Quotes About Ancestry

But the most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather. The ship's manifest showed that they could read and write. I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes.

I know very little about my great grandparents, who came through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, settled in Baltimore, and spoke only Yiddish.

My father and mother should have stayed in New York, where they met and married and where I was born.

My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.

My great-great-grandfather Julius founded the Communist Party in New York.

My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.

Had my grandparents not emigrated when they did, I might have been born Jewish in Eastern Europe during World War II, or I might not have been born at all. Instead, I was born in 1942 in New York City.

In my bones, I feel like a Scot. I always have. My mum's from Doncaster, so whatever that is as a combination of Scotland and Yorkshire. It isn't southern.

I knew dad was born in Yorkshire and mum was from Mountain Ash.

I think of myself as a young prince from a long line of royalty.

I have been instilled with culture from such a young age that I know who I am, and I know once sporting is out of the picture, I will have this to come back to and continue the customs and traditions that I've been taught.

My father had nine kids, seven boys and two girls, and my uncle had 21 kids, 11 boys and 10 girls. They had the opportunity to teach the art of Gracie Jiu Jitsu and that's how we got involved from a young age. It's in the blood.

We started the family Bible after slavery was abolished. My great-grandmother remembered the Bible being started, which meant that she was a slave as a young girl. When she died, the Bible was at least 105 years old, so she must have been nearly 115 years old. Her daughter, my grandmother, died at 97, and her husband at 98.

My father's father fled a pogrom in Russia in the early 20th century and was welcomed to the United States. So was my stepmother, who escaped as a young girl from Communist Hungary in 1950.

A descendant of enslaved people, George Floyd was born with generational trauma in his DNA and denied the generational wealth that belonged to his family.

I'm 100% Norwegian. Three generations removed and all continuous inbreeding of Norwegian of Minnesota and Iowa, so I traveled to Norway before.

Years after my parents made the United States their home, I had the joy of traveling to the Dominican Republic with my kids. They saw where it all started and how their grandparents' values survived and thrived in America.

Let's treasure our roots, even when we're far away.

If I look at my family tree and follow every generation before us, going all the way back to the slaves, then Eddie Murphy is the highest achievement as far as my bloodline is concerned. How could you be jealous? You can only be proud, unless you got some serious issues.

The tattoos are about my grandmother dying, and they tell the story about my mother and father, my brothers and my sister, my kids. It's pretty much a family tree on my arm with my life in football, too.

My family, although they're very large on both my parents' sides, they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally, they try to dig, but they can't get very far, and it's baffling. In Dublin, it seems that so many public records were wiped out; it's proven to be very difficult, so I know very little.

I'm a very traditional person. The tattoos are about my grandmother dying and they tell the story about my mother and father, my brothers and my sister, my kids. It's pretty much a family tree on my arm with my life in football too.

Charles Darwin and I and you broke off from the family tree from chimpanzees about five million years ago. They're still our closest genetic kin. We share 98.8 percent of the genes. We share more genes with them than zebras do with horses. And we're also their closest cousin. They have more genetic relation to us than to gorillas.

I haven't actually checked my family tree, but Rutherford is a very old Scottish name, so I've probably got Scottish genes a few generations back.