Online Census
 

Is it just me or was this decade's online census extremely short compared to previous ones? It took about 5 minutes to fill it out for the three of us. My son gets to do his first one separately now. :p

****While typing this, I looked it up and it seems the 2010 was this short also. For whatever reason, I don't remember it being this short. Previous ones had a mix of short and long forms, so I guess I have always drawn the short straw and received the long forms (pun intended).****

All they asked on the questionnaire was to confirm where we live, who lives here, our race/ethnicity, and our origin (England, Ireland, Germany, etc.).

Personally, I have no clue where my ancestors came from. It wouldn't let me leave it blank so I chose English, and I did the same for my wife and daughter. From what I just read, may last name is a common surname throughout Europe since it's a knockoff of St. Benedict's name.

I got the long form and it took a while.

My wife filled it out. Seems like in a minute or two she said she was done. I recall the REALLY old paper forms. Wanting to know how many bathrooms in the house, other questions — feds wanted all kinds of information.

Our kids gave us Ancestry.com kits for Christmas in 2018. I’m a little leery of these services now, wondering if all the data was sold to the government. But really fascinating to see the results. As a kid, I heard we were of Scottish descent, then later somebody thought German. The test results showed northern Europe, and Scandinavia. You also get information showing migrations into the U.S., and so likely locations of relatives.

My wife was a Smith, so England/Ireland was no big surprise. She is getting TONS of suggestions for relatives, down to 4th cousins. Crazy.

and our origin (England, Ireland, Germany, etc.).
[/QUOTE]

Not sure why this even matters anymore.

Not sure why this even matters anymore.[/QUOTE]

My list for that would be quite long

English (Wooten is an old English name first one here out of an English prison to Georgia in 1730)
Dutch - Maternal great grandma
German - Maternal great grandpa
Irish - Maternal great grandma
Cherokee - paternal great great grandma
Swede - paternal great grandpa
Russian - paternal great grandma

Not sure why this even matters anymore.[/QUOTE]
Ancestry beyond my great grandparents was never discussed in my presence when I was growing up, so I have absolutely no clue who my ancestors were before the 1800's.

It's interesting to know where you come from.

My dad's brother did a lot of research into our family's history, and was able to trace us
back to northeast England in the 1500s. One ancestor (French) escorted King Henry II from
France to England to take the throne. Another was Oliver Cromwell's personal secretary/priest.
Our Coat of Arms has the Ducal Crown because of that French ancestor. We also have three
seashells indicating pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

We came to the New World in 1640 after Oliver Cromwell's uprising was ended, and we
actually owned a lot of land on Long Island. They found the actual gravestones of those
ancestors both in the US and in England.

Really fascinating to be able to see your family's history and how (if they did) they affected
history.

Both my Mom and Dad were from the same little town in Sicily (Grotti)

Not a lot of ancestry there.

Thats a much more uplifting story than my wife’s.

The story was that one of her ancestors was a horse thief, and fled Ireland to avoid prosecution. :o

I am directly related to crazy Tom "Boston" Corbett the guy who shot John Wilkes Booth. A religious man, he later"reassigned" himself with a pair of scissors to avoid temptations :eek: