Your immigrant roots...

Katek re your comment about the black hair, pale skin and light eyes of your DDs (pretty girls), the true Celtic blood tends to show itself in Ireland as red or auburn hair, pale eyes and light skin. Interestingly, the combination of dark hair and light eyes is quite common in Ireland, but is attributed to interbreeding with the Spaniards from the Armada, shipwrecked off the NW Coast as they fled the English. It is a colouring that is more common in the West of Ireland.

What an interesting combination of immigrants we all are!

My girls.

I never knew ex husband's family history as his father was adopted but one of his sisters was quite oriental with black hair and almond eyes. This colouring has been passed down to our daughters who both have extremely dark hair, pale skin and very striking pale grey eyes. In fact a visitor to dd2's school recognised her from many years previously by her eyes! I don't know if this colouring is indicative of Celtic genes. As for dh and ds their story can be traced to the 1600's and involves Kristallnacht and rescued children. A very long story.

My mum has four grandsons - three with red hair
One is married to a Finn and they have two red headed sons
One is married to an Indian and they have a son and daughter
One is married to an English girl whose parents live in Spain and they live in Perth Australia
One is unmarried so far but has an Italian girlfriend.
She is a very proud Granny.

Yes, Gagagran, I do. My head is definitely not on my shoulders!

Re Lenny Henry - yes, he's lovely but I wish the Premier Inns would stop using him in their ads - it makes their rooms so much more expensive than they used to be!

Can't wait to watch the film inspired by Lenny Henry's childhood- in the days when being a black immigrant to the UK was still very difficult. I just love Lenny. At 9pm on BBC1.

Lona Thank you. I think so too but I am a bit biased!!

Absent [shock} indeed!

I find ancestry fascinating and it's interesting hearing your stories. I traced my paternal ancestry back to the 1800s and no-one had moved from this small area of Yorkshire. I recently had a DNA test when Ancestry.com had an offer on and I am 100% European, mainly Scandinavian. So that's a bit boring. I would love to know what my husband's ancestry is as he and my daughter have really dark, almost black, hair with fair skin and blue/grey eyes. We think his maternal grandfather was Jewish, but the colouring comes from his father whose family as far as we traced seems to have lived in the Midlands and Yorkshire going back to the 1700s. Photos of his paternal grandmother show the same dark hair with quite big eyes that he and my daughter both have. My son is firmly of my colouring.

My maternal grandmother was from Jamaica; her father was of English origin and her mother (my GGM) was coloured. Her mother was probably of African descent but her father appears to have been a Sephardic Jew from Porugal. My maternal grandfather's mother was an Issacs (from Lowestoft!) so probably some Jewish blood there, too. On my father's side the families all seem to have been ag labs and small shopkeepers from Kent.

My DP's father's family was of German origin; they came over in the 1870s. They settled in Co Durham and married locals.

So my children are a right old mixture!

The sad thing about my Jamaican side is that my mother's sister, her only surviving relative, won't talk about her side of the family as she lived in the US for 40 years and any suspicion of 'coloured' blood was looked on with horror. Her Jamaican origins were kept well hidden.

The slightly amusing aspect of my family history is that my maternal gfather's family didn't take very kindly to the bride he brought back from the West Indies ('that nigger he married' ; she wasn't, she was just a bit darker skinned than them)) but one of his female cousins married an Indian lawyer..That really did cause an upset. (I'm not too proud of that bit of my family history.)

I also find all this apologising for slavery very difficult to cope with as I have a bit of slave and master in me...

German & French/Swiss Huguegnots on mum's side.
Cornish on dad's side. I feel more Cornish as I have the same blood group and colouring as dad.

Do you have a tendency to lose your head henetha? If so, yes probably!

There is a persistent story in our family that my maternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Howard, could trace her ancestry right back to the Howards of Norfolk, of which Catherine Howard was part. She, of course, was one of the wives of Henry V111.
Does this make me royal?

Only immigrant in my family is my PGF who came from Anglesey in North Wales and married my PGM in South Wales , she was born in South Wales

My MGF and MGM were first cousins (their mothers were sisters) and were Irish immigrants in the 1800s. I am named after my MGF's Mother (my GGM)

My PGF was a Yorkshire farmer with a long line which my Dad traced back to minor gentry who fought for Charles I in the Civil War. My PGM was a school teacher who had to resign on marriage. Her Father (my GGF) was born in poverty in Norfolk and the whole family went to work in the cotton mills in Lancashire from the workhouse. GGF was only 7 when he was working in the mill but he learned to read and write at a Methodist Sunday School and ended up as Clerk to the Education authority in a Yorkshire Town Borough. I am very proud of him.

We are all such a hybrid mix of our ancestors. I wonder what our descendants will take from us?

My mother was German, married my father in '47 when I was on the way! He was working in Hamburg at the time. My late (English) aunt did their fathers family tree and they seem to be English from Cumbria. who ended up in Yorkshire. Would love to know more about mothers' side but my German is v. poor and if you try online it's all about American based.

I am adopted & have no knowledge of my birth family. However my adoptive mother came from immigrant Italian stock if I remember correctly some time in the 1800's. Her family name was changed from their Italian one by one of her grandfathers when he decided to buy out his employers building business & rather than lose customers by having an obviously immigrant name changed it to that of his employer. I know there was two sides of the family that split apart in the late 19th/early 20th century, but I have since met a distant cousin from the 'other side' so to speak.

I remember my adoptive father being contacted by, I think, HMRC, or it might have been a lawyer, about the estate of a cousin of his who died intestate with a reasonable size estate. That way he gained some cousins he didn't know about & was put back in contact with some he had lost contact with. There was a copy of his family tree which I remember seeing but not sure who has it now, whether its my older brother or my mother, who is still going strong at 95 years old young!

I am fascinated by the Dupeytren syndrome...... anyone suffering who definitely KNOWS their blood group may want to give me a shout and I will explain a trial they could carry out. {
No fee at all.}

Penstemmon Someone, I think.

What an interesting thread. I've done a lot of family tree research and discovered that I have French ancestors (Huguenot, I think). DH, who has proud Cornish ancestry found that he also has Scandinavian blood, including a several times great grandmother who was a Swedish white witch and whose son founded Stockholm, with a statue in that city to prove it.

Maggiemaybe - I also had an op for Dupeytren's a couple of years ago and was told the same thing, ie about the Viking blood. Unfortunately (and off thread, sorry) my op (injection, actually) only lasted about 18 months and is now as bad as ever.

My mother had surgery to correct her Dupuytren's, hildajenniJ, and was also told that this proved that she had Viking blood (also from North East England). Much to her disgust, Margaret Thatcher had her op for the same condition the same week - my mum hated the fact that they'd something in common! I also have grandfathers with the most Welsh and Scottish names imaginable, so know where else I'm from.

DH, we thought, was descended from a Catholic martyr and minor gentry in North Yorkshire. Till we discovered that his Great Grandfather was a foundling, one of two babies left together on a doorstep. DH and two of my children have black hair and my DD2 has very dark eyes. It'd be interesting to find out what their heritage is.

Oh! that sounds really interesting to find ..if a little concerning... that someone/thing had consumed your ancestor.

Penstemmon Your daughters are so beautiful!

absent That's horrible! I was going to say... Food for thought, but I won't!

Ancestry and tribal affiliation are central to Maori culture and we were having a fairly random discussion about our ancestry during the coffee break at my Maori language class last week. One friend, who has mainly Maori and some European ancestors and who is a little younger than I am, shocked us all by explaining how she was officially "categorised" when she was a school child. She was classed as – without any background research and to her complete confusion – only one-quarter Maori and thus not a "proper" Maori. This must have been in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The arrogance of those responsible defies belief.

She also shocked and amused us by describing a private visit to Te Papa Tongarewa ("The Place of Treasures of This Land), the national museum and art gallery of New Zealand in Wellington. She has what could be described as aristocratic Maori lineage and was given access to documents about her ancestors. Where cause of death was listed "eaten" was inscribed for at least two members of her family.

My PGM was Palestinian from Nazareth. We have a copy of her family tree..done differently from Europe as it is done like tree rings..it goes back many generations..but all in Arabic and only for sons Not sure if Jesus is on there though but I was always proud as a child to know Grandma came from the same place as Jesus! However the 'tree' does not go back as far as the Crusades when the fair hair/blue eyed Palestinians got their genes from .. my grandma was that colouring.

My PGF came from Darlington. His GGF was a miller.

My MGM was also from the NE of England as was my MGF whose GGF was a sweep.
I think there was Celtic blood somewhere on mum's side as the bright red hair of my mother and her two sisters with their blue/green eyes was a bit of a give away.

On my DH side my BiL has done lots of genealogical research and paid about£100 for a DNA analysis to discover Persian (Iranian) genes. This may account for his two brothers' & his sister's dark hair, eyes and colouring but not DH's red hair and hazel eyes! Not sure if the Persian genes were from his mum or dad..suspect dad but not sure!

My two DDs appearance represent both these contrasting sets of GGPs and gene pools. One is red haired, fair skinned and blue eyed & the other dark haired, brown eyes and olive skinned!