My grandmother's family on my mom's side immigrated from Bavaria in the early to mid 1700's. They immigrated because they got tired of armies marching through their land and stealing all their crops to feed themselves.

THey were here before the Revolutionary War, helped Washington Survey the Alleghenies and the land west of them, then fought with him in the REvolutionary War.

They settled in what is now West Virginia, built the first Lutheren Church West of the Alleghenies, and are still in the Ohio River Valley of West Virginia.

She took a job as a nurse for the army, accepted a job in the Panama Canal Zone, and that's where she met my Grandfather, whose family immigrated from Ireland to Buffalo in the 1890's to 1910's( conflicting reports here.)

His Dad and Uncle arrived in Buffalo, became cops, hated the winters, and saw an ad for police openings in the new Canal Zone. They accepted and moved to Panama, where they raised their families.

My mom and her siblings were raised in Panama, and came to Louisiana because my mom had two choices for college: Louisiana or Florida schools. That's where the ships came into port. She chose LSU, then transfered to Charity Nursing, where she met my dad who was in LSU Med at the time.

The rest of her siblings followed the eldest. My grandparents moved to Louisiana after retirement to be near the family.

My dad was born and raised in Metarie. His family were a bunch of Dagos who immigrated to NOLA in the early 1900's.

We grew up being Sicilian, and taight to be proud of that fact. When I was 34 we picked up my brother for the family Easter part. He is in to geneaology and history. He gets in the car and the first thing he says is "Did y'all know we're not Sicilian? Apparently we're Sardinian Jews. We fled religious persecution from Sardinia to Sicily."

My response was "Ok, First: That has to be the only time in the history of the world anybody ever fled to Sicily. Second: Make sure I'm in the room when you tell everybody."

This post was edited on 6/29/22 at 11:06 pm