interesting read and thank you
You’re welcome. If you want to do a genealogy study, hopefully, you’ll find overlapping records, one to confirm another. I had several crazy great-aunts who helped. Had to weed through their penchants for finding rich, famous ancestors or ancestors of particular breeds, but some bits and pieces of their collections were also true and helpful. Even found a missing Chief (Cherokee) that they tried to hide. Great-grandma showed me the shocking tintypes (or whatever they were called) of a whole bunch of his descendents—her aunts, uncles and cousins, she said. Such scandal! He was learned and kind of relatively wealthy, unlike the one they tried to hide on my dad’s side (one Cherokee among some Irish relatives).
That “first ancestor” was only the first with my surname—one of a huge number. Sounds vainglorious and all of that, but really, we Americans with any who landed that early are Heinz 57s (little cliche there), big time. Most of us (even without very early American ancestors) are mixes of many races and descended from many nationalities. Consider only 40 generations and how many men and women came before you. For one example, the traces of east Asian ancestry in many Germanic folks...huge! English, having been invaded by Romans, Saxons, Norman and how many others? And French, with their reputation and travels around the world. And Dutch. [Little mischievous and pot-stirring humor there for all of the beloved crazy aunts in our lives.]
Oops...meant to write 20 generations for roughly 400 years.