The most recent immigration would be from my mother's side. My maternal great-grandparents came from the tiny Caribbean nation of Nevis/St. Kitts in the early 1900's. They were the descendants of slaves who worked the sugar plantations there. They made the trip north and settled in New York, which had better opportunities for education and employment.
Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
111–120 of 137 posts
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#112My mom is a Canadian immigrant to the U.S. (fled as a young teenager). I found out a few years ago that I am technically a Canadian citizen as well (they passed a law granting citizenship to people born of Canadian parents, regardless of the location of their birth). This will hopefully make my long-term eventual moving to Vancouver easier.
Usually when people flee a country, it's associated with a calamitous situation affecting at least a large part of the country. Its probably more appropriate to say 'left'.
Sorry, I didn't mean to infer that she left because of some over-arching national issue. At 14, she took her six sisters and ran away from home to escape an abusive father. They wound up in the U.S.
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#113My mom is a Canadian immigrant to the U.S. (fled as a young teenager). I found out a few years ago that I am technically a Canadian citizen as well (they passed a law granting citizenship to people born of Canadian parents, regardless of the location of their birth). This will hopefully make my long-term eventual moving to Vancouver easier.
My wife's mother emigrated from Canada as a child and even though her mother had to renounce citizenship at one point, my wife fell under the law to which you refer. We went ahead and went through the process to get her citizenship recognized and were successful in doing it. It's a pretty easy process, though a little time consuming. We thought we best do it until they change their minds! If you may want to move to C…
Yeah, after finding out about it, I did submit the paperwork. I'm presently waiting for everything to get approved (they said the lead time was about a year).
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always been amused by family trees in the old world. I was born in brazil but my great grandfather came as a war refugee fron Sweden (he had two brothers: one stayed in Sweden and the other fled to the Us). At that time there were refugees from all over europe arriving in latin america so it is very common where I live for someone to bear family names from 2 different countries (my wife has german and portuguese…
Our family name was "corrected" by some over-zealous Church of Scotland minister in the 19th Century - it was originally "Sclater" and was changed to the much more common "Slater". Just to confuse things, some of my ancestors really were originally Slaters as well!
That is something we have in common then. the original spelling of my family's name is "Lannerdahl" but it was "corrected" to "Landerdahl" (these "corrections" were also very common to immigrants' names.)
Btw, what do you mean by over-zealous (sorry, I'm not familiar with Scotish history).
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#115Interesting question. However I find it worrying that this clearly written spec seems to be misinterpreted quite a bit in the comments. I worry that it means you can't trust the results at all. Or maybe people just like talking about their most distantly traceable ancestors. I worry that people who don't know if one of their ancestors was an immigrant have answered incorrectly. I think the way to reduce confusion wou…
5 generations isn't all that far back. Depending on your age, it puts you mid to late 19th century, and there's a fair number of Americans that can say with reasonable certainty that they have no immigrant ancestors since that time.
Much less residents of older countries, which can probably go back a whole lot further than that.
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#116My great-grandparents were born in Italy, my father is of Scotch-Irish decent, my mother's father is British - and I'm 100% American :)
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#11714 generations. Mayflower.
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#118The problem with this poll is that it has a strong bias built into it. Those with recent ancestors who immigrated (such as parents or grandparents) will be able to answer this question fairly easily. Those who do not will find this question difficult to answer unless they have good records of their family tree. I'm not aware of any immigrants in my family tree, but I'm only aware of my ancestry two generations back,…
Certainly if I wanted to be more scientific about this, there is a lot I would do differently... That said, if you go through history, there has seldom been a time when one location or one state remained the dominant force in the world for more than 3 or 4 generations (especially looking at more recent world history). So, another way of posing the hypothesis might be: Is there a "migrant" sub-population within the hu…
Given that it is fairly easy to identify those "dominant forces" you should check whether there were any significant amounts of immigration to those places before they achieved top-dog status.
By my estimate I can see only one country that has had mass immigration and then which achieved dominant world power status fairly soon afterwards: the United States. Are these connected, probably, are they connected because the immigrants were made up of a tribe of wandering genetic entrepreneurs moving onto their next conquest, I suspect not.
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our family name was "corrected" by some over-zealous Church of Scotland minister in the 19th Century - it was originally "Sclater" and was changed to the much more common "Slater". Just to confuse things, some of my ancestors really were originally Slaters as well!
That is something we have in common then. the original spelling of my family's name is "Lannerdahl" but it was "corrected" to "Landerdahl" (these "corrections" were also very common to immigrants' names.) Btw, what do you mean by over-zealous (sorry, I'm not familiar with Scotish history).
"over-zealous"
The minister would have been some university educated outsider who presumably thought he knew better than the locals how to spell their names. After all if you see ten families called "Slater" and one called "Sclater" you might think that the last lost simply made a spelling mistake - and what the church said was law (effectively).
Re: Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
#120Well, that's certainly the hardest poll question I've ever seen on HN. Let me get back to you.
Ancestry.com is offering free access to their immigration and travel records this weekend only (this ends tonight).
Search here: http://www.ancestry.com/ancestry.com/dynamic/immigration
(I have no connection, financial or otherwise, to Ancestry.com)