Four groups of people that settled this country.

Contains some very colorful descriptions of the people that founded this country.
Which group did you descend from? Tell us about your family.

"18. “Appalachia’s idea of a moderate drinker was the mountain man who limited himself to a single quart [of whiskey] at a sitting, explaining that more ‘might fly to my head’. Other beverages were regarded with contempt.”"

There is a lot about my ancestors I do not want to know, but I have done some research.
The Wrather name was found on a rock in a Grotto in Yorkshire.with a date from the 16th century. Google always converts Wrather to weather, making searches difficult. There is supposedly a family history available in Murray, Kentucky. Not sure I want to know.
From what I have found they were probably traders, fornicators, drunks, and grifters. The northernmost point of Scotland is Cape Wrath, the Norse word for turning point. Family tradition is to teach the children how to get the best price. My great grandmother was a Glover, a very Irish name. My grandmother was a Hall, also Irish.
My maternal grandmother was a Montgomery, a Scottish Clan. She was raised a Presbyterian. I suspect she was from a Borderer family. I think she was from East Tennessee, i.e. Appalachia. At one time the Montgomerys were big shots with a castle and jousting tournaments. They had big parties and drank it all up. My brother-in-law sent pictures of the castle ruins which were used for bombing practice around WWII.
My mother was a Tipton. They have a family book with stories of a knighthood, etc. Historians credit others for the achievements claimed by the Tiptons.. When my mother and sister were in London they told some of the locals that they were going to a part of the city where they had found the names. The locals warned them that they were going to the roughest part of the city and advised them to stay away.. There are also Tiptons in Birmingham, England, which is a shi*hole.

My ancestors were bigger crunks and scalawags than yours were. So there.

My ancestors do not descend from Albion's seed ...

My grandfather on my mom's side fought in WWI and ended up in Paris... Decided he didn't want to go back to Czechoslovakia. Bought a ticket on a boat to South Africa. Missed that boat and found another heading for the US.

Met a young lady in Chicago from the same area of Czechoslovakia and settled down... Was a cemetary gardener all of his working days. Always kept a wonderful, if small garden in his house in an inner suburb of Chicago with a strong Czech population. I remember as a young boy hearing mostly Czech spoken at the local little shops.

My dad's history is murkier - Eastern European / Russian? Came over in the early 1900's

Interesting topic Chas. Thanks for starting this thread.

If I take my grandparents as guide posts, then I have 4 family names to consider:
Graham, Beeson, Holt, and Davis

Quaker: Beeson is the only one I can trace back very far. Edward Beeson I can trace back to England - he arrived in the US on the Welcome in 1682. The Welcome was one of the 23 ships that William Penn came to Pennsylvania with. Researchers say that Edward Beeson was not a Quaker, but he certainly came over with Penn and then lived in Pennsylvania for several generations.

Borderer (or as I've always called them Boarder Reivers): Graham. I can't document this line past 1850 in Louisiana, but family oral history and the surname Graham tie us to this group.

Holt and Davis are names I never had very much luck tracing, so I don't have any clue where they fit into the 4 groups.

Been many years since my family history research was done, so take all of the above with a grain of salt.

A very quick and absolutely-no-idea-if-related-to-my-lineage check of Davis and Holt says Davis was Puritan, and Holt another Quaker.

My parents on both sides were Polish. But my family name doesn’t sound very Polish, but rather Czech.

It happens that in my concert life I do get to the Czech Republic every year or so. When I check in at Czech Airlines, they immediately start talking to me in Czech.

quote:

Originally posted by Dan:
A very quick and absolutely-no-idea-if-related-to-my-lineage check of Davis and Holt says Davis was Puritan, and Holt another Quaker.

Have relatives that are Holts. They were not close and I think it it only by marriage.

I don’t think I’m related to any of them. My mother’s side all came to the US at the turn of the 20th century — think Fiddler on the Roof. My father’s father’s side were scattered around Little Rock north to Chicago. Based on the name, they may have been Cajuns. His mother said she was from Germany around the Hartz Mountains, but she spoke Polish.

My first post was written as part of an argument over whose family is the worst I was having with a guy who has been a friend since the third grade. It is embellished in that direction.
His great great grandfather killed his brother in law because the man was abusing his wife, the killer's sister. Chivalry in Appalachia.
The killer then moved to similar territory in Arkansas, which is where my friend's parents were from.
I conceded because my killer relative killed a woman because he was crazy, my friend's killer relative was chivalrous.
His relatives were Borderers. Mine were Borderers on one side. The other landed long ago in Virginia on the Good Hope.

A portion of my peeps go waaay back to 1600-1630ish, but in Canada as part of the Huguenot migration, where they settled as fur trappers primarily. Fron there they moved south and into the USA (or at least what is now the USA). There are a fair amount of very distant relatives in upstate NY, and more immediate in the Kansas City KS and MO areas.

Most of the rest just migrated over for (to me) unspecified reasons, primarily from France, the Netherlands and Germany from around the early 1800s on. There is a group that was part of the LSD schism in Nauvoo, IL that sent the majority of today's LDS on with Smith to Utah. My ancestors didn't follow Smith and instead remained in Illinois where some presumably still live. I didn't find out about this group until I was in my mid-20s, when my dad casually mentioned it.

No descendants from Albion's seed for me, and definitely not for Mr. Nina.

My people are definitely not in these groups.

I finally had 23 and me done. I wish I could tell you about my interesting relatives but it appears I don’t have any.

90% Western European mutt with a bit of Polish on my mothers side. There are names but they’re like Miller, Roper, Smith - no fun to research. The only relative of interest is one Sylvester Roper who invented the motorcycle twist grip throttle and died racing a steam powered motorcycle on a board track at some point.

Maybe the most interesting stat is that I’m 70% more likely to have back hair than the population at large. I don’t have any but my brother looks like an ape.