01-14-2020, 03:21 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-14-2020, 03:25 PM by Eric the Green.)
(01-14-2020, 06:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(01-14-2020, 01:48 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I had a number of revolutionary war soldiers in my ancestry, and at least one civil war soldier. I am related distantly to Abe Lincoln. I don't know of any political leaders of those years in my ancestry. Most of my lines came to America from Britain in the 17th century; some German lines in the 1850s. Some French and Dutch earlier. None more recent. So I am an "American."
For a while I was into genealogy. Our ancestors include veterans of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, WW I, and WW2. We had a major line that settled in Hingham MA way back in the 1600s that is the best documented and populated. We are are all over the book History of Hingham. (One married couple had only one pair of grandparents between them. They sure had a smaller taboo against intermarrying back then.). I can match your distant kinship to Lincoln, and raise you four people who sailed on the Mayflower. (My nephew lives near Mordici Lincoln Street, a Lincoln ancestor who stayed in Scituate MA for a time.) Other French, Norwegian, and similar lines tend to end as they cross the Atlantic, truncating them. Each nationality seemed to stick among their own kind until 1900 or so, then seemed to intermarry among Europeans quite a bit, creating all those lines.
Anyway, I haven't identified as "American," but as purebred mongrel. Same thing?
See the Butlers of Brockton if you are really curious.
It just goes to show that those who question the authority of the Republicans are "Americans." My ancestors included Mayflower folks too. Mordecai Lincoln is my direct ancestor. No WWI or WWII soldiers, though; my father was a pacifist CO in the big one, and a co-founder of the first listener-supported radio station in the nation, KPFA (Pacifica Foundation).