Me being an inquisitive little devil I got to thinking again.
As I doodled away drawing matchstick men and girls on a piece of paper (not as good as Lowry, but I live in hope) whilst waiting for my digestive juices to awaken; I thought to myself a somewhat profound thought....Where do we all come from?
No I wasn't being all religious or Steven Hawkingish, I was just wondering where all us girls on BCTS came from, location wise. It would be interesting to know. I come from England, but I have Irish and Scottish blood, so I always was a crazy mixed up kid. I know some girls come from Wales, a lot come from the good old US of A. Some come from Canada ( do Canadians like the USA and visa versa? Is there a rivalry of some sort?)... What about Australia and NZ, how many come from there?
Perhaps there are girls from Hawaii, Norway, Iceland or Wagga Wagga, mind you, thinking about that, I think that is in Australia; geography was never my strong point. How about Tibet or Iraq...maybe some girls are from India or China. It would be interesting to find out how universal our little corner of the web is. Perhaps Erin or Bob Arnold have stats to show how universal our little home on the web is?
Enough rambling...back to my best friend Cliff Hanger......
Sue
Comments
By jove another Brit............
.......... Lets break out the Tea n Scones :P
It's Funny, I was wondering this the other day as well, Myself I'm a Brit of English (Definitly), Scotish(Must be some in there somewhere, I'm a red head), Canadian (Gran was born there to an english mum)heritige, So I'm a right old mix.
So thats Britain 2 ROTW 0
Sam
Welsh - is there anything else?
Actually yes, my mum was a Scot - apparently a direct descendant of King Robert Bruce. It's okay, you don't have to bow all the time.
Angharad.
Angharad
The Bruce huh...
“A Johnny come lately...†whispered Annette under her breath as she curtsied to the glorious Princess Angharad.
The Scotts got around, even those of us who are children of the mist (Despite Them!).
I’m also of (in decreasing amounts) English, German, Swiss, French & Cherokee descent and for quite a number of years have lived in the state of confusion… No, I mean New Jersey. (Okay, maybe that’s the same thing, but my kids contributed to the confusion!)
Since others have put more detail in, I guess I can edit this and add a few places I've lived (for more than a month): Monterey, California; Kodiak, Alaska (both territory & State); New London, Connecticut; Norfolk, Virginia; Monterey again; Guam; Jacksonville (beaches area), Florida; Bellevue, Nebraska; Mississippi; Rochester, New York; Argentina; Pensacola, Florida; Back to Rochester; back to Norfolk; Back to Rochester; Boston, Massachusettes; and Now northern New Jersey. I've touched all but a dozen of the states, and overnighted, at least in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, BC & the Yukon over the years when visiting our northern neighbors. I've also at least over-nighted in: Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Italy, Monaco, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, England, Panama Antigua & Japan... This has also contributed to my state of confusion... I can't imagine why. But, folks DO get upset with me when they ask me where I'm from, and I ask them when...
Annette
Well Sue, Since You Asked :-)
I am from Alabama: deep in the Heart of Dixie { That's the South) Thee are a few other authors here from America, I don't know about any rivalries other than between college teams.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Mostly English
with Cherokee, Scots, Welsh, Irish and German for sure, possibly Dutch, French, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Potawatomie, African, Muskegee and Swedish.
The Scots came to America from Ireland and the Bavarian Germans came from France via the Netherlands, so things were a little mixed up before they even got here. :) The Cherokee is certain, the other Indian tribes are guesses about supposedly half-Indian ancestors. Swedish and Muskegee are just guesses -- my Dad's first name was either Muskegee or Swedish and no one knows which. :) There's a possibility that some of the half-Indian predecessors may have had a drop or two of African ancestry.
According to family legend, one of my great grandmothers was almost Canadian, she was born on the ferry between Michigan and Ontario. :)
In other words: I'm purebred American. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
The Great Melting Pot
I'm not a girl, but I guess I can answer, anyhow. (I'd be willing to try if it were possible, but I haven't seen any girls-only water parks or weird magic shops in the mall; and I'm too old to come down with MORFS {which is due for its first case in about three months})
Anyhow, I'm English, Irish, German, French, and maybe Polish (hard to tell due to border changes.) That's why I can't get along with myself. ;-)
I live in Michigan, USA, which is right smack-dab in the middle of the Great Lakes. Look for this mitten-shaped peninsula, and that's about 2/3 of the state.
There isn't much rivalry between the US and Canada, though there are some political differences. Of course, we have political differences with most of the rest of the world, so what's new? LOL
Southern Fried
South I say! Deep south American flavored that is. Scot on one side with good ole American mixture of everything else on the other. French, English, Cherokee, Irish, and goodness knows whatever else. :)
hugs!
grover
PS: On a side note I was going to say born and raised in rural South Carolina, but after thinking about it, Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, Poul Anderson, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Andre Norton and of course Jack L Chalker among others had a little to do with the my raising too. Go figure.
I Am An American With Scottish Blood
I was born in the USA, but I have Scottish blood in both sides of my family tree. My surname is Campbell and my Maternal grandmother is a Macaulay. We attend the Highland Games every chance we can. I am very proud of my heritage.
Hugs,
Jen
Just British, I guess.
English in particular. No idea of my ancestry and not been interested enough to find out but, like most white Englishmen, probably a bit of a mongrel. Both my grandfathers were born in around 1860 and both died just after the war (circa 1945). I can just remember them both. One was a watchmaker and the other an engine driver, who, I'm told, drove the relief train into Ladysmith during the Boer war. That's it.
It's interesting (slightly :) ) that because my father re-married and started a new family after my mother's death in 1944 I tend not to appear in official records. So I'm sort of stealth. I only found out when my half brother's wife started getting into genealogy and couldn't find me.
Geoff
Where, indeed
I'm American by birth, though I lived abroad as a child, as did my wife. When we travel overseas people we meet for some reason usually assume we're Canadian (or, if they haven't heard us speak, Irish). We generally don't bother correcting them; I like Canada just fine, eh? I'm technically part Canadian anyway, my great-great-grandfather having been born in Canada (near-ish Horseshoe Falls) shortly after his parents arrived from Ireland and a few years before they moved to Illinois around the start of the American civil war.
Americans like to identify ourselves by where our ancestors came from--I guess because we have relatively little history of our own as yet ("400 years? Pfeh, some of my kitchen appliances are older than that," I can hear some folks across the pond sneering). Ancestrally, I'm (in approximate order of proportions, like the ingredients on a food label) Irish, English, Scottish (both directly and "by way of Ireland"), and Danish, with less than 2% each of Welsh, German, French, probably Swiss, and possibly Dutch--that I'm aware of. My wife has a similar mixture, a bit heavier on the Scottish and Swiss, along with Ojibwe (from Canada), French-Canadian, and probably Choctaw.
When not living abroad I grew up in the Great Lakes area--Illinois and Michigan. My mom's family were Mormon pioneer stock, a mixture of relatively recent immigrants and the descendants of Connecticut Yankees and Pilgrims. My dad's non-Irish side, I've recently discovered, migrated to Illinois via Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and includes an honest-to-gosh Forty-Niner who made a fortune in the California gold rush--by actually finding gold, not selling marked-up equipment and supplies to miners (as most such fortunes were made).
In other words, as Erin put it, purebred American. :)
I never know what to say when people ask where I'm "from." So this is the long answer. Where I am now is a bit easier--Seattle.
P.S. Angharad, my wife is descended directly from Robert the Bruce as well so I guess that makes you distant cousins. Turns out I'm descended from Edward I of England myself. I hope you won't hold that against me....
A little of everything
My father's side of the family is Italian. My mother's maternal side Scottish and Irish. Paternal side mostly German with a touch of Dutch.
My wife is from the Philippines. Two of our three living children are full Filipino(We adopted Carl and Jennibeth).
I live in Florida USA but like a great many Floridians I was born elsewhere. New York in my case. I lived in NY from 1961-76 in FL from 1976 to 1979, spent ten years in the navy, when that was over I returned to Florida in 1989 and have been living here ever since.
While I was in the Navy I was stationed in FL, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida, Washington DC(but lived in Maryland), California, and the Philippines. I've set foot if ever so briefly in a few cases, in all 50 states. Plus I've traveled to Canada, Philippines, Mexico, China(hong kong), Singapore, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, England, The Netherlands, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. Now some of my readers may now understand why my stories read like a travelogue sometimes. :)
Danielle
Einstein described insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the result to change. Was Albert a reader of TG fiction then?
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
I'm from Boston
Hi! My mom's from the Portland ME area and is English, Welsh, and Norwegian. Her dad's name was Pierce and her mom's dad's was Garland.
My dad was from Arkansas and spent some of his time growing up in Kentucky. He's English, Scots, Scots-Irish, maybe some Irish and Native American. His last name was Gregg; his mom's dad's was Paine. Gregg is some off-shoot (?) of McGregor. He told his kids that he was a direct descendant of Patrick Henry, who apparently had 13 kids (increases the probability, I guess). Some Gregg married some Henry in the 1840's
The mental illness is from my mom's family. She had a brother and an uncle who committed suicide, and she had/has various problems. From family tales, it seems that men in my dad's family get Alzheimer's. My dad died of it, but his only brother out lived him and died of Melanoma.
I was born in Boston. My mom was a medical secretary. Mom and dad started living in AR and dad started U of AR after marriage. They lived in an aluminum trailer, no AC of course and my mom couldn't stand the heat. She miscarried twins a year or two before I was born. Many of her uncles were educators in the N.E. One, high up in Northeastern, (in Boston) pulled some strings and my dad, being pretty smart, transfered to MIT. The greater speed and depth of education was shocking, he said. With my mom pregnant again, working for a doctor and fearing miscarriage, I think she may have taken some DES to prevent miscarriage. That might be why I'm trans. My mom denied taking anything, but she was in denial about anything bad or embarrassing most of her life after recovering from depression when I was young. I think she literally forgot bad stuff about my childhood that I could remember.
OK; rambling again.
I grew up in Buffalo NY. I went to MIT and also lived in ME and CT before moving to Arizona in '79.
Hugs,
Renee
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Mom's Side Of The Family Is From Mass.
My mother was born in Malden, Mass. My grandmother,aunts, uncles and cousins still live in Mass and NH. My grandmother and great grandmother tried to join the DAR, but found out we are direct descendants of General Thomas Gage of the British Army. He was in charge of the force that occupied Boston during the Revolutionary War. Needless to say, that didn't work out LOL!
Keep Portland, Oregon Weird.
My descendants were in Northern Europe 15,000 years ago. (see the human genome project).
I am told that the Boucher's started out in Alsace (sp?), then went to Wales, then went to Eastern Virginia in 1635. On my Mother's side, she was a Webb, and I think that is English.
My family generally migrated across the US and wound up in California by 1918, where my mom was born. I am also told that if your family lived accross the South like we did, there is a pretty good likelihood of having Black blood, and I know that I have some Cherokee.
I know a woman in Texas who has researched all this so exhaustively. She seems to obsess about it. Very sweet woman though.
Many Blessings
Gwen
Where are we from ?
The Ignorant Idiot here;
( A RELUCANT, but UN-REPENTANT EVIL SHITE )
I myself, haveing recently move from the Tidewater of Virginia unto the middle of the
Carolinias, have found this serries of commentary most fascinating and enlighting.
I have duely noted the number of those who noted Scots-Irish as an ethnicty.
( I have no idea why, but I find the amount of claimants to of significance. )
As to some one who said they had a Webb in the background, You are most definately
of Scots-Irish herritage. There is the infamous Senator Jim Webb who wrote a history
of Scots-Irish and their effect of American and Southern history.
The origions of the Scots-Irish come from the " So Called " Middle Marches of England
and Scotland. Check the film BRAVEHEART, which gives verry basic history, The book
THE STEEL BONNETS by the late George McDonald Fraiser, ( OF Sir Harry Flashman fame. )
an an Osperry book entitled THE BORDER REAVERS for a bit more insight on the make up
of the ethnicty.
The whole Blog give witness to the specialness of the readership.
Not just as to the variety of people and locations from which they hail,
But to the variety of experience, intelect and Sprit. As well as that specialness we ALL share:
That special desire to experience that which is the other gender.
assimilated
Um, my Mom was German American from Brooklyn NY. My dad Italian American from Denver Colorado & Oklahoma (half the year, doing farm work. He sounded far more Oklahoman than "Italian"). She moved to Los Angeles to work in a defense plant, met him when he returned from the war in the Pacific. Got a house in the LA suburbs, had my sister and me (no, nothing like PLAY NICE, Allie's actually the responsible one...). The weird thing about growing up there & then was that ethnicity seemed to play very little part in anyone's lives, as long as you were approximately "white", people didn't much bring up ancestry. Jewish meant they had a different name for Christmas. "Polock" was something from jokes that didn't apply to your friend Don Grblznsky. Everybody seemed to model themselves as best as possible on the sitcom families of that era, the 50's & 60's. Although we ate a lot of spagetti, I only got that Italian meant anything in particular when I visited relatives in other places. People used the words that my Dad only did when he hit his thumb with a hammer. They had dead chickens hanging up in the butcher shop- how strange. And the tone had been set on my mom's side back in 1900 when some old family patriarch demanded that everybody speak English exclusively. It almost seems like generic America really only aquired a taste for heritage with the television production of Alex Haley's ROOTS. Suddenly everybody wanted to get a sense of "where they were from". But actually,
my own cultural & ethnic identity is pretty much "third stone from the sun".
~~~hugs, Laika
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Gaelic Girl
Hi
Thought I'd throw in my penny's worth.
Scottish born, with Scottish, Irish and a touch of Norwegian ancestry (what a mix).
Currently living in Wales.
How's that for a feisty celtic girl?
Misty
The Ignorant Idiot here
The Ignorant Idiot here again!
A few years ago, back when I was suscribing to Transgender Forum,
Some one conducted a survey on just who and what and how old was enjoying
the site.
One of the results I observed over a several year period was that the
readership tended to be older. ( Around or over 40ish. )
I belive the same applys to this site.
This is significant, as WHERE ARE THE 20-28 somethings and what are the
TG doing on the web?
I believe that this is VERY IMPORTANT as, It"s GREAT that we're all over
the place and international, BUT WHY ARE WE SO OLD ?
Now, as then, I am concerned for the preservation of Trans Gender Culture
and OUR beautiful HERITAGE of the LITERATURE we have created out of our collective
Pain, Misery and Great desires.
One More...
I'm a third-generation San Franciscan on my dad's side.
Mom was born in Boston; her parents came from Poland, though her father, who left home in his teens, lived in Palestine for a few years around 1920. (Apparently we still have distant cousins in the ultra-religious community in Jerusalem.) My dad's father was in the import-export business, with extended family in the Philippines, Japan (Nagasaki) and China (Shanghai) back around the turn of the last century and for a couple of decades after that. There's a Turkish passport in a family collection for my grandfather's father, and his father's tombstone here in San Francisco says that he comes from "Fedos I.", which we've concluded is the Isthmus of Feodosia around the Black Sea, now part of Ukraine. My dad's mother was born in Russia, or in Russian-controlled Belarus.
Eric
English
I have enjoyed reading the comments posted, concerning where we come from.
I was born in Hampshire and, even after all these years i now live only a mile from my birth place. As you would expect there is plenty of English on both sides of my family, with a little Irish mixed in as well. On my mothers side there is talk of at least one who came from France. Perhaps that explains why i do the ferry trips to France so often, i thought it was just for the wine.
I enjoy watching the BBC series ' Who do you think you are?' This programme explores the family tree of celebrities.If you get a chance to see it please do. The recent one about Jerry Springer was so moving.
It is fascinating to learn the backgrounds of some of the contributers to this site.
Love to all
Anne G.
I'm also from Wales
Of course I mean Wales, Massachusetts, which oddly enough, has the exact same shape and topography as the land mass of Wales — only in miniature. (Our "Big Pit" for example, only goes 30 meters into the earth.)
My ancestry is nothing but Irish. Although — Ireland having been invaded by the world and his wife — I get my fair coloring from somewhere else. Of my grandparents, three were born in Ireland; only my mother's mother was born in the States, and *her* immigrant mother (who lived here) refused to speak English, regarding it as "a language only fit for pigs and dogs." (If that's so, I guess I'd rather be a dog.)
I've been living in Boston, Massachusetts for many years and can't imagine living elsewhere.
just yer average mongrel
Och aye, well that's me Dads side with a bit of English tossed in, but we don't talk about that. Of course scratch the surface who knows what mix you'd find. Mums side, hmm... English, with a bit of German, Czeck and Indian. I sulk now and then that I got all the Anglo genes, I wouldn't mind a pinch of that Indian skin. Anywho good ol Pater was an offshoot of the Clan Cameron out of Fort William. I hope I'm not feudin' with anyone. Of course having changed my family name to another Scots with the same letter I may well be feudin' with myself.
Late (er, as in recently, still even)of Sydney Australia. Someone has to hold the Southern Battlements.
Kristina
I'm an American, but...
I also might have just a touch of German or Swiss in me, from my paternal grandmother, but I don't like her anyways, so do I have to acknowledge it?
Myself, I grew up in Texas (Dallas and Houston) after coming back to the States when I was like a yearling. Then spent stints in California, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and now currently in Kentucky. Though I am planning to move to Florida or something pretty soon. I guess that's enough boredom and now back to regularly scheduled entertainment.
Samirah M. Johnstone
Robert The Bruce Got Around, Didn't He?
It would seem I'm related to half of BC on my father's side. Of course (sneer) we can trace our family back to Malcolm. My father, who was noted for not telling terminological inexactitudes, also used to insist that we had Moorish and Spanish blood from shipwrecked survivors of the Armada and Norse ancestors too. Naturally I believed every word he said. After all he was my dad and passed on his penchant for veracity to me.
My mother's side is far simpler. Pure Cockney except for a Russian-Jewish great-grandfather and maybe a smidgen of Irish (but we didn't talk about that). Now just to complicate matters I migrated to Australia over forty years ago and that's where my heart is, except for the fact that I have since lived at times in Papua-New Guinea, Fiji, Hong Kong and Singapore. I'll stop there, because if I mentioned all the places that I have worked in or visited it would look like I was bragging,
Joanne
Mostly Scandihoovia
Not a girl, or wish to be one, but I thought I'd chime in. I was born and raised in the Pacific NW of the U.S. As a merchant seaman, I've traveled alll over the world on tramp freighters, tankers and container ships. My dad was from Yorkshire, of English and Danish stock. My mom is Swedish and Finnish, so that makes me 3/4 squarehead.
Yah shoor, Ya betcha!
Mister Ram
German, both sides
I'm from Germany on both my Dad's and Mom's sides of the family; Her family name was Hess (great-grandfather or so came over in the 1880's, '90's or 1900's or some such- and that's all we know) and Dad's side of the family came from northern Germany near Aachen or thereabouts. Many members of Mom's side of the family are now dead (as is my Mom). Most of Dad's family lives in southern Illinois. Mom, Dad, my sister Nancy and I went over to Europe in fall 1999 on a reunion tour of the path his Army division (long live the 89th! Rolling W RULES!) 89th Infantry Division Website took across France, Luxembourg, and Germany. Yes, Dad's a WW2 veteran and he and I are proud of it. The tour itself did not cover where Dad's family came from, but we ducked off the tour at Nuremberg and rented a car to visit Aachen and the cemetery in the Netherlands where four of his platoon's men were. They, along with a combat engineer, drowned when the assault boat they were in crossing the Saale river in Germany swamped and everyone had to swim for it. One of the sad things about that incident is, one of the men who drowned had told Dad that he did not know how to swim. Conversely, Dad had taken swimming lessons up through lifesaving at university before the draft board tapped his shoulder.
Thanks for the opportunity to say where the family came from and how much I admire my Dad!
KR
If you want to know about me, not my Dad, email me: KR's Email
Good? Ol' South
Arkansas born and raised, though most people don't believe it when they hear me talk, since somewhere along the line I picked up just a bit too much 'valley girl' for my dad's liking.
Genealogically I know I have Irish, scottish, german, english, and cherokee, with rumors floating around that there may be a little Chickasaw and Jamaican in there too, though neither has been confirmed.
Melanie E.