Hey, we’re Cooke, too.
How things were done on Ellis Island: My father’s aunt landed on Ellis Island, the 5 of them, on Ellis Island forward the end of the year. The “Jewish” quota was used up. Another family group from Italy had their immigration approved…last name Abuzza…The Abuzza family’s grandfather died on Ellis Island and they were going back to Italy. They gave the Goldstein family their papers before they went back.
My family kept the name…which is interesting…but not the end of the story. Oldest daughter got married and took her husband’s name…Tucker. Most of the people here won’t know who this woman was: Sophie Tucker. But if not the kindness of the Abuzza family…it would have been different.
Pizzagirl,
It sounds to me like your family’s experience is different than mine and many others.
I would have to disagree with your observation that first generation immigrants soon had little or no foreign accents and only spoke English in their households. I grew up hearing many foreign languages and accents in my neighborhood.
There are still elderly European immigrants TODAY in my small city who will only speak their native tongue. I called a few of them and had to eventually hang up as they couldn’t understand a word I said.
Researching my own family led me to the conclusion that a 46-year old immigrant from a tiny farming village in Bohemia never learned English based on his handwriting and the several versions of his given name on documents. I’ve also read of households where the native tongue was usually spoken at the dinner table and offspring spoke it fluently until adulthood.
Vlad, re: hair color. You can ask a geneticist! 
We’re all descended from the same African woman. So your family, my family, what’s the difference?
^ the journey.
My maternal grandmother, a Calholic, lived in Slat Lake City in the 60s and 70s. She paid a visit to the LDS geneaology center at one point. I have the mimeograph pages of their instructions of how to locate records, etc., as well as the results of her research. At least back then, some of the info the LDS had was on index cards.
One of my cousins has been doing this kind of research since the early 80s, pre-internet, etc. She has an entire room filled with 3-ring notebooks of all the relatives, stories, etc. that she has found.
An interesting tidbit I’ve found: DH’s paternal grandfather would appear to have had another son outside the marriage. It was in his obit in the NYT in 1977. Have no idea if my FIL or DH know about this. Have not decided if I should disclose that can of worms!
At our seder the past two years, I have been asking FIL and his twin brother (now 81) about various family members, etc. Their recollections have confirmed a lot of other pieces I’d heard/researched and helped tie up some loose ends. I need to keep doing that, and to get him to ID some of the people in pictures that BIL has found amongst all the junk.
For those of you with ancestors in the American Revolution, fold3.com collections are free today.
My dad’s parents were ethnic Germans whose families had lived near Sighisoara, Transylvania for 700 years. The German spoken there is almost indecipherable to outsiders. They came through Ellis Island in 1906 and 1910, and my grandfather went to work for the railroad. My mother’s ancestors were Scotch-Irish who came to Virginia in the 1700s. Their descendants made their way to Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia and Texas in the 1800s.
DW is 3/4 Polish and 1/4 Bohemian. Two grandparents came from Krakow through Ellis Island in the 30s. One set is very hard to trace because the Anglicization of their name was so severe, that we rely on family anecdotes for their history. All ended up on South Side Chicago.
DD emigrated from Asia as an infant in 1997, arriving in the US on that awful day in August when the world learned that Princess Diana had died in the horrible auto accident in France.
@nottelling That isn’t as much of a problem in my case, because fairly quickly with my mother’s family I end up on a small island where everyone has one of three last names, and one of maybe a half dozen given names. At that point, all one can do is assume all 300 of them are relatives somehow. Maybe someday I’ll travel there and get it sorted.
With my dad’s family, I hit regular roadblocks, and I keep plugging away at all of them until someone suddenly shows up out of the blue. Ancestry.com can be a blessing and a curse in that sense, because while I have gotten some wonderful leads, it’s important to be very particular since a lot of subscribers have extremely low standards of scholarship.
Funny story about the low standards, though-- part of what kept me from realising earlier than I did that my great grandfather was a bigamist was that I assumed the people showing Other Family in their public trees were just lousy scholars. A few were (one used Wife 1 and Wife 2’s names interchangeably for the same woman, though the children didn’t match), but most were spot-on, just following one branch to the exclusion of the other.
@mom2collegekids Yes. All those Hebridean Scottish ancestors in my tree appear to have Vikings antecedents.
@Greenwitch: Solta is the island where my Dad was born. Most of his father’s side are from there. His mother’s side from Korcula. I have first cousins in Split. Our name is one of the few that doesn’t end in ic.
I need to sign up to ancestry.com when I retire. Who knows I might found out something like I’m 1/16 French, 1/32 Portuguese, maybe my grandmother was hiding something. I like to find out about my husband’s side as well. Were they Jewish, if not why did they leave Germany?
@Dr. Google,
Spend some time on the free sites first. www.familysearch.org is a good place to start. I also recommend www.rootsweb.com. Stay on the “free” side–don’t wander over to Ancestry. Put in the names of people in your family tree and see if anyone else has done some work. You can’t count on the trees there to be accurate, but it will give you a running start. Also use google books.
I use Ancestry for the original documents one can find in their various databases, and almost never rely solely on other people’s family trees posted there, unless the information is linked to actual documentation or I can find documentation for it. I’ve seen way too much information posted about relatives of mine that I know to be inaccurate, to trust other people’s research without verification.
Ancestry is running a holiday special~ Get FREE ACCESS to records from the original 13 colonies - ends Sunday
That just makes it more confusing. If black hair is supposed to be HHHHHHHH, which is what they both have, how could my sister become HHHHHHhh or HHHHHHHh.
It also makes it seem like within one population hair color should converge. But among English ethnics, which should have converged to one hair color over thousands of years (either black or blonde) , there are still several hair colors.
Decades ago I did a preop evaluation of an elderly man in Indiana. He told me he was from “the old country” and had an English name like Smith or Jones but no British accent. I was curious and asked him where- he said “Virginia”. My concept of the old country was Europe, not eastern US- I recalled my American History and migration patterns… Differences in when/where your ancestors were from- mine more recently from overseas.
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That just makes it more confusing. If black hair is supposed to be HHHHHHHH, which is what they both have, how could my sister become HHHHHHhh or HHHHHHHh.
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hmmm
I have a cousin with blue eyes, and her H has blue eyes, and they have 3 kids…one kid has brown eyes. I don’t think that’s supposed to happen. The child clearly looks like the father, so no one’s questioning hanky panky…
edited to add…just checked online…while it isn’t common, it can happen.
http://genetics.thetech.org/how-blue-eyed-parents-can-have-brown-eyed-children
I know a brown haired girl with two naturally black-haired parents (parents are Asian, their hair is very black). I just figured her brown hair color is some kind of throw-back.
I’ve often felt there wasn’t much point in following all the branches. It can be more than enough work to do a complete job on the paternal lineages of your father and mother. Once you’ve got that elucidated, you can work on the maternal lines.
Having said that, it can be interesting to follow the branches in order to see the similarities between yourself and all those other descendants. For example, nearly all the males descended from my great grandfather, who was born around 1850, became teachers and more specifically, science professors despite there having been little contact between them.