Because the ex-Kiwi had ancestors who came here in the early 1600s etc...
My gg grandfather left here (Canada) and went to NZ...
We had his Bible that contain some of his family history so we knew that we came from the US...
All I did was come back home...
Kind of like someone from here visiting Ireland to see where their forebears were from...
My Dutch Walloon new home and lands seeking ancestors arrived in NYC instead of Virginia in 1623..
My English settler ancestors arrived in Boston with Governor Wintrop in 1630..
My French Huguenot refugee ancestors arrived in NYC in 1685
My Palatine German tar for sealing English ships making ancestors arrived in the Albany area in 1710
My Irish indented servant ancestors arrived in the Albany area to work on the Livingston Manor in 1720...
My American ancestors fled north in 1776 to be among the first settlers in the newly formed country of Upper Canada under English rule...
My English ancestors who were on one of the “First Four Ships” (equal to the Mayflower in pomp and importance) arrived in Canterbury, New Zealand in 1850
The only daughter of that family on that ship married my Canadian/American ancestor whose 4 grandparents and mother were all born in the US to American parents....
My gg grandparents...
My families were among the first to the US, Canada, and New Zealand...
:)
Fascinating history!
I’ve often hiked in a former hamlet about 1 hour north of NYC that was settled by Huguenots prior to independence(Doodletown, NY - now abandoned, but the cemeteries are still there). Part of my family is from Quebec; they’re Catholic, arriving sometime I believe in the early 1900’s. Canada is beautiful to visit, but I couldn’t take the weather there (summer is too short, winter too long, and nights are cold even in the summer). It was great 15 years ago, when US$100 got you C$150+; now they are pretty much on par.
A co-worker visited distant relatives in Ireland at the height of their economic boom; people were wary of them until they were convinced they weren’t trying to press legal claims for family lands (at which point they were quite welcoming).
Can you claim NZ citizenship? I know they’re pretty selective about getting in, and I didn’t know if you had a “golden ticket”.