how can we discover our ethnicity?

Question

whenever i suggest that there must be MORE to my ethnicity, my mother always insistintly disagrees and says that we are whatever her grandmother was (because thats as far as she can go). well, i dont think her grandmother just popped out of the ground from somewhere. there is definitely more...how can we find out?

Answer 1

Not knowing your ethnicity, I can only give you a general guide.
Locate someone of the same and talk to them.

Answer 2

You do genealogical research. I started in 1978, and only last year found a whole new branch to my family, so it is a hobby that can go on as long as you are interested.

Start with what you know. Write down the information about your parents and grandparents. This is the information you will want to collect:
1. Date and place of birth
2. Date and place of marriage, including bride's maiden name
3. Date and place of death
4. Burial location
5. Was the ancestor a veteran? Was the ancestor a member of a particular religious group? Knowing this can help you trace back.

Once you have what you know, start getting what you don't know. Start at www.rootsweb.com, because it has the most information and it is free. I believe there may even be a link to how to start research there, which will give you more information than I can here.

First go to WorldConnect at rootsweb, because it is a collection of family trees submitted by thousands of genealogists. If you are lucky, you'll find one of your ancestors on one of these trees and it will give you the information on ancestors further back. There is an email link to the researcher with the tree, so you can write them directly. I've had several cousins email me this way, and we've joined forces to find more information.

Realize that you may not find any ancestor at WorldConnect. Don't despair!

Go to the Social Security Death Index to find the date of death/year of birth of ancestors. This information will also include the place of death.

Go to usgenweb.net (link at rootsweb) to the state and then the county where your ancestors are from. The information at the different sites varies greatly, but there is usually a link to a query page, where you can ask other researchers if they have information on an ancestor.

There's a lot more, but this should give you a start! Good luck!
Yours in kinship.

Answer 3

Geneology Studies! Geneology can be fun, and infinately time consuming. There are several sites where you can start, and some that require you to pay a fee. Also, check with county, and state records around where you and your family has lived.
Go to www.google.com and put in Geneology and pages and pages of sites will come up to help you get started.
My mothers family is English and Irish.
My fathers family is Welsh and Dutch...
Ugh! I'm a mutt! But finding out the Heinze 57 is fun... we've traced and documented our family history back to about 1777.
Good luck!

Answer 4

All the other answers you've been getting are good.

So you can go back to a great grand mother. That's a good start.

I share the same last name with my mother.
She remarried a man with the last name "B" and a few years later I married a guy with the same last name! My husband's family "origin stories" sounded very much like my step-father's family stories. I did some research and found out my husband and stepfather share a common ancestor in colonial New England.

Oh, the Mormon Church has wonderful resources and you don't have to be Mormon to use them. The Mormon Church database helped me discover the common ancestor shared by my husband and step father!

Answer 5

Well if you want to go further back, use a genealogical database like familysearch.org and see if you can find the parents of your great-grandparents. You need to be careful to make sure you have the right match though, so get all the information you can from your mother and run it through a search. Old family mementos, like diaries, birth certificates, newspaper clippings, etc. can be super helpful in learning birthdates and names. You can keep track of your finds in the free software FamilySearch provides. Don't expect much- it's not unusual for a family to stay in one place for generations.
As was said, be suspicious of websites that lead you back to some duke of whatever as your ancestor. Lots of people don't want to admit that their background consists of ordinary people, so they stretch the truth. But even following ordinary people can be incredibly rewarding. Good luck.

Answer 6

First, if your family name hasn't been changed through the years, that's a good start. Many folks had their last name changed going through Ellis Island -mine included.
Secondly, any family Bibles, etc that have birth, marriage, and death notices in them are very valuable. If some relatives ever served in the military, you can get copies of their service records. Those are useful as they will have that person's address, and list next-of-kin. Ask your other relatives like Great-aunts/uncles, if any are still alive. They may have some insight.
Finally, one can go online and use commercial resources like Ancestors.com to start building one's family tree.
FWIW, two thing I used to advise my history students, when they asked about ethnicity/genealogy: One not EVERYBODY has royalty as ancestors. Especially if a commercial company works on your family tree, if you see a lot of aristocracy, be very suspicious. Two, be prepared for the chance that what your family believes is true about some ancestors, may not be what occurred. For example, one woman discovered that a family "war-hero" was court-martialed and served most of his enlistment in jail. He later created his background to avoid embarrassment.
Good luck. It's a big task, but nearly everyone who does, heck even the woman who discovered the family-secret above, feels it was well worth it.

Answer 7

If you don't have any other relatives who can answer your question then perhaps try familysearch.org. Alternatively, try to obtain a copy of your grandmothers death certificate. Death certificates can contain all kinds of useful information. Marriage certificates can hold a wealth of information as well.
Talk to your mother again, but gently. There may be a reason why your grandmother didn't talk about her heritage.

Good Luck

Answer 8

Do you have any other relatives you can ask? That's where I'd start. Also, you can go to this site:
http://surnames.behindthename.com/
and look up the meaning of your surname (or last name). You can generally find out what part of the world your last name orginated in. There are other sites for this also. You can google "meanings of surnames" to get a list.

Answer 9

you'll have to keep digging till you go pass the cave men and then to Adam and Eve. But when you do get there, let me know, cuz we might be related