Your First Immigrant Ancestor

I asked Grandpa Running Bear what it was like when he first came to this country and he looked at me like I was an idiot. Three of my four grandparents were immigrants to Canada.  They were all alive until I was in my teens, or later, and I knew them well.  They all loved to reminisce about the "old country" although not all of their reminiscences were fond ones. In fact the three of them were as proud, or more so, to be Canadian as anyone I know who was born here.

I guess I could ask the mercenary bog-trotter what he was thinking when he packed his kit, but since he left a detailed journal, I already know. An eye on the main chance, and the high road out of Donegal.

Fantastic choices here. Irish who fled the Potato Famine, Sicilian mafia, Scotch-Irish moonshiners, ain't I just colorful?

I've tried but Balki won't return any of my calls.

What interview? This would probably consist of the words " Stop thief!"

Whoa, the "first" immigrant ancestor could be a bit vague, as I believe there has been many migrations of my tribe in the past 5000 years. I myself is the most recent immigrant to Canada, and for that I should probably start writing a journal for the amusement of the later generations.

YES!  This would be awesome!  So much to learn about the culture. Also considering Im a HUGE history buff.  So many first immigrant ancestors in my heritage, including :  English, Czech, Irish, German also even though its not considered immigrant Iroquois indian.  I would be most interested in my Czech, and Native American ancestors,  since I have more of those 2 in my bloodline then the others.

The patriarch of my tribe arrived in Jamestown 400 years ago, but apparently he wasn't too keen on America and returned to England after a few months. He obviously left a little something behind though.

Well the Pie family's straw-haired, tea-sipping English roots can be traced back to the 16th century, but I heard that my gooseberry ancestors may have some Irish source...

Mine came to America in 1625 from England. Lived in Colonial Virginia then, Tennessee, Illinois and Kansas. I can take this line back to the Vikings. That's because I'm a genealogist.

Depending on which branch of the family tree I climb out on I could find myself in various parts of the world, including being in this country before it was a country. I would like to go back and interview my great-great grandfather who came here from Ireland when he was a teenager. That part of the family wasn't much on handing down stories, so we don't know much about his family in Ireland or much of anything else. All we really know is he stowed away on a ship when he was 16 and came to America and that he did have a brother, but nobody is even sure what the brothers name was anymore. It would be an interesting look at that part of my family history and might even lead to finding relatives still in Ireland.

That would be me, and given that I work from home in the middle of rural Minnesota, I actually end up talking to myself more than is probably healthy.

I got interested in genealogy after buying some software for my (soon to be retired) father with the purpose of him finding a new hobby. I traced some of my ancestors (on my father's side) to Jamestown and early Virginia, but there is much confusion and dispute as to who was the first immigrant. It would be interesting to ask him why he left England/Scotland, how he was related to the other Vagabonds in Virginia, and who were the family still in Europe to keep researching back.

Must have been an adventurous charachter for family lore has him jumping ship to start a new life here:hundreds of years ago!

The only family members to my knowledge that emigrated to this country were my great-grandparents, who came to the United States from Italy during the last major stages of European immigration in the early 1920's. They died nearly two decades before I was even born, and I've always wondered what it would have been like to meet them, and hear their stories. What was their motivation to come to America? What was life like in Italy? Who did they leave behind? There are thousands of questions that will probably always remain unanswered in my mind.

Heck yeah, this would be great. On my mother's side, that would be two on the Mayflower, and on my dad's side, an opportunist and refugee from County Longford, Ireland in 1731 (the date of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, for some historical perspective) Had they known what a bunch of whackos they would have engendered, they may well have stayed behind. Interesting that both sides fled to escape religious persecution.

Luckily for me, that would be my parents, my grandparents & my great-grandmother (all moved over in my parent's generation); unfortunately, I can't really talk to my grandparents or great-grandparents, because I don't speak chinese very well at all.