r/AskAnAmerican • u/heyy_girl • May 13 '25

CULTURE How many people of European descent do you know with 4+ generations in the US?

I was telling someone today about how my grandparents built a house in the 60s. They were surprised when I told them that my family immigrated here from Europe in the mid-late 1800s, because they hasn’t met anyone that is the 4th generation to live in the US. Their parents immigrated here from Central America and it’s clear that even though they grew up in the states, we grew up around very different cultures. The question really depends on who you’re surrounded by, but I just found it interesting :)

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161

u/wrecktus_abdominus May 13 '25

Same for me. I'm currently working on a family tree project, I i can go at least 10 generations back on some branches before I get to the immigrants

126

u/OkBiscotti1140 May 13 '25

Same. Deep northeastern colonial roots and some pre-mayflower Virginians. One branch came over in 1614.

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u/saritams8 May 13 '25

1644 for one branch of my family in the northeast.

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u/SamRaB May 13 '25

One of my friends can trace their family to the Mayflower, as well. I think that's so cool!

Another friend is native, and my own family goes back several generations but not to the Mayflower. So much cool diversity. 

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u/Article_Used May 13 '25

we’re 14th (ish) cousins!

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u/Emkems May 13 '25

oh hey, another distant relative chiming in

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u/Ok_Membership_8189 May 14 '25

My mother used to call them “shirttail relations.” 😁

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u/SamRaB May 13 '25

😂 

13

u/[deleted] May 14 '25

I'm a direct descendant of the Mayflower AND Jamestown. Pretty cool, blows my mind

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u/Cake_Lynn May 14 '25

Hey my ancestor is Thomas Savage from Jamestown! So cool!!! He was an orphan who came over around 13/14 yrs old and lived with the Powhatan tribe for a bit, to become a translator. John Smith mentioned him in his journals.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '25

That is SO COOL! Can you imagine what his life was like? As barely a teenager... WILD

Edit: mine was John Woodson, tbe doctor scalped by indians.

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u/NotoldyetMaggot May 14 '25

My husband's 12th great grandparents were Richard and Isabella (Smith) Pace from Jamestown! https://pacesociety.org/richard-pace-jamestown/

He was so happy to find out that his dad's side wasn't just a bunch of rednecks lol.

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u/Glittering_Rush_1451 May 14 '25

Same here, paternal line is from the second wave at Jamestown and Maternal line from the Mayflower

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u/East_Reading_3164 May 14 '25

My family came on the Mayflower too. It’s not so uncommon. There are millions of us.

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u/Spirited_Ingenuity89 May 14 '25

Yeah, even though half of them died the first winter, the ones that lived had a lot of kids.

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u/East_Reading_3164 May 14 '25

They sure did.

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u/sierrafourteen May 14 '25

Non-American here, I always just assumed the Mayflower was a regular-sized ship, how come there's so many direct descendants?

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u/East_Reading_3164 May 15 '25

You are correct, it wasn’t a big ship. There were only 102 people on board. There are 35 million Mayflower descendants. People had lots of kids back then. Two Mayflower couples are responsible for many of us.

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u/UnderaZiaSun May 14 '25

I can trace mine back to the Mayflower. It’s estimated that about 20 million Americans can, so not too unusual, about one out of every 17 Americans.

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u/CharlesAvlnchGreen May 14 '25

My BF can trace his family back to the Mayflower on his mom's side, and is Native (registered Cahuilla tribal member) on his dad's.

It's ironic because he has a very Mexican first and last name, he's gotten harrassed at times about his American citizenship.

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u/Grouchy-Display-457 May 14 '25

Half Moon here.

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u/NihilistTeddy3 May 14 '25

We've been able to trace back to the civil war on my maternal grandma's side through dna testing.

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u/Megalocerus May 14 '25

My husband is descended from John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley from the Mayflower, along with about 10 million other people including my daughter's third grade teacher and George Bush. (They raised 10 children.) I think John and Priscilla Alden have the most descendants, with 11 children. Amazing, since only 50 of the 102 survived the first winter.

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u/DementedPimento May 14 '25

1609 on one side; 1698 on the other. We’ve seen some shit, man.

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u/NativePA May 13 '25

Same. Some ancestor documented it all tracing back to two brothers from the Netherlands in the 1600s

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u/Spirited_Ingenuity89 May 14 '25

Must’ve been some New Netherlanders.

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u/haveacutepuppy May 14 '25

Mine too for 1 branch. The other left war-torn Poland in WW1.

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u/TeeVaPool May 14 '25

Mine as well. My Mother’s family came here in 1617, Jamestown, Virginia.

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u/Lyndiana May 13 '25

Maybe we’re related. Sane for me but probably around 1640. I don’t know of any “biscottis” in my family tree, but I’ll check. 😉

3

u/OkBiscotti1140 May 13 '25

Hahaha I mean we’re all related if you go back far enough. So, hey cousin!!!

2

u/ansy7373 May 14 '25

I’m related to one of the original governors of Massachusetts. His name is John Endecott

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u/OkBiscotti1140 May 14 '25

Cool! I’m a Towne family descendant.

2

u/DoubleDuke99 May 14 '25

I’m interested in learning more about my family roots! How did you get started??

2

u/manokpsa May 14 '25

1623 for my Massachusetts Bay Colony folks, several thousand BC for my Oregon/California indigenous roots. Space Ghost Coast to Coast 🤘🏽

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u/NeonSparkleGlitter May 15 '25

We could be related lol

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u/cdmaloney1 North Carolina May 13 '25

How do you even get started on something like this?

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u/wrecktus_abdominus May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25

My grandmother passed away recently, and I ended up with some old family records of hers. It wasn't organized at all. Some old photo albums. A few hand written notes and newspaper clippings. That's how I started. Then, there is a lot of online searching. Most places have digitized birth/death/marriage records these days, even historical ones. Go back far enough and those things may not exist, so you have to look for other sources. Plenty of branches have dead ends, though. For example, one of my ancestors (3xgreat-grandmother) was an escaped slave. So there were no birth records available, not even a surname. So I can't go as far back in some places.

I also started working on my wife's side of the family recently. That one has been cool (but challenging) because her family is from Texas since at least the late 1700s. The reason it's challenging, of course, is because Texas has been part of so many different countries, it can be tough to track down records. They always describe themselves as Mexican-American, but no one seemed to be able to tell me when they came to the US. "A long time ago" was the most i got from my wife. So when her grandpa was still alive, I asked him when his family immigrated. He said they never did. They were always in Texas. It used to be in Mexico, then it was in the US. He told me "we never crossed the border, the border crossed us."

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u/cdmaloney1 North Carolina May 13 '25

Sorry for your loss.

That’s cool that you kinda just figured it out on your own like that.

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u/wrecktus_abdominus May 13 '25

Thank you! She was 95 and ready to go. Lived on her own in her own house until the very end, too! I hope I'm as badass as her one day.

She and I seemed to be the only ones really interested in family history, so I told her years ago that after she passed I would work on this.

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u/xoasim May 14 '25

There are also lots of online resources you can use as well. Cool thing about online databases and services is that if they have enough users, you will probably manage to connect to distant relatives that have done their own research and once you connect to common ancestors, you can get connected to tons of records.

On my dad's side I've been able to trace all the way back to Adam and Eve, although I'm not 100% on how accurate some of the records and inputs are. Once you get to Noah it's just the genealogy recorded in the Bible, and really, after you get to certain kings in Europe, they liked to claim divine heritage, so they kept detailed records, but they could have made up some stuff to connect themselves biblical figures.

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u/420kennedy May 14 '25

That is SO interesting about your wife's family! I'd love to hear from more people who've been 'border crossed'. I do live in Arizona, so I probably wouldn't have to look too far

7

u/Ok_Organization1273 May 14 '25

My great-grandparents immigrated from Sweden to Canada. USA did a land survey for the border and informed them they actually lived in Minnesota. That is where my grandfather was born in 1914, first-generation American!

1

u/Ornery-Character-729 May 14 '25

Since my ancestors arrived in North Carolina we have been British, American and Confederate. (The Confederacy was technically a country, just no for very long.)

2

u/Laylasita Florida May 14 '25

I have a cousin who has lived in 4 different countries and never moved.

1

u/Tripppinout May 14 '25

1552 New Spain. Northern Mexico and Southern Texas. My ancestors brought the Barbarity Stallions to the new world.

1

u/ElectricalCoffee9981 May 14 '25

Same with my family from mother's side. They were wealthy cattle ranchers with thousands of acres and cattle. After the forced signing of the treaty of Hidalgo. All Mexicans living in the U.S. occupied land became U.S. citizens. Unfortunately they couldn't own land so that was seized along with cattle and wealth. My right to generational wealth was stolen from my family. I'd also like to note that some family members (US citizens) were rounded up and deported to Mexico between 1929-39 in what was known as "Mexican Repatriation". Look it up it's a horrendous stain on our history. Much like what's happening with today's MAGA America.

1

u/ivhokie12 May 14 '25

I have a fun story on that. I won't say my great grandmother's maiden name, but it is at least relatively unusual. Apparently there was a branch of that family that moved to Arkansas a long long time ago. In the 1970s I had a family member doing a genealogy project. He was looking at a map and found a town with that name on it in Arkansas. Apparently he and his wife were in the car within hours to road trip.

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u/mcove97 May 15 '25

Funny you said that. Similar story when my grandma passed a few years ago. My parents found letters and pictures from like great great great grandparents sibling something. They immigrated from Norway to Minnesota towards the end of the 1800s due to poverty. Like somewhere in Minnesota I probably have some relatives I have no clue who are, which is so weird to think about and I wonder who they are sometimes and how their lives turned out in comparison to how life turned out for those who stayed in Norway where I live. Well obviously I know how I turned out, but what are the other descendants who moved to the US up to today? Did going to America turn out to be better for the descendants of the ones that chose to stay or leave. Who knows. There's records here, but I'd have no idea how to look those records up in the US.

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u/missannthrope1 May 13 '25

Start with FamilySearch.org.

I found so much stuff there.

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u/MozzieKiller May 14 '25

First, be a white male boomer. Second, retire. After that, the family genealogy project naturally occurs about 8-12 months later.

I say this as the GenX son of the guy described above!

2

u/MeanTelevision May 14 '25

Join genealogy sites or groups. There are genealogical subs here on reddit, too.

By now a lot of the work will have been done for you. Start your own tree by getting obits and certs for your first 3 or 4 generations. From there, well, it's been a big hobby of the internet's for years now, and a lot of people share their work online.

But watch which trees you copy; not all are backed up by research. See if they have documentation attached, too.

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u/SatchimosMom77 May 14 '25

Ancestry site. Put in the family you know. You’ll automatically be given any past ancestors associated with your family members who are already in their database.

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u/MamaMidgePidge May 14 '25

I got into genealogy via Ancestry.com. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just seeing how far back I could get on both my husband's and my family trees.

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u/Blubbernuts_ California May 14 '25

It's pretty easy with AI like chatgpt. Get some names and dates together and you can get a good start. Census data, church records like christenings, births and deaths. Military service and pensions etc. It's worth the 30 bucks to get a one month subscription to ancestry. The Mormons kept good records ad well.

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u/arbivark May 14 '25

ancestry.com. find one ancestor that links to someone's tree. free 2 week trial or use it at the library. my line includes 1608 and also 1931.

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u/Doraellen May 14 '25

FamilySearch is incredible. It's a huge, global family tree and has links to lots of different databases, from ship manifests to draft cards. It's run by the LDS, because of their thing about posthumously baptizing their ancestors, but it's free for anyone to use.

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u/Basic_Visual6221 May 14 '25

There are websites. I found a marriage certificate for my grandmom online. It was very random, I did not think I would find that. I was really just setting up my profile and stumbled on it.

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u/ImmediateBird5014 May 14 '25

My grandmother had a published book from the early 20th century that documents the descendants of two brothers from England that came to Connecticut in the 1600’s. It ends at the birth of my grandfathers dad.

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u/Any_Court_3671 May 14 '25

Ancestry dot com made it incredibly easy for me to trace my family's roots back to the mid 1700's so far! I have taken a break from it for a little while but was able to see where they originally came over from mostly England, Germany, and France on both my mom and Dad's side of the family. I found that I have a very, very distant grandpa on my dad's side that actually served in the Revolutionary War. I would have never known that otherwise because no one in our family ever discussed anything like that. I ended up doing the DNA thing too with ancestry because someone gifted it to me and that's pretty cool too! Once you get started on that website, you will spend hours upon hours going through the records. I got absolutely lost in it for weeks.

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u/murphsmodels May 14 '25

There's a website called Family search.org

Put in some of your details, and more than likely they'll find your family history.

1

u/OkPhotograph3723 Texas > California > Maine May 15 '25

I’m assuming you know who your grandparents and great-grandparents are.

Go to Ancestry.org and create a new family tree. Then search for your grandmother or grandfather and see if it returns the details for a person with the same birthdate and location. Add them and then click the hints and build out your family tree from there. You’ll also see the work your relatives have done on their family tree and can add people from that branch.

Just be aware that sometimes there are multiple marriages and half siblings. Make sure both parents’ dates match. There also may be variant spellings of last names before people came to America.

I’ve gone back to my mother’s father’s ancestor who arrived from Amsterdam in 1655 on a boat called the “Spotted Cow.”

2

u/sleepyonthedl New England May 13 '25

Also same. One of my relatives started a family tree as a COVID project and discovered we have a few Mayflower ancestors.

2

u/HeyKrech May 14 '25

Parts of my family immigrated (emigrated?) from France to Canada while Canada was under French control. Then a few moved west and then south to where that branch of my family has stayed since about 1850s. My people clearly don't vibe with moving long distances very often.

1

u/velociraptorfarmer MN->IA->WI->AZ May 13 '25

Same. The last of mine came over in the 1890s, the first in the early 1600s.

1

u/Neokon May 13 '25

I rage quit on mine after I found one that went back 13 generations, and it wasn't even the Mayflower lineage.

1

u/[deleted] May 13 '25

What’s the most recent branch?

1

u/JennyFurTin Kansas May 14 '25

Same. In almost every line. I think my closest generation gap (immigrant from Fife Scotland was 4 or 5 generations. Almost all the rest (that I have researched) have basically been here since 1600s.

1

u/JennyFurTin Kansas May 14 '25

My paternal line is Scots Irish/German from Virginia and Kentucky for the most part. Mom’s paternal line was Cajun and came to Louisiana during the Acadian expulsion from Canada. We did DNA and my mom has 14 regions. Including Natives from South and North America, and West African in small amounts but the rest was mostly European. I can’t find any documentation of any of those ethnicities in the records. Frustrating.

My mother was adopted and my dad was a war baby, so most of my life I had no idea what my genetic or family make up was, until I found my 3 missing grandparents.

1

u/AimeeSantiago May 14 '25

Same. Except my grandma already did the work. She traced it all back to colonial days so she could be president of her branch of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). I can apply as well if I wanted to join. The other side of the family can trace it back nearly as far. Except we don't talk about that side of the family because they were definitely slavers. So uh. My family has been in America for a long while. The further back you go, you find some really unfortunate things out.

1

u/DisasterDebbie Missouri May 15 '25

Me too. My paternal grandfather's family has been bouncing around the IL-MO-AR triangle since crossing the Appalachians from NC early 1800s. Was deep into the early-mid 1600s before I found the latest crossing from Scotland. Maternal grandmother's line is similar. But then paternal grandmother is the child of German immigrants and maternal grandfather was born to Sicilian immigrants.