Thursday, June 13, 2019

We're All Immigrants


I was looking at our family history and wondering "how much" of us were from different countries.  I realize this is very nearly impossible to completely figure out.  To simplify, I looked at our great-grandparents and their family's country of origin.  Since we have a blended family, our numbers are all a bit different.

I'm half German, 3/8 British, and 1/8 Scottish.

Jay is half British, 1/4 Danish, 1/8 Canadian, and 1/8 German

So then our older boys are 3/8 German, 1/4 Scottish, 1/4 British, and 1/8 Danish.

Trent's makeup is more homogenous: 5/8 British, 1/4 Swedish, and 1/8 Swiss.

The makes our small fry a little bit more scattered: 3/8 British, 1/4 German, and 1/8 of each Scottish, Swedish, and Swiss.

We're pretty northern European around here, but all of them had to come to America at some point.  None of them had very much when they came over.  My grandmother had to slip some money to her husband-to-be so he could even get off the boat in New York.  I'm grateful to those pioneers, those immigrants, who settled here and paved the way for us.