As an nth-generation American with an ambiguous cocktail of Western-European blood in his veins, I know little of my ancestry beyond tidbits that were deemed interesting enough to share around the dinner table from time to time. My father has told me that our family name, Reddig, was bastardized from ‘Rettig’ (a German surname meaning ‘radish’), presumably upon entry into the United States. If my ancestors were German, then I think it would be safe to assume that at least a few of them came to the US over the course of the 19th century, when European immigration to the US was at a high.
Beyond that, I can’t say I know much else. My mother’s side of the family has been on the continent even longer, so the stories I’ve heard are even more vague and difficult to verify. If legend is to be believed, then one of my ancestors emigrated from England alongside William Penn in the 17th century, becoming among the first Quakers to populate the new colony of Pennsylvania. If this is indeed the case, then this ancestor of mine would have come to the colonies seeking refuge from religious persecution–a trend that pushed dozens of Protestant religions out of England at the time.
Despite the mythological appeal of my mother’s heritage, I find my father’s side of the family, populated by generations of long-forgotten radish farmers, to be the more interesting and, incidentally, the more relevant to the subject of this class. I hope to become more familiar with this side of my ancestry so that I might better understand how my personal history fits into the larger narrative of the globe (or at least Europe and North America) in these recent tumultuous centuries.