Expert tracing of direct ancestry through DNA and family records for people born in Britain or Ireland or other places called home by the global diaspora; including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Scotland’s American Revolution began in the Fall of 1759. Benjamin Franklin – then Colonial Envoy to Great Britain for Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Georgia – made his first reported trip north to the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. He spent the next two months enjoying good friends and good company in the taverns and meeting houses of a city that played no small part in the new political, social and economic ideas that would dominate the American Revolution.
For the descendants of Scottish Americans it can be difficult to identify exact origins because there are three primary groups of Scots in America’s formative years who spread far and wide.
English Canadians were very much outsiders when they arrived not long after the French in the early 1600s. An Italian paid by King Henry VII of England did make the first European contact since the Vikings in the 11th century but the age of imperial expansion was well underway by the time the English made any impact. Portugal, Spain and France were miles ahead in the competitive resource grab and only a remarkable series of events made the cultures of Britain and Ireland replace the dominance of the French.
Were your Irish Canadian ancestors among the fishermen arriving in Newfoundland in the late 1600s? Or were they one of the hundreds of thousands at Île de Grâce or Quarantine Island who made up 60% of all migrants to Canada between 1825-1845?
