FAMILY HISTORY: AMERICA, ENGLAND, BUT IS IT NORMANDY, ENGLAND OR GERMANY?
I’ve written a bit about this before. But our small family came to the states in the 1630’s. But we know everyone’s name back to the 1400’s. The family historians have made claims that we’re Normans. But that’s entirely specious. And the argument they used to prove it only serves to disprove it. We know, I think, no more than 25 names of people who participated in the Norman invasion. And our family was from central England. So, I’m fairly sure that like most english people’s we’re largely germanic. Mostly celtic. Although, given their Puritanism, and their location, it’s just as likely that they were part of the wave of German immigrants who left for greater freedom in England, or even more likely part of the Danish gene pool that dominated that area. But until we have genetic samples from enough members of the family to create some semblance of a pattern – at least on the male side, we will have a hard time being sure.
In the large, we have retained the protestant english behavior of small business, martial devotion, and did not substantially outbreed, at least in New England, until the second world war. Although we must keep in mind that the prices of land were driven up in new England in the 1700’s, partly because it was some of the best land on earth at the time, and many families moved to the ohio river valley to take advantage of the lower cost of land. And it is more likely that that wing of the family has retained its homogeneity. The southern wing of the family is fairly large but harder to isolate.
Some day I’ll spend some time on this. Some day. Maybe….
Source date (UTC): 2012-12-23 06:40:00 UTC