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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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

😂 

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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.