What is your family heritage?

[LakesideM]

My parents were both born here in Brooklyn, but all of my grandparents come from either Russia or Poland, where Jewish people were not too comfortable living in those countries back then.

Same heritage, although my grandmother was born in Baltimore. And
with Russian borders ever changing, many were from what is now Ukraine.
Hatred toward Jews meant virtually everyone in my family left by 1920,
long before the Holocaust. Several family members are/were Gay/Lesbian.

 

[ChristopherRobin]

My grandfather emigrated from the London area, and my grandmother, his wife, was born in Cornwall.

 

[InspireMePl3as3]

Family history is not that easy to come by if you are an indigenous to the country born, unless you have historical research connections. (This maybe ignorant of me, and not to offend others). For my genealogy has been always passed down through word of mouth, speeches, song and performance, this in itself can have some hurdles into days society for us as we migrate or become urbanized and come away from the core family circle in which this practice is still done today. As New Zealand is such a young country compared to the world records have only started really in the last 200 years. And those within the family who have been bestowed to be the keepers of knowledge are now far and few. Yes I can proclaim I am Maori and that both my parents are Maori, however somewhere in the past migration happened and therefore, I can just about bet that I am not full blood as I do know that I have a Spanish and Scottish connection but have never had this confirmed. For most Maori we believer we can through to Aotearoa on the great Waka Migration from Hawaiki,

 

[juanjo]

Always an amusing thing to figure out. My mother's people were originally Ladino Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492 and settled in what was then the ottoman Empire and then went on to be parts of various countries until some relatives left in the 1800's and came to the US via Trieste. Strangely enough family lore indicates a distant cousin was here as early as just before the Revolution and settled in Louisiana, New Orleans. We have photos form the Civil War Era as well as one of one great grandfather taken in what eventually became Arizona around 1905 or 6. He was in the calvary and he spoke more Spanish than anyone else in the troop so he was known as "Mexican" Jacob. I am named for him.

My dad's folks were the old Deutschevolk who settled along the Danube in the Middle Ages and worked the trade between the Black Sea and Germany. They left when they were unhappy with the end of WWI and split up of the old Austrian Hungarian Empire. They came to the US and settled in Chicago where they lived happily until the start of WWII when they were almost interned for being enemy aliens. My oldest uncle wen to serve in the Marines in WWII and also in the Korean War. My dad joined the Navy at age 17 in the last days of WWII was was just finishing boot camp when the war ended. He went on to serve a long career as a boiler man becoming a CPO before he retired and went to work as a pipe fitter. We always joked that my diapers were navy blue and my first words as a baby were "fuck Army". It was weird growing up in a family of blue collar Jews especially after I moved to California where no one believes there is such as thing.

My great sadness is that while I still speak some Spanish, I have pretty much forgotten all my Ladino and Yiddish of my childhood. My parents did not encourage it and my grandparents felt it was better if we were good "Americans", whatever that is.

 

[tampa24]

That was really interesting Juanjo. Thanks for sharing all that.