that I am 100% European.

[browncoatslytherin]

Family lore always said that one of my maternal great-great-great-grandmother Algonquin and married a French trapper. However, Ancestry DNA tests have shown that I am 100% European.

are those dna things really worth it? i've been contemplating having it done but i'm not sure it's really worth its salt as far as results and details go.

[keen23]

are those dna things really worth it? i've been contemplating having it done but i'm not sure it's really worth its salt as far as results and details go.

I wouldn't have paid for it, but my husband was super into genealogy two years ago and paid for both of us to get it done. He had some surprising Jewish heritage markers in his DNA (which previously he had been told was uber-Catholic). It was worth it however this Thanksgiving when my blow-hard know-it-all cousin started talking about said great-great-great-grandmother and I was able to bust out with the fact that DNA evidence didn't mesh with family stories, and we probably should stop saying it.

[browncoatslytherin]

I wouldn't have paid for it, but my husband was super into genealogy two years ago and paid for both of us to get it done. He had some surprising Jewish heritage markers in his DNA (which previously he had been told was uber-Catholic). It was worth it however this Thanksgiving when my blow-hard know-it-all cousin started talking about said great-great-great-grandmother and I was able to bust out with the fact that DNA evidence didn't mesh with family stories, and we probably should stop saying it.

ah, okay. thanks! the contemplation will continue :P

[singsingsing]

I am obsessed with genealogy and have done (or have had family members do) pretty much all the DNA tests, in large part because I've been trying to discover the biological family of a close relative who was adopted. No luck yet.

As for origins, mainly French Canadian, Scottish, English, a few Irish, Guernsey, and German (mysteriously changed to Dutch on the census around the time of WWI, how 'odd').

If you want to do a DNA test and you're an American, go with either AncestryDNA or Family Tree DNA. Both are great, in my opinion. Just make sure to look into them and decide which is best for your own purposes, because there are different tests you can take that will provide you with different information. 23&Me is good but about $100 more expensive because they provide genetic medical info - but if you're in the U.S. you can't have access to that info anyway, so you may as well go with one of the other ones.

[browncoatslytherin]

I am obsessed with genealogy and have done (or have had family members do) pretty much all the DNA tests, in large part because I've been trying to discover the biological family of a close relative who was adopted. No luck yet.

As for origins, mainly French Canadian, Scottish, English, a few Irish, Guernsey, and German (mysteriously changed to Dutch on the census around the time of WWI, how 'odd').

If you want to do a DNA test and you're an American, go with either AncestryDNA or Family Tree DNA. Both are great, in my opinion. Just make sure to look into them and decide which is best for your own purposes, because there are different tests you can take that will provide you with different information. 23&Me is good but about $100 more expensive because they provide genetic medical info - but if you're in the U.S. you can't have access to that info anyway, so you may as well go with one of the other ones.

really? why couldn't someone in the us access their own genetic medical results? because they aren't going through a doctor or something? i'm just curious. thanks for the recommendations. :)

[47of74]

My ancestry is from the German speaking regions of Europe, mainly what today is western Germany and Luxembourg.

On my mom's side of the family Grandma's family was traced back to 1813 when my Great-Great-Great Grandfather was born in Recklinghausen in west central Germany near Dortman. He was married in the 1840s and they crossed over, settling first in Ohio then in Iowa. My Grandpa's family was also German in origin. Grandpa's parents were born in Germany but we're not sure where exactly.

On my dad's side of the family we've traced Grandpa's ancestry all the way back to a farmer in Luxembourg who lived in the early 1700s. My Great-Great-Grandfather was born in Luxembourg and emigrated to the US. In 1868 he married my Great-Great-Grandmother, who was also born in Luxembourg and who had come over with her parents and siblings. I have some very distant cousins who still live in Luxembourg to this day, I've exchanged letters and emails with them a few times. My Grandma we traced her ancestry back to my Great-Great-Grandparents. Her father's father was born in Luxembourg, and his mother here in Iowa. We believe her parents were from Luxembourg. Her mother's parents were born here in Iowa, we believe they also were from Luxembourg.

One of these years I'd like to go to Germany and Luxembourg to see for myself where my ancestors were from.

[NCLunaLovegoodFan]

Mostly Irish and English ancestry for me.  

On my mom's side: Both my grandparents grew up in Chicago (my grandfather's mother came from an Irish-Catholic family, and my grandfather's father has English ancestry. My maternal grandmother's parents came from Iowa and have German and English (far as I know, as I reached a roadblock with my grandmother's father's paternal family ). Her father's mother is of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. So far, I found out I have numerous Amish and Mennonite distant cousins.   I also found out that  the mother of my maternal grandmother's mother is a Van Tassel (yes, the same Van Tassel  from Sleepy Hollow). So, I also have some Dutch ancestry.

My father's side has been harder to track, since he was born in England and his father was adopted. I know very little about my paternal grandfather's birth parents  (they are Irish and named Joseph and Mary).

[clueliss]

another genealogy fan.

I have 3 great grandparents on my mother's side who are German (Okay if you listened to my grandmother, she would tell you Prussian).  Verified by genealogy records and Mom's Ancestry.com dna (she is 79% Western European, with Scandinavian, English, Irish (or what I personally call Celtic since it includes scotland wales and nw england with odd trace amounts of Iberian Peninsula and Finland).  

My own ancestry.com dna shows Western European (from both parents), Irish (Celtic), Scandinavian with trace of English (ties to half of my mom's) and trace Eastern European (no clue where that comes form but it has to be on my father's side)

I have been able to debunk a tall tale about having native american blood (from my father's side) and some bizzaro story on my mother's about possible Jewish heritage (lots of stories on mom's but I have universally found them to be incorrect or twisted in some form).  

I can trace part of my roots back to colonial era (and beyond).  The Germanic roots end a generation or so before immigration to the US.  (Specific parts of Germany are Westphalia and Holstein)