When did your family immigrate to the United States"

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141

Anyone who saw my wedding pictures might notice that my cousins on both sides are rather distinctive looking (or at least they are to me). I am a good blend whereas the rest are all very clearly related. I look like the odd one out on both sides.

There are a few stories that we found that we didn’t know about in my family… like my grandfather’s drunken marriage after going to Cedar Point that was quickly annulled. It wasn’t hidden so much as it just never really came up.

My grandmother was in the London Symphony at the age of only 14. Fact checked that to be true. Also found evidence that my GGF cooked for the Big Three during a WWII conference.

My Ashkenazi family was from “Russia” and moved to “Germany” and that’s where we say they’re from… even though where they’re from is no longer part of Germany (or Russia for that matter). The surname is Russian though I’ve also heard that it is probably from a Ukrainian or Polish root… I don’t know any of those languages so I have no idea.

Similar with my grandfather on my mom’s side. We say we’re Hungarian Roma even though where my grandfather’s family is from is not part of Hungary anymore. My mom’s maiden name is from Hungary but it is extremely rare there. The only place that I see it is with people of Turkish decent.

Who the heck knows?

142

My family came from Poland on one side and England and Ireland on the other, for the most part.

A cousin of my dad’s was a genealogy buff and traced ancestors back to the 16th century in England, which I thought was pretty cool, but then it hit me that there were over 4,000 great-times-ten grandparents at that same level foe me. It made the whole project seem futile to me, somehow. Or weirdly skewed by the available-information bias. (Of course, there is almost certainly some overlap in the 4000+ grandparents, so that number would collapse down to something more manageable.)

For those of you who enjoy genealogy research, do the shear numbers of ancestors after a few generations back ever feel discouraging or overwhelming? How do you choose which forking path to follow? What motivates the search?

143

For me, at least, the spotty availability of European Jewish records, and the fact that (with exceptions for some locations, including parts of Germany and Alsace) they rarely existed (or survive) prior to the late 18th/early 19th centuries – along with the fact that the names of married or widowed women often went unrecorded except as “Frau X” or “Wittwe X” – mean that I’ll never be overwhelmed with the number of ancestors (and other relatives) I find. After 20+ years of research, I know the names of about 250 direct ancestors (not counting the ones I know only as Mrs. X), and perhaps 1500 other relatives, past and present. Which I don’t consider unmanageable at all. (I’ve seen some computerized family trees with 20,000 people in them!) There’s just one branch I’ve traced back to the 16th century and quite a few back to the 17th century (all on my mother’s side); on my father’s side it all peters out at about 1800.

And yes, there can be a lot of overlap that reduces the total. That’s true of everyone, because if you kept doubling the number of your ancestors with every generation, in less time than you think you’d have more ancestors than there were people living in the world at the time. And the overlap didn’t necessarily occur only hundreds of years ago: in my maternal grandfather’s family, which lived (before they moved to Berlin in the 1870s) in small towns in rural northeast Germany (all of it now in Poland), there were so many first cousin and double first cousin marriages in successive generations over the century prior to 1870 (and who knows how many before that), that my grandfather had some first cousins who had only 6 different people as great-great-grandparents, instead of the 16 one would ordinarily have absent such marriages.

In general, of course, I’m more interested in what I can find out about people’s lives than simply in names and dates – such as, for one example, what I mentioned earlier in this thread about finding out about one of my ancestors having been fined for getting in a fight with his son-in-law 270 years ago and pulling his beard. (Apparently the problem was that his daughter and son-in-law lived with him after their marriage until they could afford their own home, and he lost his temper because his son-in-law spent too much time hanging around his house with friends.) Which is why along with the research, I read as much as I can about European Jewish history, both generally and in particular geographical areas and even individual communities.

144

Well, nottelling, as a historian, DH used to repeat to me that there simply weren’t things like parish/religious and civil records for ordinary folks, the farther back you go. In some cases, depending on where, there wasn’t even consistency in naming, if there were even surnames. He was speaking of people who claim someone traced ordinary relatives back to Charlemagne. But it applies. (A family Bible on DH’s side has my own name misspelled.)

DH’s maternal family has a lot of researchers, most who just want to flesh out the tree, don’t verify. There are two I know worked hard and smart, are authoritative, but they’re from more distant lines and mine (DH’s) weren’t their primary interest. Every 5 or so years, we sync up. But I don’t need even 500 names (have no idea what the total is, probably well less.) I love the stories, eg, how every generation back to the early 1800s, on DH’s paternal side, played violin (we learned this after our girls started.) I got a lot of that from local histories (many done to celebrate a town centennial or via WPA projects, during the Depression.)

All I did was well worth the membership fees for Ancestry.

Along the way, I learned a lot about US history, migrations, why Long Island farmers (way, way back) moved south to VA, then down to GA. Why all those Swiss immigrant cheesemakers left VT for W.NY and then, yup, Wisconsin. There are some amazing university collections about local history. UFL, eg, has so much about the south and a photographic collection that was online.

I laugh now, at the memory of DH’s maiden aunt handing me a box of her work. I was probably 30, not interested, and she said, someone has to keep this up.

I had been told my paternal grandfather’s Jewish relatives settled in Portsmouth, NH, had some role there. I was in the historical part of the city, recognized the name, in a certain context, and thought, “It can’t be.” Ten years ago, the records weren’t online.Two years ago, they were. Shmuel/Semel/Sam and his brothers. I looked at all of them and, over time, found clear descent to my grandfather. And then some collateral relatives. A Bingo! moment.

Donna is right about figuring it forwards and backwards. And sometimes, sideways.

145

"
For those of you who enjoy genealogy research, do the shear numbers of ancestors after a few generations back ever feel discouraging or overwhelming? How do you choose which forking path to follow? What motivates the search?"

I was into this about 10-15 years ago. You’re absolutely correct in that the number is overwhelming, I chose to focus on my “pure paternal” (father’s father’s father and so forth) from Lomza, Poland (came over 1920) and my “pure maternal” (mother’s mother’s mother) from a little town in NW Bavaria (came over 1893). But that was for practicality purposes. I’ve not done much other than document existing info on my Latvian side and my Irish side. I’d likely need to hire professional researchers for those, and just ran out of steam frankly. While I was still on a roll, I also did some work on my stepfather’s side (from Romania) and documented in one place my husband’s side (Hungarian, German).

What motivated me? Well, I didn’t really know my bio father (he died when I was young) and so I was sort of intellectually fascinated on that side. On my mother’s side I always felt some kind of kinship towards my ggmother who came over in 1893 as a young girl. When I myself was little, I heard the story of how she loved learning and books and had to drop out of school to support her family (as so many did in those days) and was devastated - that always resonated with me even though I didn’t know her.

For the Jewish side I used JewishGen / JRI-Poland and bumped into a second cousin online who filled in missing pieces. Our housekeeper is Polish and she graciously translated documents for me. For the German side I used a LDS facility ( that side came through Phila, not EI, so I needed to go through microfiche) and then I hired a researcher over there. My files are in an older format, though. I am retiring next year and one of my projects is to digitize and upload it all to ancestry.com, the Jewish sites, and so forth so others can use it.

But really, re the forking paths - you kind of take any data you can find :-). Especially on the Jewish side where it’s so spotty.

146

My sister had a baby girl during the time I was into all this.

I commissioned a plate for her from a talented friend who does this kind of thing that goes as such: my niece’s name and birthdate is in the center along with decoration. Then on the rim at 12 o’clock is my sister’s name and birthdate, at 1 o"clock our mother’s name and birthdate, at 2 o’clock her mother’s name and birthdate, and so forth around the rim. I believe the last woman on there was born in the late 1600s. So a circle of women. It was kind of poignant when you’re pregnant and you look at this place and think - omg, every one of these women had the same dreams and hopes and fears but their actual lives were so different, and of course these women who lived hardscrabble lives eking out enough food to eat couldn’t even possibly imagine how their daughters all live today.

But really I think the big thing is to realize there were still family secrets, and jerks, and hidden marriages and children and so forth, as I said earlier, you can’t do genealogy and not expect that somewhere along the way you find that someone lied about or hid something, or that there were feuds over stupid things or that grandma is really 10 years older than everyone thought.

147

On a contradictory note, hair color heredity confuses me. Both of my mom’s parents had brown hair, and my mom has black hair. Both my parents have black hair and my sister has brown hair. I’ve always been curious how that works.

148

Amen to that! My g-grandfather had a “secret” first marriage (that included secret first children); my grandmother’s sister had a baby out-of-wedlock who was “given” to a cousin to raise. No one had spoken of the secret marriage or the secret baby for years until I stumbled across them many years ago. I’ve also found that there is a lot of mental illness in my other grandmother’s family, including a splashy murder-suicide.

My husband’s gg-grandmother was murdered by her stepson. No one in my husband’s family had any idea until I showed them the old newspaper stories.

149

I want to throw a few ideas out there about people saying their grandparent or GGP came over with a different spouse. Maybe one was approved for immigration, so they married to have both be able to immigrate. Or maybe the passage costs were cheaper for a married couple. Maybe they had documents that they married, but really didn’t.

Maybe someone on this thread has some insight into these ‘what ifs’ based on stuff they know happened.

150

My maternal grandfather was abandoned at the NY Foundling Hospital in the very early 1900s along with a younger sister (I think he was 4). She was adopted and he wasn’t. The records were never available to him when he was alive to find out anything about his past or where his sister was adopted. This mystery completely poisoned his life and he never stopped searching. He must have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over his life and I find that incredibly sad.

151

Or people pretended to be different relationships for whatever reason. My gfather was 15 and his sister 17 when they came over (their parents were deceased by then) but supposedly she posed as his mother. Maybe that changed the cost of the passage or made it less likely for them to be questioned, I have no idea.

152

<<<
“Saying whether someone is “Russian” or “Polish” or “Ukrainian” or whatever is really a matter of where you stop the clock. I mean, if you stop the clock at an earlier point, I’m really Sicilian!”
<<<

This is very true. Neither my MIL nor her parents looked the least bit Irish. Likely their ancestors were from elsewhere.

And when you consider the invasions that have gone on throughout history, it’s very likely that many who thought they were this or that are really a mix that includes something else.

153

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My gfather was 15 and his sister 17 when they came over (their parents were deceased by then) but supposedly she posed as his mother. Maybe that changed the cost of the passage or made it less likely for them to be questioned, I have no idea.


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That makes sense. If she posed as his mother, then likely she was claiming to be at least 13 years older. Don’t know if the concept of being a minor or being the age of majority mattered much back then, but if it did for immigration, then it would make sense for minor-aged siblings to claim that one was much older and the “parent” to gain passage.

154

I think many immigrants came over here due to their steadfast determination not to change their name, religion, political side, language, or other basic values. We were Poles and not Russians no matter what they did to us.

Both branches of my family might have been wiped out had they not stepped onto the ship and left Europe. It’s one thing to read about it, and another quite different thing to be caught up in the middle of it.

155

“I think many immigrants came over here due to their steadfast determination not to change their name, religion, political side, language, or other basic values. We were Poles and not Russians no matter what they did to us.”

Well, the Jews in the Pale of Settlement we are talking about didn’t really HAVE last names til around 1800 (you can credit Napoleon for that one) so I’m not convinced they were THAT attached to those last names. And given that the bulk of them who came over here quickly abandoned Orthodox ways (keeping kosher, keeping the laws of family purity and so forth), they may have been escaping persecution but that didn’t mean they desired to live as religious Jews in the US in the way they had to in the shtetls where everyone was everyone else’s business.

As for language, it’s also my observation that those in those older generations were very quick to learn English and proud to have little / no accent, and they didn’t really speak their languages at home or teach them to their children aside from a few words here and there.

156

In the waning years of my mom’s life, I went to a memorial service for her brother, my uncle. We all started telling family stories and I knew more than anyone else. Someone suggested I write them down, so I did. But the results looked kind of paltry. I did know the name of my mom’s grandmother and where she was born, so I called the town library and asked if the librarian there could give me any hints as to how to find out more info. She said “Let me check the bride’s book.” It seems New England towns kept an index of marriages by bride’s surname so that female heirs could be traced. Since I knew my GGM’s name, she looked it up and told me the names of her parents and the names of the groom’s parents. From that start, I was off and running.

I’ve never joined Ancestry. You can use it for free at many libraries and at Mormon Family History Centers. A conservative estimate is that two-thirds of what it has is available for free or at least less money from other sources. And it rarely puts things in context. For example, my GGM’s name was spelled a certain way. I now know that her birth and marriage records are the only two times the family name was spelled that way. I plowed through the microfiche from the small town where she was born. Since I knew her parents’ names and the maiden name of her mother, I soon found the birth of her brother, which spelled the name differently.

I also resent the way Ancestry sells its members family info. For example, Ancestry has a sketch of my GGGrandfather. It comes from his obit and was posted in the PRIVATE family tree of a relative. Basically, if you put your stuff up on Ancestry, you’re giving it the right to SELL the info you’ve gathered. No thanks!

So, if any of you want to donate your info, put it up on rootsweb, which, while controlled by Ancestry is currently free, or give it to familysearch.org, which is also controlled by the Mormon church, but is free. Or do what I did and join one of the subscription sites that lets people search for free but makes them contact you to get the info. My tree has a lot of family photos and I don’t want to see them on the wall at a theme restaurant or on sale at ebay or–even more likely–posted on line as the photo of someone else with the same name.

157

Several possibilities. One is that by posing as mother and son they were able to stay together on the ship. As different sex siblings, many shipping companies would have separated them, putting her in with a group of women and him with a group of men. Additionally, many shipping companies charged less for children.Usually 12+ had to pay full passage. Making him her “son” might have made it easier for them to claim he was 11 or younger.

158

That makes sense, Jonri. I have no idea if he “looked young” or was able to pass. IIRC, though, their birthdates were recorded correctly on the passenger manifests. His name wasn’t, so this is a word to the wise from someone who learned the hard way: In Polish, the last name ended in -i for males and -a for females. They listed him as a male but spelled it the female way, which meant that I was stymied for a while with the Ellis Island database til I figured it out. (and, no, that wasn’t a “name change at Ellis Island” - it was a mistake at the port of departure in England!).

I don’t have a problem with ancestry.com charging, though. They’re hosting all these documents - I don’t expect them to do it for free. But you have to be careful - you need people with good attention to detail. A cousin of mine (whom I didn’t meet til I was in my 30s) actually took a job at ancestry.com and contacted me since she knew I had a lot of records. But then she put up our mutual grandmother on the site using her married name. It “pulled in” a woman for whom that was her maiden name, who was clearly of a different age, lived in a state where we had no family ties, etc. I have to admit, I was a little exasperated because it caused a mess in the records that I had to try and nicely untangle because she just wasn’t thinking when she did this.

159

BB, I’ve read similar article on wsj about Genghis Khan, something like 1/16 of the world population has Genghis Khan’s gene. So whenever I see a blonde hair blue eyes but with small eyes, I know there is a possibility he is direct descendant from Genghis Khan. I mean you don’t have to have dark brown eyes.

160

My paternal grandfather’s people first came in the 1620s from England. They first settled in Ipswich, MA. He also has some Welsh forebears who came over in the 19th century.

My paternal grandmother has ties to English royalty (though some 10-15 generations removed now…). At least one of her other ancestors was on the Mayflower. I believe the name was Cooke.

My maternal grandparents’ people came over in the early-to-late 19th century from Germany and England.

And I think I am something like 3% Native American, most likely Ottawa or Mohawk. They obviously had been in the New World for a great long time.