as a child, i was told certain things about my genealogy. mostly by my mom (and her mom). she told me that i was jewish due to the matrilineal inheritance of jew-ness through the mother, and she told me that i had a cherokee ancestor on her dad's side.
after my mom died, i started a family tree. initially i just wanted to do my immediate family so i could look at them, but then i realized how neat it would be to see how far back i could go. this became a hobby that completely consumed my personal time for months and months. now my family tree is huge and it's got like a bajillion people in it (996 as of april 2026). shout out to familyecho.com, W mormons. anyway, from this endeavor i've learned some interesting tidbits, but none of those tidbits include verifications of the claims that i am jewish or native american. the native american claim has proven far more dubious than the jewish one though. even if i actually am, it's not like i grew up steeped in indian culture or anything. another thing i've found is that i'm far less irish than i thought i was, if i am at all.
anyway, here's what i have been able to prove so far. my great-great-grandparents were:
a lot of those "unknown"s' surnames probably come from the united kingdom but it's far back enough that i'd just say they're american.
making my family tree has been a lot of fun because i get to see a bunch of dead people with cool names (or boring names) and i've learned about some interesting people i'm related to. it's also given me an excuse to stalk people on facebook! a noble use for the worst website on the web.