Where are your people from?

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A large portion of Cape Breton Island was settled by these "displaced" people. Add to those numbers the expulsion of the Acadians(in the USA they're called Cajuns), a small number of freed slaves from the southern US, a ton of Irish who came during the potato famine, the United Empire Loyalists after 1776 and you can see what the population of Cape Breton Island is composed of.

Sounds like a fascinating group of people there...

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Excellent posts! Again, don't know much about my mom's mom's folks, but I think my grandma's maiden name was Steele (German) and folks tell me that I look exactly like the Steeles. My grandpa (or in Arabic, Jidi (Jiddy)) came over from Syria in about 1914. He was 17 years old and wanted to fight in WW1 for the U.S. He didn't get to serve (I think he must missed it). His name was Muhammad Harb (or Hamad = David). Feisty little guy... he was five foot four, tops, but he was one tough cuss. Learned the language and worked his ass off all his life to get his family started. Worked on the construction crews that built Hopkins Airport in Cleveland. Gave up his lunch on Friday's so that his kids could have treats like the other kids when he got home. Worked for Minihaha water, where he carried those water jugs up stairs on his back. That's where he met my dad, and introduced him to my mom. We hear tell that he had a large tract of land in Syria when he left, but he was bound and determined to move to the United States. The place where he lived has since been converted to Lebanon, probably via some sort of splitting of the lands by Britain or some imperial power. His religion was Druze... sort of half Christian and half Islamic, if I understand it right. Over the years you would hear about "Druze Militiamen" during coverage of the Lebanese conflicts in the early 80s. He was one of those guys. Told tales of great libraries destroyed by invading Crusaders, etc. Always fascinating. My dad's parents (Turaski or Turajski, depending on who you talked to) were typical big northeastern industrial city Polish. My grandma was strict and VERY Catholic, my grand dad was a little easier to get along with. I was there every Sunday after church for the typical Sunday dinner. But my dad died when I was 10 and his being sort of the black sheep of the family, we didn't have much more contact with them after that. Fred Pratt was my step dad. Great guy. Irish by way of France, so the story goes of his ancestry. His great uncle was the legendary horror star Boris Karloff (William Charles Pratt). I still correspond with Boris' daughter now and then via email. Both my dads died three days apart in 1968, Fred Pratt on Dec 22 from the Hong Kong Flu and Julius Andrew Turaski on Christmas morning, from injuries suffered in a tavern altercation (that's another thread). That left my mom and seven, count 'em, seven kids from 20 years (my older sister) to zero years old. In fact, my younger brother Fred was born on January 15, 1969... his dad missed him by less than a month. Mom pulled us all up out of the inner city and on our way. Hers is a story worthy of a book. I should get busy on that. bp

[pro70z28]

German / Norwiegian background here. Grandparents (both sides) would speak in German when the kids weren't suppose to hear to the conversation.

[flyinhillbilly]

mostly native american here, don't know much about the rest of me, mutt i guess

[BlownGoat]

Largest part's of my family boodline are Native American (Cherokee) and Irish. I believe there's a tad of German mixed in there as well. No wonder I use to drink a lot when I was younger

[Hox]

A great uncle traced our family lineage back to the late 1400's if you can believe it. He had the extensive document printed out, and most of it is pretty interesting.
My surname is Welsh in origin, and a forefather emigrated as a bondsman - he traded his boat ticket for seven years of servitude.
Once freed, he married and his oldest son served in Washington's Continental Army at Valley Forge (the DOD still had his pay records).
He then became a doctor and signed the Declaration of Independence. (Richard Pile)
During the Civil War two brothers of my family served as spies on opposite sides. The one spying for the South was caught and hanged.
Had a young cousin killed at the Alamo, and another was hanged in New Mexico for horse thievery.
My great, great, great uncle was head of the Philadelphia Railroad (I still have his trunk), his son married and moved to Kansas, and became the first school teacher in Sedgwick County, later the first Asst. Postmaster of Wichita.
By now we're within the last hundred years, and there are lots of keepsakes, books, pictures, letters, news articles, etc. in the railroad trunk to support the story.
Needless to say, all the grandkids, nephews, and nieces have used the contents for school reports. I just record any additions or changes as someone is born, dies, marries, etc. Gonna need another trunk soon!
Mom's side is all hillbillies, and there's not much but family bibles, a box of pictures, and lots of stories from the oldsters - we tried to write some of it down.

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That's cool stuff, Hox. I find genealogy fascinating. Wish I had more time. I'm interested in these new DNA tests that can trace your genetic makeup and supposedly, tell you where your original ancestors came from, thousands of years ago. Pretty cool stuff. bp

[jim sanders]

great post Hox.... interesting to say the least !!

[stimpy]

seams to be alot of us Welshmen here , have another one, my family surname comes from keepers of the spirits and stores (Spencer) the family was brought here by the English crown when Georgia was a prison colony , we had one get beheaded when he tried to leave , after the revolution the family moved west thru Alabama and Mississippi up thru Tennessee and Kentucky into SW Iowa in the process my family was on both sides of the civil war , one of the great X2 aunts married one of the Webster boys ( I think it was Noah ) the writer of the dictionary , but my great grandfather was an owner of one of the largest grain elevators in SW Iowa (Creston area) till the great depression then the family lost it all , my grandfather came to Chicago in 1939 after getting some college , By the mighty CB&Q RR and settled in Hegwish and worked as a Machinist at aircraft gear corp (Bedford park ) making bull gears for aircraft engines till the war , he married his High school sweetheart ( grandma was a RN from st Joesph school of nursing St Joe Mo .) and went into the us army air corp and was to be a tail-gunner but by some fate his superiors found out he had some clerical skills and instantaneously grew 4 inches now making him too tall to be a gunner , after WWII he returned to Chicago to get a job At Ford motor company new jet engine facility and wound up instead as a clerk in HR at the Torrance assembly division , he went to school at nights at Northwestern university and wound up working at ford till 1972 when he had a major heart attack , he was given apx 1 year to live so he opted for the experimental open heart surgery 28 bypasses and 18 years later he passed 3 weeks shy of his 51st wedding anniversary my dads side of the family is very tight nit their where 9 kids , 32 grand-kids ,12 great grand kids and 1 great great , when grandma passed in 1995 my youngest uncle is only 5 years older than me and we are more like brother s than uncle/nephew . my moms side of the family is not clear except they come from southern Indiana and my grandma is Irish and Indian ( Delaware) , I don't know that much about my real grandfather except he worked at the arsenal in southern Indiana , my grandfather ( the one who I know as grandpa ) is Irish and Indian (Miami) also , and his dad was a stone cutter at the famous oolitic stone quarries in oolitic Indiana and he died of cutters lung(silicosis of the lungs ) in 1944 , my grand father worked at oolitic till WWII then was a chemical warfare person in Europe ( was at Normandy on D-day , his boat almost got run over buy a ship when the motor stopped ) and when he came back married my grandma and went to work at the quarries as a blaster 9 the guy who drils the holes and sets the charges to move the blocks ,till he got a job driving truck hauling the limestone blocks to Chicago , he quit that moved to south bend Indiana and worked construction for some years in and around Chicago ( helped build the sanitation plant in Stickney Ill and parts of O'Hare field ) then moved back to Indiana and started farming popcorn till the bust in 1984 and lost the farm to the bank , hes still around (84-85 years old) and is in great health and still active loves retirement , they had 3 kids 2 girls and one boy My uncle Mike was Killed in action in Vietnam(Bihn Long 6-17-67 ) when his howitzer cooked a charge and exploded killing him and his crew , as for me I am one of two , my Older brother ( by 4 years ) lives in Oklahoma and works As a pipeline welder after working for Microsoft for 10 years as a code writer ( helped write the code for 95,98 and XP) he has 2 children Jeff 16 and Ashley 13 as for me No kids so it ends here . I have the whole Spencer genealogy that my grandfather researched and later was published and is supposedly to be in the library of congress (that I was told by my uncles) OK you can wake up NOW.. so to make it short I am Welsh , dutch (thru grandma Spencer) Irish and native american , so I dig peat moss ,watch he booze the irish side wants to consume and the indian side can't tollerate, and then want to sell it at a profit to the irish side .

[Lippy]

These are very interesting to say the least.