Four Facts of my Family History

There is nothing really significantly interesting about my family history. Whenever I asked my mom questions about the past, she would answer with the bland “I don’t know” or “not that I know of”. It is not her fault, of course, but I just know that a lot of the past generations of my family have lived in America their entire life. I do not recall any interesting facts or information that influenced my family to move to America, as far as I know a lot of my past family members and relatives have been living in the United States for a long time.

However, a couple of facts about my family history seemed to be a little bit interesting to me. My grandmother was always the person to ask about family history because she seems to know a lot about it, for some reason. This led to interesting conversations and information I never realized. It is really cool to think about all of the paths that my past family members took which may have influenced where I live now.

First off, I remember that my grandmother talked about how her (not sure how many greats) grandmother came straight from Germany. I thought this fact was really interesting because I never thought about where our ancestors came from, but learning this fact I realized there might have been a lot more of my ancestors that came from many different countries. I sometimes wondered if she never moved from Germany if that’s where I would be now. I also wondered why she came to America. What was happening during that time that she came to America? Also, how old was she when she came to the United States? She could have been an adult or maybe she was a child who had no influence on where she moved.

Second, my grandmother also told me that we are related to a famous rock climber. I honestly cannot remember his name at this point, ironically, but I thought that it was really cool that we are related to a well-known (not to me, apparently) person. I remember trying to search him up on Google and finding some results, but that was years ago and I cannot remember what I found. I also cannot remember how we are related, but I still find it interesting anyway.

Third, my grandfather told me that his (I do not know how many greats) grandmother was a full blooded Passamaquoddy Indian. I found this really interesting to know that one of my grandfather’s relatives was originally from the United States, and more specifically, Maine. I hope to do more research about this and maybe even find out who she was and how many other people from that tribe we are related to, even today.

Lastly, I know that my great-grandmother was adopted. I found this out a long time ago, and it got me wondering who her real parents were and where they were originally from. Maybe they came directly from a different country or maybe they lived in Maine anyway. My grandmother also wants to do research about this because she thinks it would be interesting to find out, and I hope that we can soon!

These people and events about my family history does not really affect me greatly, but I do definitely want to learn more about these specific parts of my family history. I think that if I learn more about these events and people it will help me connect it to parts of history that I learned in school. I hope to research more about my family history to figure it out!

However interesting this is to me, it does not really relate to Vargas’ experience. Vargas’ experience is more complex since it was Vargas himself who moved to a completely different country and assimilate rather than his family a long time ago. He had to completely change his life and learn a lot about the United States in order to live there, while I have been living in the United States my entire life, and so have a lot of my relatives. The only slight similarity is the fact that one of my grandmother’s (not sure how many greats) grandmother came straight from Germany and Vargas came straight from the Philippines. If I had more information about why and how she came over to the United States I think I would be able to compare the two stories better. Either way, I still think it’s really cool!

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