Ancestry of Americans?

Question

i would a website/link of the percentage of where americans can trace back (ex. english/irish/german, etc.)

i just found out im turkish =)

Answer 1

Try www.cyndislist.com/mideast or www.familysearch.org (click tab where it says All Countries, and it goes in alphabetical order down to TURKEY, TURKMENISTAN and TURKS and CAICOS ISLANDS.

Without a name to try, I couldn't find out if www.rootsweb.com would have anything listed, but they DO have a database called "World Connect."

For www.ancestry.com, you would just have to leave the "All countries" showing when you enter birth/death dates. Otherwise, they don't show Turkey as an individual listing. This site has a trial period you can sign up for, but then it costs $29.95 a month or $299 in one payment for a World Deluxe membership for a year.

Answer 2

Not really. You can go to www.census.gov and get some related information.

But what you have to understand is that anything of this nature is based on self declared information. In your case, for example, you stated that you just found out you are Turkish. This means, that in the not so distant past, you didn't know this! So if YOU were part of some collection, that you were Turkish wouldn't have been associated with you because you didn't know. Self declaration of information.

There are some other non-self declared compilations available, but again, not of a lot of use. Immigration records, for example, will give the country either the person is a citizen of, or sometimes just where they last lived. Not everyone in Turkey is Turkish. Look at it from the reverse standpoint. If you immigrated from the United States to say Turkey, your immigration records would show you as "American" or "United States".

Nobody can declare their ancestry beyond what they know (or often BELIEVE). So any such compliations of information would be founded on rather loose "facts". Some true, some not. Or like you, the person had no idea they were Turkish but believed they were Romanian because that's where the "Turkish" side ended up for a hundred or so years.

But the biggest problem is "what are you?" One of my lines came to the US in 1625. This line has of course been in the US (or what is NOW the US, it wasn't in 1625) for 382 years. Before that, they were in England for about 120 years, then the best I can tell, they were from what is now Scotland (or possibly the area that is now Germany). So am I "English"? You could argue that I'm American because we've been in America three times as long as this line was in England. But nobody likes to say they are "American". But seem to easily declare that they are "English" or "German".