European Origins
Home > Genealogy > Ancestral Origins > EuropeIt is not realistic to make statements about your "origin" by saying something like "I’m Scots-Irish" or "I’m Native American", or "African-American", because truth be told, no American is pure anything, other than purely human of course.
I can say I’m 100% American, and 99% North Carolinian (I was born in South Carolina and lived briefly in other states). As far as ethnicity or "race", I’m "white" or "Anglo-Saxon" or "Caucasian", whichever you prefer. As far as my ancestral origins are concerned, I haven’t proven all my lines back to the immigrants, but all of my known ancestors were in America by the 1600's and the 1700's, mostly from Western Europe it would seem.
I claim the following European ancestry:
- Scottish (Scotland)
- Scots-Irish (Ulster Scots from Northern Ireland)
- Irish (from the Republic of Ireland)
- English (England)
- Welch (Wales)
- German (from the various Germanic states)
- Swiss (Switzerland)
- Portuguese (Portugal)
- French (France) (not certain)
- Dutch (Holland / Netherlands) (not certain)
- Spanish (Spain) (not certain about Spanish ancestry)
In addition to European ancestry I also claim these as ancestors:
- African (Unknown locations on the continent of Africa)
- Native American (Cherokee probably)
Truthfully, I am only interested in my ancestry back to about 1500 A.D. I believe that anything before that is just too far back to prove to my satisfaction. However, once you get back that far, and into the remote mists of time, I could probably claim all kinds of ancestry, heretofore unknown to me, such as Roman, Jewish, Russian, and who knows what else. But like I said, it is too far back to be of much interest, except in a general sense.
I have not done much European genealogical research, nor do I plan to do any, at least until I’ve fully documented my own American ancestry, and since I’m a 10th (or more) generation American, it could take all my life to find out all about my American roots. However, it is a journey that I'm willing to take (metaphorically), given proper access to European records via the Internet.