09 November 2008

Fractions in my past

We are indeed a mixed up mess.
By ancestry, my children are:
  • one-fourth Ostfriesen--all of my Mother's ancestors are from this ethnic area in northern Germany. Most are from the area around Wiesens and Holtrop. Their lines settled in Hancock and Adams Counties in Illinois for the most part.

  • one-sixteenth Irish--their 2nd great-grandfather Neill was born in Illinois of Irish parents. The father is known to be from County Derry and the mother's Irish origins are unknown.

  • one-sixteen Swedish--their great-great-grandfather Johnson's parents were born in Ostergotland and immigrated to Knox County, Illinois, in the 1880s.

  • one-sixteenth English--their great-great-grandfather was William Frame, born in 1888 in Chicago to natives of County Cumberland who immigrated to Chicago in the 1860s.

  • one-sixteenth Belgian--their great-great-grandfather Mortier who lived in Rock Island, Illinois, had parents who were immigrants from East Flanders in 1880.

  • one-sixteenth French-Canadian. A great-great-grandmother was a native of upstate New York of French-Canadian heritage. How she ended up in Chicago is a story in and of itself.

  • three-sixteenths German. My children are descendants of several German families who immigrated in the 1850s including the Trautvetters from Thuringen, the Biegerts and Sieferts from an unknown location, and the Schulmeyers from Bavaria.

  • one-thirty second Swiss--their 3rd great-grandmother was born in Iowa in the 1860s, the daughter of immigrants from Grabunden.

  • the rest---a general hodge podge of Colonial ancestors from New England to South Carolina. There are ancestors who were 1650 era immigrants to Virginia and Maryland, mid 18th century immigrants to Maryland and a scattering of pre-Revolutionary families along the East Coast. At the time of the Revolution, there were ancestors in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and New Jersey. By the time of the Civil War, all their families were living in Iowa, Missouri, or Illinois--except for those families who were still in Europe.