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Honored Contributor
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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

By 1897 & 1901 slavery had been long abolished in the USA so I doubt they were slaves.  Poorly paid probably, but not slaves.

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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

I know a set of twins who sent in their DNA for testing under different names because they are both married and they got back different results. As a matter of fact they paid to have the company trace their record to match them up to possible relatives in the data bank and it didn't even match them up as related.

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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

@Spurt  @Annabellethecat66

 

No, it's not a scam.  Most will tell you they have trouble labeling American Indian DNA but they're working on it. 

Honored Contributor
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Registered: ‎03-20-2010

Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

[ Edited ]

Well I know part of my heritage on my mom's side at least (heard it directly from the parties in question)......  My grandfather came to the U.S. from Rome, Italy when he was 18 (came looking for work opportunities) he lived in one tiny room so he could save money so his sisters (my aunts)could join him in America.....My grandmother came from Naples, Italy ......she met my grandfather in the U.S. and the rest is well my family history.... Woman Very Happy  My grandfather was very proud when he became a U.S. citizen.......... 

 

Unfortunately on my dad's side all my paternal grandmother ever told me is she came to the U.S. with her family and they moved to/from several states looking for the right place to settle.........

Animals are reliable, full of love, true in their affections, grateful. Difficult standards for people to live up to.”
Honored Contributor
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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

There is an interesting website called Find A grave .com . You can search for & often see photos of graves in other cities, even overseas. My DH volunteers for them, we spend a great deal of tiome while in Pittsburgh going to people's graves. DH brings a weedwhacker & a broom and we clean up the graves & make them look nice then take a photo and DH enters it in the site. He gets requests from geneology folks all over the country to go to these graves around the Pittsburgh area to post a picture. We get a lot of exercise trudging up & down the mountainous Pittsburgh cemetaries looking for these graves. I think every bit of land where it was too steep to build a house instead they put cemetaries. We have already had to crawl to get back up a hill to the car. Anyway - it's good exercise , out in the sunshine and he enjoys doing something to help people out. We usually take a lunch with us and spend the day in a certain section of the city.

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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

[ Edited ]

@151949 wrote:

By 1897 & 1901 slavery had been long abolished in the USA so I doubt they were slaves.  Poorly paid probably, but not slaves.


*******************************

 

@151949

 

There were two types of slave labor in later years that I know of.  One was Indentured Servants and the second one was very common... people, usually but not always black, who were taken from jails and forced to work in the mines for years beyond their sentence.  That went on into the 1960s in some states. 

 

The latter has been fairly well documented, the name for it begins with a P, I can never remember the name.

 

FYI there's still slavery in the US, underground, but it's there.  You might remember not long ago a woman excaped from the American home of a Princess where she had been held in slavery.

Honored Contributor
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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

PENAL LABOR

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States

 

The "convict lease" system became popular throughout the American South following the American Civil War and into the 20th century. Since the impoverished state governments could not afford penitentiaries, they leased out prisoners to work at private firms. According to Douglas A. Blackmon, because of the revenue received by local governments, they had incentives to arrest blacks; tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested and leased to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations.[4]

 

In Florida, convicts were often sent to work in lumber camps and turpentine factories.[5] The state governments maximized profits by putting the responsibility on the lessee to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for the prisoners, with little oversight. This resulted in extremely poor conditions, numerous deaths, and perhaps the most inhumane system of labor in the United States.[6] Reformers abolished convict leasing in the 20th-century Progressive Era, stopping the system in Florida in 1919. The last state to abolish the practice was Alabama in 1927.

Respected Contributor
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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

What difference does it make? 

Honored Contributor
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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

Convict labor is not the same thing as slavery.And actually, neither is indentured servitude since the person enters into it via a contract for a certain period of time and receives something (money or whatever) when it is over.

For instance - a person wants to come to America but has no money so they find a rich person coming to America and sign a contract to be their indentured servant for x # of years in return for the fare over and a place to reside when they get here. This has been legally abolished  but it is not exactly the same as slavery. The person enters into it voluntarily.

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Re: What degree of immigrant am I?

I must be one of the few outliers who...really doesn't put

much thought into my ancestry.  I'm German/Irish, like a zillion

other people, but that's about all I care about.  

 

My parents were older when they had me so I didn't know any of my grandparents.  Mom & Dad never talked about their grandparents, 

so ancestry just wasn't our thing.

 

Meh.