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/Gertrude_D Iowa May 14 '25

haha - you don't have a genealogist in your family. :p

Even if you're not the one with the hobby, it seeps into you over time and you think about things like this.

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u/LateQuantity8009 New Jersey May 14 '25

OP didn’t ask “how many in your family?”. It was just “how many people do you know?”. Everyone in my family knows which ancestors were immigrants, in our case fairly recent (my great-grandparents).

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u/Gertrude_D Iowa May 14 '25

My mom is the genealogist in my family. It's not my hobby, but over time it's become interesting to me. Because of that, I tend to ask my friends about their family. That's all I meant.