How can I find out all my nationalities?

Question

I recently answered a question asking about nationalities. I only know I'm a small bit Mohegan Indian, mainly Canadian and some Italian. How can I find out exactly what I am. My parents are no help. Maybe some free websites? I've asked everyone in my family. No one is completely sure. My Grandma said Old Yankee. Whatever that means.

Answer 1

"Old Yankee" is someone whose ancestors got to New England before 1776 and either stayed there or migrated to Canada. I will paste my standard answer below. The Canadian 1881 census is on-line and free. I don't know about the other Canadian censuses. Most of my links will help you with that grandmother. Canada has a GenWeb. Both Ancestry and GenForum have Canadian boards. Canadians post on the surname boards, but, since there are not as many of them, not as often as Brits and Yanks.

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have links to some huge ones, below, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.

If you are in the USA,

AND most of your ancestors were in the USA,

AND you can get to a library or FHC with census access,

AND you are white

Then you can get most of your ancestors who were alive in 1850 with 100 - 300 hours of research. You can only get to 1870 if you are black, sadly. Many young people stop reading here and pick another hobby.

No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.

You won't find living people on genealogy sites. You'll have to get back to people living in 1930 or so by talking to relatives, looking up obituaries and so forth.

Finally, not everything you read on the internet is true. You have to be cautious and look at people's sources. Cross-check and verify.

So much for the warnings. Here is the main link.

http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html

That page has links, plus tips and hints on how to use the sites, for a dozen huge free sites. Having one link here in the answer and a dozen links on my personal site gets around two problems. First, Y!A limits us to 10 links in an answer. Second, if one or more of the links are popular, I get "We're taking a breather" when I try to post the answer. This is a bug introduced sometime in August 2008 with the "new look".

Answer 2

start by making a family tree start with you then make a side for ur moms family and another for you dads...if they can tell you who there grandparent were thats a start..ask ur grandmother who her parent and grand parents are..ask her where they live..dates they lived in that area....the more info you can get from the start the easier ur search will be..go to www.familysearch.org..ancestry.com..also search a magazine called family tree maker..also you can check your local library or genology chapter...its a fun and interesting project! Good Luck!