We all have 8 great grandparents and 16 great-greats…do you know where your ancestors are from?
Today i was in Manhattan at the St Andrew’s Society holiday luncheon. Delightful! (And.although I live in Pa, i joined the New York Society because the Philadelphia club does not admit women. S’okay: New York is much fancier! They have pipers whose music stirs the very core of one’s being, or at least, this one..) i was sitting next to a gent with an English accent, Scottish on mom’s side, one of the officers of the Society, now an American ( although a Prog, im sorry to say; i had to bite my tongue a bit..) But what was funny to me was , after we had exchanged our Scottish bona fides, in the course of a discussion about the siege of Vienna(1685) he suddenly self identified as Polish! Go,Jan Sobieski!
i have alway found it so funny when people refer to being from ” an old family”. i mean, we ALL are, right? We’ve all got exactly the same number of ancestors.
In Amwrica, we all just kinda pick up one thread and cling on to it. After all, we cant keep track of 16 lines and ethnicities, which is what we get if we go back tp our great-greats. i know ive got a buncha Dutch in me, f’rinstance, but i dont go around fantasizing about Hans Brinker or …what WAS the name of the little boy who kept his finger in the dike?
Romantic Scotland is as much as i can handle. And BTW, if you’re into it, Gabaldon’s 9th book in the Outlander series has just come out….❤️❤️
Welp—the Duolingo Owl just summoned me tp practice Russian, so—I better go. But let me know who YOU think you are, and what ancestor you chose from your dizzying array of progenitors.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
“And.although I live in Pa, i joined the New York Society because the Philadelphia club does not admit women.”
Lol 🙂 Very Scottish of them to not admit women 🙂 Robin used to enjoy informing American women that (at the time, anyway) women in Scotland were only allowed to play golf at designated and very brief times. Because, it was said, women slowed the game down too much. When he told one of my cousins this, she was horrified. Her jaw dropped and she said nothing. It was so funny 🙂
All four of grandparents came from Ireland, and most of my cousins are also totally Irish, but it’s obvious from looking at all of us that we are not totally Irish. The Viking influence is definitely there, and also the Black Irish-somewhere in our ancestry, there were definitely some Spaniards, or some Moors, or both, probably. My Dad always said that my Mother’s maiden name sounded French to him, and apparently there was an influx of French into Ireland at some point? I keep meaning to do a DNA test to find out more about this, but I never quite get around to it. I guess you can count me as interested, but not that interested. 🙂
My mother claims that Daniel O’Connell, the great liberator of Ireland, was our uncle. Her sister disagreed with her about this. He did come from the same town in Kerry as my maternal grandparents, and apparently there is some kind of plaque on the old family farm which says that he was born there. Also, an old Irish woman of my grandparents generation told my mother that he was our uncle, so it is possibly true. I have also meant to learn more about Daniel O’Connell, but I never quite get around it. Maybe someday 🙂
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This was an interesting post because few of us realize that the early colonists were hardly of the aristocracy! My ancestors came over (some on the Mayflower) of English and Scots/Irish descent as indentured servants.
One great-grandfather x 8 became a very powerful landowner and one of the richest men in the colonies and his grandsons fought in the American Revolution so that qualified me to join the DAR. I had to refuse because those women didn’t understand the true splendor of my ancestors’ achievements who came from less than nothing and accumulated both power and wealth simply because they were free to do so once escaping monarchial rule. They were not members of high society and I have no use for an organization that didn’t acknowledge that and failed to appreciate their enormous personal accomplishments.
One unbelievable story:
My mother begged me to attend one of her DAR “house tours” of 250 yr old homes established in SW Florida. One owner (and I kid you not!) had an ancient list of her ancestors’ slaves- births, deaths, progeny, etc. framed and put on the wall of her front foyer. My mom and I burst into a paroxysm of giggles (common reaction when you’re shocked) and exited the tour immediately.
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My mother’s sister married a wonderful man whose ancestors all ( I think) came over on the Mayflower. Uncle Hap. He lived to be 94, and enjoyed two shots of Scotch every night until the day he died. He was so awesome 🙂 Once, during a stay at a rehab center, someone stole his bottle of Scotch. He called my aunt in a panic: “Marie, they have taken my Scotch!” he said. I told my parents about this, and my Dad and at least two other people showed up with bottles of Scotch for him, so he made out ok. 🙂 I miss him.
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“My mother’s sister married a wonderful man whose ancestors all ( I think) came over on the Mayflower.”
Many of us came over on the Mayflower but what counts is what you achieved once you arrived in a positively brutal climate with no economy and had to face a hostile indigenous group of people.
This is a unique country and the fact that so many fail to acknowledge (and in my case, bow down to our early colonists) is truly unusual. Most cultures appreciate their history, the struggles of their ancestors and we do not.
Color me “confused.”
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Y’know….half—just over half—the passengers on the Mayflower weren’t Puritans. Can you still brag about your heritage if you’re descended from one of them?
Didja know that when the Puritans took power in England, 1649-1660, more people went BACK to England from here, than came here? I wonder if those Brits brag about that?
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You’re preaching to the choir! The colonists didn’t really venture over here for religious freedom; they just wanted to escape the British caste system and the very toughest of them prospered and remained to build the greatest country the world has ever known.
For these survivors, we owe our freedoms, but Ben Franklin foresaw the possibilities of failure in his infamous quote: “A republic if you can keep it.”
This remains to be seen. ):
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Nice post
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