Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!

[surrealestate]

I've been thinking recently about various issues and the assorted ways in which the population with which I spend most of my time nowadays differs from that from my childhood and adolescence. Though it also made me realize that in many cases, I have no idea one way or the other, beyond the default assumptions, which seem to be very different where I am now from where I grew up.

So, a poll!

Note the use of "raised" rather than "born". And you can decide for yourself where the line is between "raised" and "adult" if it applies to you. For the language question, I know some people may have multiple "first" languages, so I tried to clarify what I meant. [ETA on Q1: Your parents, grandparents, etc, all count as part of your lineage. As per the wording, your answer should refer to the one that goes furthest back, not the most recent.]

[Poll #1346353]

(One thing I hate about LJ polls is how they expand in vertical space after you answer them. I wish they didn't do that. Or didn't show the response stats until you hit the "expand" or something.)

Comments

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

The first one needs to be checkboxes...

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

How do you mean? There's always "None of these apply." if you feel choosing one would be misleading.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I made the "One or more of my grandparents" only by a hair, because the last of my ancestors to immigrate was a great-grandmother who arrived as a child in either 1889 or 1891, depending on your source. (She married a man who was born here, though several of his siblings had immigrated with their parents.)

[volta]

The earliest members of my "American" lineage did not speak English.

Amusingly enough, the only one of my grandparents who had English as a first language did not come to America until she was a teenager.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Two interesting tidbits, though the first probably puts you in rarer company.

But yes, those pesky other countries that speak OUR language. ;)

[muffyjo]

What about, I was born a US citizen but raised all over the world? :)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Ooh, fun outlier!

I'd say either "None" or, if you feel "raised American", make believe I worded it that way and answer accordingly. Whichever feels right to you. :)

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

Gah! I have a boring heritage. My parents got married and had all their children together, i.e. no divorce, no out of wedlock kids, they lived together their entire married lives. All 4 of my grandparents got married and had all their children together (no "broken families", all aunts/uncles had same mom and dad), no known out of wedlock kids. All 4 grandparents came from eastern europe (polish on one side, Russian on other). All 4 grandparents came to america nearish 1900-1910 or so-ish, when they were older teens or early 20's or so in age. All married in the USA. I always thought my background was "normal", yet now I realize that while I had the cultural "normal" family it was nowhere near the norm!

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm aware, all the marriages in my lineage lasted til death, but I'm not sure how to assume anything about anyone else's based on this poll. :)

[beaq.livejournal.com]

In my dream, you stood in for me in my role as Tiresias because I'd fallen asleep and woke up just before curtain and had lost my costume and was half naked and I RAN to the theater but you were already coming backstage and you told me Tony Haigh, the director, was very annoyed, and I felt actor's nightmareishly horrible but it was OK because I really *had* forgotten the lines. Also my costume was dreadful, whereas you looked really sharp in your sunglasses and short bob.

Oh, uh. Yeah, that mixed heritage thing. First gen on one side, Revolutionary War on the other. And also on the one, but he went away and came back with the wife.

You?

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

That's a crazy dream! A short bob would totally not work on me.

My parents were in hiding during WW2 and came to the US (and met here) much later.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I picked the first option because I moved here from Canada as an adult, but I have a feeling that you were thinking of "the old world" as the place that people came from.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

My family is from the Old Country, but I know not everyone is (and clearly most pollers aren't as recently). One of the reasons I also asked about English was to single out the Canadians. Er, I mean, distinguish between different sorts.

[richips.livejournal.com]

I consider English my first language.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

And now you're a citizen, too! Yay! :)

WASPs like me

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

There's also the case in which people's family were English-speaking immigrants. I mean, I think you covered that in your options, but the results could be deceptive if what you're looking at is how many of us are the children of immigrants.

My family go back along various paths to (we think) Anne Bradstreet, the first woman published in the colonies. Then there are the Scots who came over thanks to Flora McDonald in the 1740s to make a New World kingdom for Bonnie Prince Charlie, who preferred Paris to North Carolina--and who can blame him? The Hunter brothers came in the late 1800s but married into older lines. I think that was my great-great-grandfather and his siblings and they were the last immigrants.

My mom recently got her family bible from my uncle and that's been fascinating. There's a letter tucked into it from a relative fighting in the Civil War, along with various other interesting tidbits.

Re: WASPs like me

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

My family history is such a black hole (though I suppose more info is potentially discoverable) that I find the idea of being able to easily trace back more than a few generations fascinating. And being able to actually research it in English (not to mention real physical THINGS) would *really* be a treat!

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of when I whined to my parents that I wanted to be multilingual like my friends whose parents were from Puerto Rico and West Africa and India and Korea, and that they should have emigrated to a country whose official language was something other than English so I could have grown up speaking English at home and that language at school. Fortunately, they found that hilarious.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I kinda know how you feel, though from a different point of view. My parents made a point of not letting my brother and I learn their language(s), and while part of it may have been wanting to make sure we spoke English first and foremost, I think it was mostly so that they could speak privately in front of us.

[harm-city-heart.livejournal.com]

My father's side is Scottish/Irish/English but has been in American for at least a century, but my mother is an Israeli immigrant for whom English is a second language.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a lot of people have "uneven" heritage, but unless I've misunderstood what you wrote, you'd be "My American lineage goes back further than that" (on your father's side).

[medicalfairy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure my answers correlate... but it's to be expected. I think I count as having "American" lineage even though we were kind of annexed.

[mdm-sosostris.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm wondering if your poll might not be New England-skewed...

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

My readership is certainly New England-skewed, though there are many people (including myself, though my answers are atypical in this one) who didn't grow up here. We'd need another poll to know just how many, though. :)

In what way did you mean?

[goat.livejournal.com]

I think my paternal great grandparents (on both sides) were immigrants from Italy, though it could be that they were first gen Americans.

I don't know as much about my mom's side. She had at least one grandparent who was born in Ireland, as she was able to get dual citizenship.

[goat.livejournal.com]

also re: mom's side, I don't think my lineage goes back that far in the US, though I don't know when the families moved here. Probably late 1800s.

[doctordidj.livejournal.com]

I'm counting my grandparents' heavy Scots accent as English ... though some of my Brit friends might disagree, and some of my American friends couldn't understand them.

question one: "raised"

[cos]

We moved to the US shortly before I turned 7. I consider myself to have been "raised" equally here and not here, and I think picking one over the other (in either direction) would be misleading.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

It the first part more than one of these applies. My dad moved to the U.S. as an adult, but one side of my mother's family had been here since probably the Mayflower and definitely the one of the very early European immigrant boats. (It's harder to trace female ancestors than I thought; they often disappear in the records, going from incompletely named child to incompletely named wife.)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Sounds like "My American lineage goes back further than that." applies in that case.

(I felt like I tried really hard to make it clear, but clearly I didn't do well enough. :)

Have you put a lot of effort into tracing, or was that something someone else in your family did?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

My mother's parents were both born in Germany and lived there until adolescence. I believe all of my father's grandparents were born in the US.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

To be clear, that means your lineage "goes further back than that," since your parents (or grandparents) were not the first in your lineage raised in the US.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

One quarter from Scottish descent that has been here since the late 1600s, one quarter Polish 2nd gen, and half Italian 1st gen. Sadly I have no idea about my grandmother's parents, but have more details on the other three quarters than anyone would care to hear.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

I was born and raised elsewhere but was a US citizen from birth, hence "None."

The maternal and paternal sides of my family are polar opposites. On the maternal side, I'd be the first to be raised speaking English. But on the paternal side, I'd be the first to be raised speaking Spanish. Since they were all English speakers going who knows how far back, "grandparents" seemed the appropriate response.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Heh. I have sufficiently good genealogical data (back to France and England, including legitimate DAR eligibility, on my Mother's side) that I haven't even read all of it. (My stepmom has done all the work on my father's side, where German is a lot closer). Although it always weirds me out that the only people who can correctly spell my last name without prompting are Texan or English.

(Seriously - when I go to the UK and hand them my US passport, the nice people with Her Majesty's Customs Service say 'Welcome home, Mr <lastname>')