Week 26: Identity — I Seek Dead People

I am one of more than 27 million Americans who claim “English” identity. As the following charts from Ancestry illustrate, only a smattering of my DNA is identified with any place other than the British Isles – and most of that is English. My paternal grandmother’s ancestors came to America from Germany in the 1730s, but their descendants married people of English descent for the most part. One line on my mother’s side came from Germany at about the same time, but also intermarried with people with English roots. My mother’s earliest immigrant ancestors came to New Amsterdam from Holland and Germany in the 1640s, but, once again, they intermarried mostly with people of English ancestry, so any other ethnicity was overcome by the sheer Englishness of my family tree.

Week 26: Identity