Dudes claiming they are "old stock" or "heritage" Americans. They'll even call other white people who's ancestors weren't here before the Civil War "ellis islanders" and invaders.
As someone who's ancestry has partially been here since the 1690s.. it's a crock of shit and silly as fuck.
I had no idea it was possible to trace one's family that far back unless you're some kind of royalty or aristocrat.
It can happen if they literally just posted up somewhere and haven't left. Gets hard to keep track if the family branches off and moves around though.
Yeah my family was nothing special (I think my first ancestor over here was a blacksmith lol) I am lucky in that they were scotch irish and fervent presbyterians and early church records are some of the best ways to trace your ancestry.
Scots-Irish. Scotch is a drink. Unless you mean they were Irish but loved Scottish whisky.
Yeah I've seen it said before. Just in america scotch is often used, so I'm used to using that terminology.
fair, and of course it could be argued that that usage is common enough in America that it's valid American-English.
But if you go to Ireland or especially Scotland, and talk about Scotch-Irish, people will either mock you openly or keep it politely to themselves and silently judge you ;). All they'll hear is "I'm whisky-Irish".
Or you come from a country with records. I have ancestry traced back that far, and not an aristocrat among them.
It's actually really easy. Familysearch.com or Findagrave.com are decent resources
As I said other people have often already done the work for you too. With sources and everything
1650s here on the paternal side. Ancestor was a contracted farmworker when he immigrated. The last name is fairly uncommon, which makes tracing the history easier.
Mind you, often when people talk about tracing family back to that era or even earlier, it doesn’t mean that they have a full tree with every relative listed out. It means they found one path up the tree that leads back to an ancestor with a well-documented lineage.
Depends on the records kept by the family. Late 1690s, early early 1700s is fairly easy if records were kept and is not all that far fetched. I'm fortunate in that my family were indeed "old stock" and the records in that regard are fairly easy to find. As long as you're willing to do the research (and quite often other people have already done it for you i.e visited cemtaries and looked at early church records)
The most I've found is stuff from 100 years ago but it's spotty at best. Further back gets difficult because of that.
There's lots of places that have surviving records of births, marriages and deaths of commoners stretching that far back and often further than that. For instance most Icelanders have genealogical records dating back to the settlement of Iceland in the early middle age.
Also, the longer back you go, the sheer number of ancestors means that the likelihood increases of one of them being a nobleman whose genealogy would be much better documented than that of a peasant.
When your family line is a bunch of bhen-chods its easy to keep track of your lineage.