Whaddya know.... I'm Swiss!

[Dookus]

Recently, my brother and I did some genealogical research. We found a distant cousin of ours who actually researched my mother's family tree back to the 1600's.

We always believed we were Irish and English. We always figured we came over during the Irish potato famine.

Turns out my mother's family (through her father's side) came from Switzerland in the early 1700's!!!

We found military records for my great-great-great-grandfather - he fought for the Union in the Civil War and even better, was listed as being in the Honor Guard when President Lincoln gave a little speech at Gettysburg (our family's from Pennsylvania).

So now I'm Swiss! woohoo! or... Yodel-ay-ee-hoooo!

[JohnKleeb]

1. interesting

I actually made a simliar mistake, I am Irish and German on my dad's side and maybe Swiss-German as well, but on my mom's I always thought as a young kid I was Czech and Serbian, I am actually Slovak and Slovenian, and theres a difference. If I was Serbian, theres a chance I could be Eastern Orthodox not Catholic.

[Maple]

2. You're not gonna

start going Bork Bork or anything now are ya? :D

Fascinating find!

Does it make you feel different about yourself?

[Dookus]

4. Yes, it is fascinating....

what's "bork bork"? Remember, I'm new to Swissitude...

I guess it DOES make me feel a little different - more patriotic, I think. I didn't realize I had ancestors here before the Revolutionary war, and the Gettysburg thing is just damned cool.

My cousin, who lives in PA, is a huge Civil War buff. It was a real treat to share the information with him. He goes to Gettysburg all the time and gives tours to friends. He was unaware of his connection to the place.

Lincoln has long been a huge hero of mine, and to imagine an ancestor of mine standing there in uniform while he spoke his immortal words is just really damned cool.

[wtmusic]

3. That's way cool

especially the honor guard thing. One day I will go digging myself...

[HEyHEY]

5. Nuetral Ninny!

Old kids in the hall sketch

[Dookus]

7. heheh...

I don't feel any more neutral, but I *AM* craving fondue...

[BurtWorm]

6. I know how you feel, I think.

I found out just a few weeks ago, after 44 years of not knowing, that I'm part Rusyn, which is an obscure ethnic group from the Carpathians in Slovakia, Poland, Romania, the Ukraine, Hungary and Croatia. I was totally obsessed for a few weeks. Now my ethnicity has become background noise again. But it was a strangely delicious feeling to find that secret out about myself.

[Dookus]

8. that's even cooler, Worm...

because it gives you a mysterious culture to learn more about. Does Rusyn have its own language?

[BurtWorm]

19. Rusyn is virtually identical to Ukrainian

but it's on its way to being codified as its own language. In eastern Slovakia the road signs are in Slovakian and Rusyn, which is written in a Cyrillic alphabet.

So why aren't Rusyns Ukrainians? Beats me! I always thought I was half Ukrainian. But apparently not. All the signposts of Rusynhood--geographical origin, names of children, location of destination in the US, religion--in my family precisely follow the Rusyn template. Even the fact that no one knew exactly what these ancestors were is part of the Rusyn template.

[Dookus]

9. that's even cooler, Worm...

because it gives you a mysterious culture to learn more about. Does Rusyn have its own language?

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Strange feeling, eh?

I just found out that I'm part Swedish...I thought my ancestry was pretty much all British Isles (English, Irish, Welsh)...still don't like meatballs, though. Heh.

[Dookus]

11. yes...

it is strange. You grow up with a certain concept of your ancestry and then you learn something new. I'm 42 years old now, and it's a real kick to learn something new. I'm really pleased about it. I know I'm still really Irish through my father's side, but this was a really cool discovery.

The unfortunate part is how hard it is to find information on the women. The men's ancestry is much easier to trace - usually because they have more public records, i.e, census records or military records. The women lead to dead-ends much more quickly.

[Exultant Democracy]

12. Geneology is pretty cool

My family has always kept pretty good records. And by pretty good I mean pretty damn good, we can go all the way back to the Roman Empire.

[Dookus]

13. woah...

tell us more!

I understand it's almost impossible to find records going back to the middle-ages.

What kind of records does your family have? I would presume they'd have to be aristocratic. In which nation? I'm dying to know.

[Exultant Democracy]

14. I was amazed too

The first person of note that we can reliably trace ourselves to is, Maximian, who was the junior emperor after, Diocletian, partitioned the empire. After that they pretty much become an Aristocratic Italian family. Then my branch headed off to Austria in the late middle ages.

Eventually someone was married off to one of Queen Elizabeth’s distant cousins, then we moved to America and during the revolutionary war we fled to Canada. That is pretty much all of the exciting stuff.

[REP]

15. Recently Disovered I'm Part Dutch

One family name had been assumed to mean Steven's Man (we're mostly Welsh, so having a slave name is not unusual) but I found records proving the name was a corruption of the Dutch Steenmann (stone mason). We'd always known that that branch of the family was in the US in the late 1600s, but even with the big clue of them settling in Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, we weren't sure where there were from.

My family's biggest claim to fame was raising William Tecumseh Sherman after his father died. I like to think he got to be the way he was from hanging out with us. His foster father was the Secretary of the Interior under Lincoln, and his foster-brother issued Order No. 11 blocks from where I used to live (in the town that was founded by other ancestors and later became part of Kansas City, MO).

[Bunny]

16. That happened to me as well.

On my mom's side - we always thought she was English and German, turns out her people came from Switzerland too! Now dad's people are all Irish, and I consider myself to be Irish, but the whole Switzerland thing is interesting. Probably explains my love for fine chocolate!:)

[happyslug]

17. It is possible he was Swiss and German.

One thing I like to point out is that modern nationalities is a product of the French Revolution, and people did not call themselves by their Nationality till that time. Prior to the 1800s people called themselves by the language their spoke. Thus a citizen of Switzerland who spoke German and immigrated to America in the 1700s would tend to call himself by his LANGUAGE not his nationality i.e. he would call himself “German” for that was his native tongue not “Swiss” for “Swiss” was not a language.

Thus your ancestor calling himself “German” was just following the convention of his time period. Something we have to watch when reading history, people’s view of themselves have changed, In the “dark ages” the tend was to your religion, in the Middle Ages this continued. After the 30 year war language (and religion) became how people ID themselves, it is only with the French Revolution that Nationality came to play in how people called themselves (Even in America as late as the revolution people called themselves, Irish, Scots, English and German based on their language (With the Irish, Scots and Welsh differing themselves from the English based on where their family came from NOT on being a different nationality).

German was the second most common language spoken in America at the time of the Revolution, In Pennsylvania “Germans’ out numbered English speakers, but these all called themselves “German” based on their language NOT that their were from what we now call “Germany”.

[Dookus]

18. Interesting...

I presume my great-great-great whatever was a German speaker, if he moved to Pennsylvania. The name was Bichsler (since changed to Bixler).

[nomaco-10]

20. Maybe we're related.....

I recently found a birth certificate for my great, great grandfather, he was born in Switzerland. My father was full blooded Irish from Belfast. How in hell did I end up in Tennessee?