"American" Ancestry

[Torie]

The folks who identify themselves as of "English" ancestry tend to be mostly Mormons who know, and in huge numbers came to the States from the rough conditions in the textile mills in the Manchester area in the mid 19th century. My genes appear to come all from the island of Great Britain (English, Welsh and Scottish), so what do I identify myself as?  Great British? Yankee WASP seems a better fit, even though one branch were slavers from Virginia, but that little embarrassment need not be cataloged (my great grandfather fled from Norfolk to Brooklyn of all places after the rebel states lost the war ). Ya Spade, my Dad was a Brooklyn boy.

[Torie]

I always thought it was more of a "redneck" patriotic identity sort of thing, mostly among working-class Anglos (Scots and Scots-Irish, primarily).  The distinction has always been presented to me as more sociocultural than ethnic.  Basically, they're white-bread, their families have been here forever, damn it, they're Americans.

Wait a minute. The Scottish who came from Scotland are the richest ethnic group in the US (well maybe the Indians are now, but both are ahead of the Jews), and knew how to make and invest money (the true sons of Adam Smith), and the Scots-Irish were the detritus who were shipped from Scotland by Prince William  to Antrim to put down the natives there (thus the moniker "Orange men,") and then were "invited" to the US to  "pacify"  the natives here. There were skilled with the gun, and had a pugilistic nature. My great, or maybe great great grandfather (probably the latter), was an engineer from Scotland, who moved to Montreal, and fabricated  the steam engine that was used for the first steamship that crossed the Atlantic. That is where the money gene came from perhaps for my clan.

One of my most brilliant professors in law school, and one of the fathers of the uniform  commercial code, was Scots-Irish, and an ex fighter pilot (and still looked like a lean, mean fighting machine), and he always wore an orange tie on St. Patrick's day.

[Torie]

I'm a tenth generation white American. How the hell am I supposed to identify with any particular European ethnicity?

It's not my place to say how you should identify yourself, but... is 10th the furthest you go back, or the most recent? If you have 1,024 ancestors at that level, they likely weren't all born in the U.S., and some branches are more recent.

As for me, my family left a country known as Russia, from locations that are now in the countries of Belarus and Lithuania, but spoke neither Russian nor Belarussian nor Lithuanian, nor would have been considered any of those nationalities.

Speaking of the hoard of distant relatives one has, this woman got interested in genealogy, and has so far found over 3,000 ancestors (conveniently listed and linked) and relations, in over 1100 family groups. Yes, I found it looking up the name of my great grandfather, and voila it popped up. I think I have a roadmap now to find a hoard of distant relations. In fact, I found my first ancestor from off the British Isles, in Germany, born in the 18th century, with the Anglo name of "James" which is odd. I note just now that "Gingrich" is on the list. I wonder if Newt and I are related.