Genealogy

I intend to have a page generated by my genealogy program sometime in the future but this will have to do for now. There is a table of ancestors here. Yes, I know it's not that easy to read. A little bit more information about my immigrant ancestors is here.

Also, here is a link to my Zehner Page. This page deals with only the Zehner part of my family tree.

Here is my blood quantum based on my immigrant ancestors. Everytime I try to figure it out the numbers change slightly. It depends on how confident I am about putting someone in the German category or back into the unknown category. Yes, I do think this is kind of a silly exercise. It's kind of meaningless when you think about it, but getting these numbers is probably one of the original reasons I started doing genealogy in the first place.

• German: These are ancestors who are known to be from a German speaking area. It also includes ancestors (mostly women) who are probably from a German area based on their family names, where they lived in the United States (often Pennsylvania "Dutch" country), or whom they married. They are all from the 1700s when marrying outside of their ethnic group or religion was rare, if for no other reason than there wasn't anyone outside their ethnic group or religion locally to marry!
• The French (Huguenots) actually emigrated from Germany. They were largely German speaking when they came to America.
• One ancestor maybe have been Sorbian and was almost certainly German in language and culture when he emigrated. And he may not have even been Sorbian. If he was, the family may have lost the language generations before emigration.
• The Irish were probably originally English or Scottish—let's say before the 1600s or so.
• The unknown ancestry is made up of people who were probably German or Scotch-Irish but this is pretty much a guess or I wouldn't be calling these people unknown!
• If one could go far enough back in the records, some of the Manx ancestors were from Iceland or maybe Norway. Of course, Iceland was originally colonized from (mostly) Norway to begin with.
• Many ancestors from Switzerland and southwest Germany may very well have been Celtic way, way back - part of the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. These cultures have been linked to the Celts (and other groups including Slavs and Illyrians).

Below are the names of my ancestors. Some of the immigrant ancestors have been marked. Sources for some ancestors are a bit shaky (to say the least). Complicating things is that Aaron Franks and Barbara Miller were third cousins. And really complcating things is that John Bartholomew Stein and Barbara Schmidt were second cousins, once removed. So some ancestors get an extra great- depending on how you run up the line.