Ethnicity within this forum?

[jiminnm]

Dad was the son of Polish immigrants. Mom's parents were from Kentucky and Tennessee, where her ancestors had lived since the 1820s . I was born in Detroit and lived there my first 22 years [[then a number of surrounding places). Worked in Detroit for 35+ years [[first as a stockboy at Vanity Fair on Woodward across from Hudson's).

[Hermod]

Maternal grandmother was born in Wayne, MI. Her family moved to Wayne to farm in the 1840s from western New York. As best we can tell, her family has been in the US since the 1600s. Her father was in the 9th Michigan Infantry and her uncle was in the 24th Michigan Infantry [[KIA) in the Civil War. Post war, her father was so enfeebled by war related fevers that he sold the farm in Wayne and moved into Detroit [[Putnam Ave) in the late 1880s.

Maternal grandfather moved to Detroit from St Thomas, Ontario in the early 1900s. After their marriage, they lived on Northlawn till my grandfather was wiped out in the Depression, then they lived in smaller apartments till he died in 1939.

Paternal grandparents emigrated from Sweden [[separately) in 1904 and lived in Chicago area till 1919 when they moved to Detroit and lived on St Clair near Warren.

My parents lived in Detroit [[Courville near Warren then Nottingham near Whittier) from 1940 to 1954 when we moved to Rochester [[still a farming town back then).

I lived in Detroit in 1961 [[Reno near 7 Mile) till I went into the Army, then only returned to the area to visit family. My extended family is in an arc from New Baltimore to Macomb Twp to Gingellville to Ann Arbor.

I have always wanted to return to the area, but wife likes Florida.

[gumby]

I am a meat popsicle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dd_qiuWxPs

[Lowell]

I recently got my results of a DNA ancestry test. 44% Scandinavian, 22 Irish, 15 UK, 15 West Europe [mostly France according to the map they provide] and, Mazeltov y'all, 2% European Jewish. The last result was a pleasant surprise, but the rest fits my family tree research.

On my maternal side, grandparents are all Canadian Scot and Irish, with some English. On the paternal side, my grandmother immigrated from Sweden, my grandfather was French, tracing back to Brittany via Montreal, and English. So the Celtic / Scandinavian results fit.

[Jimaz]

I recently got my results of a DNA ancestry test.... my [paternal] grandfather was French....

Hence the surname, I presume.

I always get a kick out of how they tell you how much Neanderthal DNA you have. Here's an amusing article: Doctor, my DNA shows I’m a Neanderthal. What should I do?.

• 23AndMe.com

[old guy]

Hence the surname, I presume.

I always get a kick out of how they tell you how much Neanderthal DNA you have. Here's an amusing article: Doctor, my DNA shows I’m a Neanderthal. What should I do?.

• 23AndMe.com

How do you get a DNA test result? Not sure I want to know, but I think I do. There are too many discrepancies in our family history.

[Jimaz]

How do you get a DNA test result?....

That's a question for 23andme.com.

[jiminnm]

That's a question for 23andme.com.

Or - https://www.familytreedna.com/

I've had the test from each.

[turkeycall]

White guy. Born [[1950) and raised near where Mack and E. Warren meet. Paternal grandparents were Volga German came to this country in 1913. They settled in Port Huron. My Dad came to Detroit in 1940. Maternal side goes back to being here in the pre-revolutionary years. Don't live in the Detroit area anymore. In the Muskegon area now.

[tucsondiva]

My many times great grandfather came over on the Mayflower with John Alden and Miles Standish, small world lol

[tucsondiva]

Ancestry.com, $79.00 order kit online, they send it to you, you spit into the tube and mail back and they send you your dna results, it is fun.

[tucsondiva]

Born and raised in Detroit by an Irish Mom and French Dad. Moved to Livonia later on and then retired here to Tucson. Family is still in the area so I go back at least once or twice a year. The minute I get off the plane I feel at home. I have been here 14 years but still get that feeling.

[Tig3rzhark]

I'm not surprised to see that most of the forum posters are either former Detroit residents or from the surburbs.

But nonetheless it's good to keep the detroit yes forums going. Hopefully, more people that are within the city finds out about this forum and joins in the conversation.

[night-timer]

I'm white. I don't live in Detroit at present.

Just out of curiosity, have we helped answer the OP's question about ethnicity?

Did he find what he was looking for?

Detroit may be seem as primarily African American, but where exactly does the borderline for the black/white head-count stop? When you hit 8 Mile?

That should be the OP's next question.

Then something about income and wealth disparity. If he wants to ask.

Just don't ask me. I wouldn't know the precise specifics.

[abraham]

As is well documented Detroit is a mostly African American populated city. I'm watching everything happen in this forum from the outside perspective of being non American. I don't want to sound impolite but is it a strange question to ask what the ethnicity of all your forum members is?

It's just a general question to see if the figures are more or less the same in the city as in the forum.


Me,
I'm caucasian. Born and raised in the Netherlands.

So what did you find regarding the figures?

[jcole]

I recently got my results of a DNA ancestry test. 44% Scandinavian, 22 Irish, 15 UK, 15 West Europe [mostly France according to the map they provide] and, Mazeltov y'all, 2% European Jewish. The last result was a pleasant surprise, but the rest fits my family tree research.

On my maternal side, grandparents are all Canadian Scot and Irish, with some English. On the paternal side, my grandmother immigrated from Sweden, my grandfather was French, tracing back to Brittany via Montreal, and English. So the Celtic / Scandinavian results fit.

Curious to know, Lowell; when I got my DNA done on Ancestry, it came back as 2% Iberian Jew, of which I was proud. When they recently reran the tests using newer optics, I lost all of my Jewish heritage. Did you experience the same thing?

[oladub]

Some historical notes and observations I've picked up doing genealogy:
-Family stories are one of the worst sources of information subject to whitewashing and embellishments but are good for leads.
-In most traditional cultures, 2% of males do not share DNA with the father listed on their birth certificate. This is now up to 6% in England and the U.S.. Tracing a family line back 25 generations thus has a 50% chance of error on a given family line.
-Remote populations not subject to migratory traffic and armies are more inbred although even a place like Iceland gets occasional gene additions because of, in Iceland's case, foreign fishing boats and smashed Spanish armada vessels.
-Families in rural European communities often live in the same rural locale for hundreds of years. Chinese villages within eyesight sometimes had no road between them. My grandmother lived in a flat place in the Flanders but said there was a nearby village where a lot of people had red hair. That meant they were inbreeding even though they lived in a flat place with no obstacles between villages.
-Everybody has ancestors who were kings if they go back far enough. Related: Between 10M Americans and 35M worldwide are descendants of a Mayflower passenger.
-Anyone of European descent has family lines from countries their own family never knew about. I found English, German, German Jewish, Italian, Kievian Russian and Slavic Russian lines my grandparents didn't know about.
-Norwegians and Swedes have Uralic Asian lines. Roman soldiers brought southern European and North African genes to every place the governed in Europe.
-American Indians came across what is now the Bering Straits in waves over thousands of years from places as diverse as the Urals to SE Asia.
-Every haplotype goes back to one male. 10% of Mongolian males and 16M worldwide descend from Genghis Khan.

[Maof]

Curious to know, Lowell; when I got my DNA done on Ancestry, it came back as 2% Iberian Jew, of which I was proud. When they recently reran the tests using newer optics, I lost all of my Jewish heritage. Did you experience the same thing?

My husband's nephew recently did. I don't remember what ethnicity they originally said was included but, they sent him a new one and whatever that ethnicity was, it was gone the second time around.

[mtm49269]

guess i'm a bit of an anomaly. pure Polish [[with, possibly, a bit of Mongol from when the hords invaded Poland in the 13th century - hence brown, slightly almond-shaped eyes).

Born and raised in Det - what we referred to as Hamtramck Heights because of 48212 zip. Worked downtown through 70's and 80's - mostly phone company. Got my degree from Wayne State. Lived for a while in Palmer Park @ 6 and Woodward.

Years since, have moved a lot including 5 years in Silly-Con Valley. Now, retired and living in western Jax county but still - ALWAYS - a Detroiter at heart.

[rickbak]

100% Polack. GG-folks got here in the 1880s, worked in the brickyards around Springwells, moved on to the auto plants and fire dept. while living mostly in Wesson-Michigan area. My grandfathers and uncles built cars, fought wars, drank and smoked way too much, and could never fill an inside straight. Seemed like every other aunt was named Sophie. Like any large, ethnic, working-class family, there's lots of funny and sometimes poignant stories that have come down over the years. Hopefully some day I can put them down in writing for my kids and grand kids to enjoy and appreciate.

For now, I still have my great-grandmother Balbena's 1894 sewing machine and sausage grinder, both in excellent working condition. [[Oh, the hundreds of yards of kielbasa that flowed through that grinder!) Balbena's mother, btw, lived to be 106 back in Krakow. Probably died pulling a plow in the potato fields. Who knows. Living to 95, 100 is very common in my family. Must be the beets and pierogis.

I always liked that my two "dads" had the shortest and longest Polish names I knew. Pop was Ed Bak, my father-in-law was Wenceslaus Maliszewski. If my mother and grandmother had gotten their way, I would've grown up to be an accordion player or a priest. Better yet, an accordion-playing priest. But not one that diddled altar boys.

[Gistok]

Detroit Stylin and Gistok - two of the DetroitYES' founding parents! Thanks to both for your great posts over the years.

Thanks Lowell [[4 years later)... I do feel older than dirt...

I just had my DNA test done... and it looks like I'm 80% Danish Butter Cookies from the Costco region...

Naw..... still 100% German....

... and I think my cumulative post count is about 16,000. But unlike KARL.... I didn't disappear at 10,000.

[Former_Detroiter]

Ethnicity: Sierra Leone, Iberia, Ireland, South East Asia. Born in Detroit. Left in 1972 after graduation from U-M Law School. Lived in San Francisco from 1972-1998. Moved back to Detroit in 1998 to care for elderly parents. Moved to Santa Fe, NM in 2012.

[gnome]

I'm pure Yakobian.

[Gistok]

Isn't Yakobia next to Leutonia... on the dark side of the Balkans?

Cabbage Rolls and Coffee.... mmm mmm good!

[gnome]

I’ll need to confer with my betters.