Who am I? How did I get here?

September 3, 2010 7:21 AM

Trying to figure out what would be considered my family's country of origin ...

I was told that the parents of one of my grandfathers came to the U.S. from a village that was passed between Germany, Russia, and Poland over the course of multiple battles. After a little research, it seems likely the village is Grodno, currently part of Belarus and situated near the borders of Lithuania and Poland. What would determine my country of ancestral origin? Would it matter which country claimed the village at the time of my family's emigration? The way I see it, I could be part-Russian, -Polish, -German, -Belarussian, -Lithuanian ...

posted by troywestfield to Society & Culture (17 answers total)

I think that it has to do with religion as well - i.e. historical affiliation with a church, synagogue could sway the heritage stemming this way or that.
posted by watercarrier at 7:27 AM on September 3, 2010

You could be all of those things and more. Your ancestry doesn't stop at Grodno. If you're looking to say 'my grandfather X's parents were from Y', then Y is whatever the country was called during most of the time they lived there, or what a typical person of their generation and ethnic group living in Y would claim to be. In practice, that might also depend somewhat on the country of origin of their parents. You can always say 'my grandfather's parents were from Grodno in Russia, now part of Belarus.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:32 AM on September 3, 2010

But I don't think you can really claim to be of Belarussan ancestry, given that it didn't really exist until modern times.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:34 AM on September 3, 2010

I think the "territory = nationality" equation doesn't hold here, due to the constant fluctuation of borders and sovereignty. I've got a similar situation in my ancestry - my grandfather was a Jew from Hryniv (a village near Lviv), which was in Austria-Hungary when he was born, Poland when he left, and is part of Ukraine now. But the region is called Galicia, so if I ever needed to be specific I'd say he was a Galician Jew.

The Wikipedia article on Hrodna seems to indicate that it's a center of Polish culture in Belarus, so if your ancestor is Slavic (as opposed to, say, Ashkenazi) it's likely that he was ethnically Polish. Do you know what language he spoke? That may be a better clue than where he happened to live.
posted by theodolite at 7:42 AM on September 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

I've a similar situation in my ancestry, as well. My grandmother was born in Strasbourg. At the time she was born, that was part of the German Empire, but it is now part of France. My grandmother's family was German-speaking, with a German surname, so we identify that part of our ancestry as German.
posted by deadmessenger at 8:09 AM on September 3, 2010

I'd probably just go with whatever language the emigrants spoke natively.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:16 AM on September 3, 2010

while my family came to the US from Russia, they were German in language, heritage and culture and identified as such. Location and ethnic background aren't always going to be in sync.
posted by domino at 8:17 AM on September 3, 2010

The old empires resembled Rome (and, to an extent, pre-Cold War America) more than they did the concept of Europe they have today, with clearly defined borders, cultures and nationalities. Grodno was a trading center, which means that people came to it from other places, most likely smaller villages. The two most important things are when he emigrated and which church he belonged to. Without that, it's like trying to figure out the nationality of your grandfather who emigrated from New York to Canada.
posted by griphus at 8:19 AM on September 3, 2010

Religion would probably tell you a lot. Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox - these would help you figure out which ethnic group your family belongs to.

Also, if you have good records of their last name, that would really help nail it. At the very least you should be able to distinguish German from Slavic form Jewish.

My family has a similarly convoluted history which is easier for me to sort out only because I'm closer to the generation that emigrated (my parents).

On preview, griphus's comment is spot on. In these regions, borders don't distinguish between ethnicities very well.
posted by redyaky at 8:25 AM on September 3, 2010

I would go with Belorussian. I say my family name is Croatian even though at the time my ancestors came to the U.S., Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
posted by SugarFreeGum at 8:32 AM on September 3, 2010

You might want to read on Wikipedia about Bruno Schulz, who was from a similar place. Although his town was not in Polish hands when he was born, and although he was Jewish, Schulz identified as a Pole. So questions of one's ancestry can defy geography and religion, even. (And from the article on Schulz, click on the article about Galicia, which will provide lots of info.)

I read a book recently about attempts through the pre-1960s part of the twentieth century to "define" the ethnicities in a part of Ukraine. Sometimes people would maintain they were "Polish" despite not being the "right" religion and despite not speaking Polish. There were "Germans" who were Orthodox and could only speak Ukrainian. Much of this territory consisted of small villages which people infrequently left; "identity" was pretty meaningless - you knew your fellow villagers and that was that. Things like "nationality" or "ethnicity" were often poorly understood or wrongly attributed based on whims, odd collusions of history and warfare and so on.

So while I understand your desire to find a label for this part of your family, it may not be possible. His name may be a clue, as the year when he left (people often left in waves, depending on their ethnicities or perceived ethnicities) - post this info if you can and you may receive more help. But many people from this part of the world saw themselves simply as residents of their city or village. Even today, although I call myself a Bosnian Muslim and although I come from an old family, I see my heritage as oriented to my city, with Christmases and Saint George Days and multiple-ethnic traditions, and awareness of branches of my family which were Montenegrin and Turkish. It was more like this back then, particularly in that part of Europe, which changed hands countless times.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 8:42 AM on September 3, 2010

Response by poster: theodolite and others: He was an Ashkenazi Jew. His name was Gordon, which makes it somewhat common for Grodno at the time (if not now). And his parents would have come over sometime around the turn of the century, I'm afraid I don't know more precisely when.
posted by troywestfield at 9:01 AM on September 3, 2010

Sounds like my family. We identify as Russian-Romanian but on one side the village was handed back and forth between Russia and Poland. My understanding is that last names for Jews who came to the US around the turn of the last century were really a crapshoot - might have been imposed or distorted at Ellis Island, might have been imposed by the Tsar - aren't genealogically reliable from my father's research.
posted by leslies at 9:09 AM on September 3, 2010

Best answer: My great-grandparents were Jewish and were children/young people when they got here near the turn of the century; their families emigrated when their shtetl was part of Russia, and so everyone said that on Census and draft forms (even into the late 1930s,) but they told their children that they were from Lithuania, because they were not too far from Kaunas/Kovno (just like most of the people in their building on the Lower East Side, apparently.) The children from the emigrating generation spoke, quoting my grandfather, "Yiddish, Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, and a little Hebrew." Russia, Lithuania, Germany and the USSR have all claimed the territory since the day my family (the part not wiped out by the Nazis) left; the Russians made their claim but after the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed. Part of the reason the "Lithuania" thing was mentioned so often (even to me, in Southern California, forty years after the last emigrants died) was due to anger over how the villagers turned their neighbors over to the Nazis. This was, for once, not a Russian atrocity.

I say they were Jews from Lithuania for short.

You might try "Polish Jews from what is now Belarus," or something similar.
posted by SMPA at 9:59 AM on September 3, 2010

What would you like the country of origin to be? 'Cause you could make any of the cases above depending.

Me, I would go with language spoken, followed by church attended. (Possibly army served in, but even that....)

And possibly older connections to places elsewhere if they were relatively recent arrivals at that city. As above, a Greek family passing through NYC for one generation en route to Montreal might not put much importance to the US connection.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:25 AM on September 3, 2010

I have almost the same situation as deadmessenger - I'm descended from the "Germans" who settled in southern Louisiana around the same time as the Cajuns started to arrive from Nova Scotia. These "Germans", however, mostly came from Alsace. If I have any long-distant cousins still there after all these centuries, they hold French passports. And yet this particular ethnic group is always referred to as "the German Cajuns" or "the Germans". Not "the Alsatians" or "Those other French people who weren't exactly the same French people as either the Cajuns or the Creoles".
posted by Sara C. at 10:28 AM on September 3, 2010

This link may help you find what you're looking for.
posted by watercarrier at 10:38 AM on September 4, 2010