Poll:Immigrant: experience or heredity?

[omni550]

Prompted by a post in this thread below, I'm creating a poll about your level of the immigrant experience.
http://www.early-retirement.org/for...-by-childhood-memories-94637.html#post2138772

------------------

So, are you an immigrant to the U.S?
Were your parents immigrants? (which makes you first generation )
Were your grandparents immigrants? (which makes you second generation)
etc.

omni

 

[aja8888]

I voted....(first).

 

[Moemg]

My grandparents on my father's side were immigrants from Ireland . My great grandparents on my Mother's side were immigrants from Ireland .

 

[frayne]

Paternal side, a mixture of English/Irish that has been here for numerous generations. Maternal side, second or third generation German.

 

[braumeister]

All four grandparents were born here, but six of the eight great-grandparents were immigrants.

 

[davebarnes]

My ancestors got off the boat from England in 1752.
Surprisingly, they had no trouble being "without papers".
As an Open Borders advocate, I would like to see new immigrants be welcomed under the same rules as my ancestors.

 

[MichaelB]

All of my ancestors were immigrants.

 

[Dtail]

All 4 grandparents immigrated from Europe.

 

[USGrant1962]

Paternal uber-grandfather English - immigrated in 1632.

Maternal grandfather was born in Italy and immigrated as a child - 1903 I think when he was 3 years old.

Not sure on grandmothers' lines.

 

[mexexpat]

All of my grandparents came from Lithuania in the 1910's; my maternal grandmother was pregnant with my mother when that set of grandparents arrived.

Neither of my parents spoke English until they went to elementary school. My father's family were farmers and isolated; my mother's family lived in a Lithuanian community where all the arrivals were from the same Lithuanian city and they spoke their native tongue. This continued through my childhood in the 1960s.

I never knew my father's real first name. I heard the story exactly ONCE (when my mother had a few too many highballs one Thanksgiving); my Dad never let it be discussed again. Here's the story:

When he walked alone to his first day of school at a small rural Catholic church with a one-room school house he did not understand or speak English. One by one the students walked up to the nun's desk. My father heard the nun ask a question and heard the other kids answer. When asked by the nun, "What's your name?" the boy in front of my Dad answered, "Eddie." When it was my Dad's turn, he also answered "Eddie" and that became his new name.

 

[kgtest]

My great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War.



Sometime around 1610-1650 was when my ancestors got off the boat.


So, not native, but been hear a long, long time.

 

[Nemo2]

What, no "None of the above"?

 

[Walt34]

I think I'd have to go back five or six generations to find immigrants. My ancestry is English, German, Dutch, and probably some other European countries thrown in but I've never researched it.

 

[FIREd]

I am an immigrant with a Swiss (paternal side) and French (maternal side) ancestry.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Paternal grandparents were Swiss/German (Great Grandfather owned a casino in Germany, destroyed by ally bombing), Maternal Great Great Grandparents probably came over on the Mayflower?

 

[gwraigty]

Maternal grandfather came over from Wales in 1928 when he was 10. Other grandparents were born here. Most of my great-grandparents came from various places in Europe in the late 1800's to early 1900's. So, I guess we really haven't been here all that long in the big scheme of history.

 

[WhoDaresWins]

All four of my grandparents were immigrants. My paternal grandparents arrived from Germany as a married couple in 1904. My maternal grandparents came from Greece separately. Grandfather arrived alone in 1905 and grandmother in 1907, sponsored by her older brother who met her ship in NYC. Her brother worked with grandfather and introduced them as he was anxious to have her married and off his hands. They married after meeting just a handful of times.

 

[Hibernian]

An immigrant and a citizen.

 

[HI Bill]

Some of my ancestors (great-grandparents, etc.) were immigrants through Ellis Island from Czechloslovakia (formerly from Russia) circa 1918, one grandfather was part Cherokee Indian, and at lease one was Irish.

 

[mpeirce]

Basically all the early immigrant groups were represented:

One was a puritan who came over on the Winthrop fleet in 1630. He helped found Watertown Mass. I recently saw his name on the town founders monument.

One was a quaker who came over in 1684 and bought his land from William Penn.

Another came to New York with Peter Styvesant.

On the other side of the family we had a Scots Irishman who settled in Virginia.

The last immigrants in our family fled the Rhineland around the time the Franco Prussian war started - the first battle of that war (Saarlouis in 1870) was in their home town.

So mostly English, a bit Dutch and Scots Irish, and a smidge German.

My wife is pure Scots Irish - her ancestors were all in the appalachian mountains before the revolution.

 

[Ronstar]

Paternal grandmother immigrated from Italy. Other grandparents and parents were born in US

 

[happy2bretired]

What I heard the most about when growing up was about the German side of my maternal grandmother. My grandfather’s father flew the coop when he was young boy so I had no idea where he originated. I did a 23&Me test and found that I have German and English/Irish in me. My missing great grandfather must have been the English/Irish part.

 

[NW-Bound]

...
So, are you an immigrant to the U.S?
Were your parents immigrants? (which makes you first generation )
Were your grandparents immigrants? (which makes you second generation)
etc.

omni

If a person is an immigrant (not American born), he is first-generation American if he is a naturalized citizen. That's me. I was already a college student when I came.

My children are American-born. They are second-generation.

 

[jollystomper]

Both parents and several siblings were immigrants . I was the first child in the family born in the U.S.

 

[brett]

First generation.

Not American though. My parents both came over on a boat. Slight difference thought because they came from one of the two 'mother countries' so the culture, language, etc. was familiar to them.