i need to find my ethnicity i have grandparents names and great grandparents including my parents?

Question

i know i am mexican and some type of native american supposely my great grand mother was full blooded cherokee
does anyone know how i can find my ethnicity ?? do birth records show this and can i get any of the information i need for free

thank you

Answer 1

Family Interviews
Start right at home by asking all of your relatives about either their own childhood or what they remember being told be their parents and grandparents. Ask even distant relatives. don't just rely on your closest relatives.

When you ask questions, let the person talk. don't interrupt. Often by letting them talk, they'll start to remember things. Also, don't coax the person with answers. If they start to say something that you disagree with, let them talk it through awhile to see where it leads to. Never challenge the person or their stories. This may be taken offensively, they may become defensive and may not wish to continue or be helpful...now or in the future.

Bring a tape recorder and pen/paper. Ask if you can tape the conversation. Taping will allow you the freedom to pay complete attention to the narration since you won't be forced to write things down. You then have the liberty to listen to the entire conversation later at which time you can make a full transcription. However, if the individual is shy or not willing to speak in front of a tape recorder, don't pressure. This will only hinder the interviewer and might keep him/her from expounding on details. Then you should resort to pen and paper. don't rely on your memory! You'll only forget the details later on...and remembering the details is the most important part.

Prepare for your interview ahead of time. Always come prepared with follow-up questions in the event you get good results. And also bring along a wide variety of questions in the event the interview doesn't go so well in the direction you initially intended.

During the interview, you'll have to be clever in your questions. If asking "So, what's the name of the village parents come from?" doesn't work, try something like this:

Do you remember where your mother or father were born?
Do you remember your parents telling you about their childhood: did they live on a farm or in a city?
Did you ever receive any mail from the "old country"?
Tell me some stories your parents told you about the "old country"? (This will certainly get the interview talking and may jog his/her memory.)
Ask about what type of church did your ancestors attend and the language (or languages) they spoke. For us Eastern Galician/Western Ukrainian genealogists, the question of religion and language is an important one.

If they're not sure of the languages they spoke, ask them then name of some of the foods they ate growing up. Such a simple question can lead to important results.

During the interview, ask the person if they own something that originally belonged to the immigrant, such as a bible, prayer book, military records, naturalization papers, letters from Europe, or prayer cards (even if they don't contain a specific place of birth, the people about whom the card was written could be from the same village and therefore can be used in researching the various sources described on this page).

Church Records----Often our immigrant ancestors came to settled in areas with their own ethnic/religious groups. (Often with people from the same village or region, which is a real bargain!) Their main connection to their ethnicity here in North America, even after they started adopting English in the home, was the ethnic church. These ethnic churches can lead to a great wealth of information. Priests kept record books of births, marriages and deaths which took place in his parish. The advantage of these ethnic church records is that the priest was fluent in either Polish or Ukrainian. This means that there is a good chance that the names of places found in these record books were spelled correctly...at least phonetically correct. This is certainly not always the case with records made by American officials in the city/town hall.

Personal Note: The only record containing my father's ancestral parish was a church record. Out of a family of 5 children, only one of the children's marriage record contained a parish name which eventually led me to find the specific village. None of the other siblings' marriage, birth or death records contained such detail.

Answer 2

Actually, genealogy records are often a surprisingly inaccurate way of determining your full ethnic background. There are now a lot of services that will run a DNA check and report back with your ethnic history.

The Wikipedia page on dna ethnicity tests is actually fairly good, and I've included it as a source to this answer.

Answer 3

You would have to obtain their birth certificates which would have their place of birth, but not their heritage,and work back through the family tree till you arrived at a place and time which would only leave mexican or cherokee heritage (like before white man so I don't know how you do that).

Answer 4

i doubt you can ever track it all down