I'm an American

I have always wondered where I came from. I mean, you know, ancestors and all. That has always been really fascinating to me.

One time, I sat down at the computer and went to some website that would show the origins of various last names. I entered the ones I knew from my family and most of the names originated somewhere in the UK. I decided I was more United Kingdom than the Queen, what with all the royal inter-marrying.

When I moved to Philly, I discovered that there are people here who actually know which boat their great grandfather came over on. You see, on the east coast, you find a lot of third or fourth generation Americans. And there were groups of nationalities. Like in Philly, there's an Italian section of the city and an Irish section and a Russian section. So nationalities remained a part of people's identities.

In Texas, it seems like it took 3-4 generations for people to even make it to Texas, and then that was 3-4 generations before me. And you'd have people descending from Scots marrying people descending from Germans, because by this time, you're basically American, so you're not really all that different.

So anyway, yeah, there are people here who know their families history. And I was a little jealous. Because I didn't know where my ancestors came from.

And then you know what happened? You know what?

The internet got better.

The other day, my brother starting playing around with ancestry.com. It's crazy. They are starting to digitize all these public records and it's amazing all the stuff you can find. I looked at a scanned copy of the US census from 1920 that had my grandmother listed as an 11-yr-old. Isn't that crazy? And so then you can see her parents, because they are listed, too. And so you add them to your family tree. And then the website says, "Hey, that adult you just added, here they are as a kid, listed with their parents." So then you add them, and it goes on and on and on.

In one line, we've gone back 13 generations to 1635. And you know where they are from? Can you guess?

VIRGINIA!!!

I didn't want Virginia! I wanted Italy! Scotland! Wales! Not Virginia!

So I'm at least a 13th generation American, which actually, all romance aside, is pretty cool.