I Am Most Probably Czechoslovakian Essay

To be honest, my Father’s side’s records are a bit hazy (my last name has no ethnic origin). My Mother’s side is a different situation.

One of the youngest nations of Europe, Yugoslavia was created after World War I as a homeland for several different rival ethnic groups. The country was put together mostly from remnants of the collapsed Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Demands for self-determination by Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and others were ignored. Yugoslavia thus became an uneasy association of peoples conditioned by centuries of ethnic and religious hatreds. World War II aggravated these rivalries, but Communist dictatorship after the war controlled them for 45 years. When the Communist system failed, the old rivalries reasserted themselves; and in the early 1990s the nation was rent by secessionist movements and civil war. Within several years these conflicts

As I embarked on this assignment I was unsure how to begin and what stories to tell. I did not know if I should commence with how my family came to America, my family tree, or a fascinating story about how my grandparents met. In order to complete this assignment I convened with my grandfather, Earl W. Stafford Sr., who knows a lot about our family history, to learn as much as I could.

William, known as Bill, was born on July 20, 1921 in Minneapolis, MN. He worked in the plaster/stucco business for over 25 years before working at Northwest Airlines. His wife’s maiden name was Lorraine Mulcahy. Lorraine was born on August 13, 1922 in St. Paul, MN. Lorraine went to college at the University of Minnesota where she got her Bachelor of Science degree and became a dental hygienist. My grandma “Lo” is the genealogy nut in our family. She has searched for birthdates, marriage licenses, and other documents of her grandparents. I called grandma Lo to get some information on my great-grandparents and family stories. I found out I was part Norwegian and I never even knew it! Grandma Lo’s parents were Edward Mulcahy and Olga Shermoen. Her father Ed was born on April 15, 1880 in Minneapolis, MN. Ed worked as a claim agent for the Great Northern Railroad in the twin cities. Olga was born on March 15, 1888 in Hawley, MN. She also worked for the Great Northern Railroad as a matron. Edward was 100% Irish while Olga was 100% Norwegian. This makes my grandma Lorraine 50% Irish & 50% Norwegian. My grandpa Bill was adopted in Minneapolis so his genealogy is unknown. He was told by his adopted parents that he was mostly Irish. If we pretended Bill was 100% Irish, this would make my mom 75% Irish and 25% Norwegian.

The Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires faced such great challenges to control their land because of some key factors such a nationalism and disunity. After Austria had been split in half by Emperor Francis Joseph. Austria and Hungary became two independent states thus, becoming the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Over the course of forty years though, Emperor Francis Joseph would find it hard to control the land of the Austro-Hungarian Empire because of many nationalist disputes that that weakened the empire. After World War I the Austria-Hungary empire broke in many separate nation-states. In the Russian Empire nationalism and disunity helped to weaken and break the 370-year-old Russian Empire. Besides the Russians themselves the Russian empire had ruled over Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Jews, Romanians, Georgians, Armenians, Turks, and other smaller nations. With this each country had their own culture. The Romanov dynasty of Russia however, wanted to keep tight control over this diversity. With that, Russification was instituted into the empire forcing all the countries in the empire to adopt the Russian culture. With this you can see how nationalism kept it hard for the Russian Empire to control their land because no country wanted to follow the Russian culture they wanted to follow the culture of their own country. So as nationalistic feelings were strengthened all over the empire after the Russification policy had been instituted Russia was now on its way to disunity and the falling of the empire with the last czar giving up his power in 1917. For the Ottoman Empire one challenge this empire faced to control their land was that of where you stood on the class spectrum. With this in 1856 all people under Ottoman ruling such as the Greeks, Slavs, Arabs, Bulgarians, and Armenians were given equal citizenship. This however, angered angered Turks who were conservative that did want this change to occur resulting in tensions in the

On my father’s side, my grandfather’s grandfather moved to the United States in the late 1800’s from Germany. This was just before the federal government took over the immigration process. An American company had advertised in his town that they should move to the United States. Fishman, and a large amount of people from his town moved to Beloit, Wisconsin.1 Wisconsin has a high German population to this day. I imagine that they all had to pass the strict inspectors of Ellis Island. He stayed in Wisconsin and married a German woman. His son stayed in Wisconsin and married a German woman. That son was my grandfather’s father. My grandmother was a Mexican-American, born in East Los Angeles. Her mother came from Guadalajara, Mexico. I do not know why she chose to migrate.

Take first the antagonism between Austria-Hungary and Russia. In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy one finds that the dominant Germans and Magyars were afraid of losing control at home if the various subordinate nationalities grew too strong. As most of these were Slavic, the creation of large Slavic states in the Balkins would draw the Southern Slavs from Austria-Hungary and induce the Northern Slavs and Rumanians to demand more power or even independence. If Russia destroyed the Ottoman Empire, took Constantinople and created

An event in Russia lead Poland to want to be an independent nation. “We shall be poles. Bonaparte has shown us the way –– Hot to be victorious.” (Doc 7). Hungary had decided that enough was enough and that they went through a they put it, “. . . a period of uninterrupted suffering.” (Doc 3). Mazzini said that God gave them their country, so they should fight to get it back. “The means of infinitely multiplying your forced and powers of action . . . was for you by God . . .” (Doc

My parents were born in Sicily; my great grandparents came to the United States in the early 1900’s. My grandmother was born in the United States 1904, although she was born in America her parents did not choose to remain in the United States. Longing for their home land my great grandparents moved the family back to Sicily when my grandmother was only several months old. In the early 1950’s my grandmother who was born in the United States left Sicily with her husband and three grown children.

My family of Burrows, Bennet (father) Goodbeer, Littlejohn, (mother) is the mixture of what America is French, German, Irish, Native American, and Black. Origins come from the Atlantic slave trade where most of my family was relocated to Arkansas. Where their condition of slavery with all of the horrors of it like the breeding, whippings, lynching, slave codes. The lack of education and the chance to prosper without being a handicap of being a subordinate which in 2016 is still every true to till this day. As for the Native American and the Irish side of the family, I don’t know much than seeing some pictures and Serval stories that I can’t recall from my childhood.

Personally, I am of German and Scottish descent. An overwhelming heavy majority of my ancestry is German, while a miniscule amount is Scottish. My father is 100% German in ancestry, while my mother is almost completely German as well, but keeps a tad of Scottish ancestry. Both my last name, Janke, and my mother’s maiden name, Pfeil, are originally of German descent and meaning. Particularly, the name Pfeil is a direct translation from the German language meaning “arrow”. Although I do not know my blood family’s genealogical lineage at this time, I do know that of my step-father. My step-father’s great grandmother, Helena Giese, came to the United States of America in the early 1890s. Helena Giese came to America at the age of 13 from her dear

European Americans are a very diverse people. We differ greatly across intensely different status, political stands, and lifestyle. We also vary markedly in the degree to which we place value on the idea of the “melting pot”. Many of us these days are almost completely ignorant to our ethnic history because our forefathers worked quite hard to

My family’s history is unique in its own way. Both sides of my family originated in the larger populated city in Northern Germany, known as Hamburg. Anticipating the new German power, known as the Nazi’s, both sides fled the upcoming hardships and financial crisis. Although they had different occupations and did not know each other, for some unforeseen reason, they both immigrated to the United States of America. When they ended up in Ellis Island, both sides chose to farm as their new lifestyle in a small town of Rock Rapids, Iowa along with other German families.

All the time I was growing up I enjoyed being of two nationalities. I was an American-Latvian. So knowing that there are still many Latvians living in the U.S. even though the older generations have passed on I found much to my interest that according to the 2000 U.S. Census there are 87,564 citizens who are of Latvian ancestry. That is saying quite a lot.

Sometimes these decisions were not for the well being of other nations that depended on the Soviet Union for support. Nations like Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland were under Soviet control, but were officially still independent nations.