My daughter now lives in Texas where I think she moved to make her father and mother miss her. Happily she’ll pay us a visit this week. Still, what could be more American? Our country was populated and continues to be by people willing to leave home. 

Today one can come here by a flight of a few hours. Our ancestors’ journey was much longer, harder, and more perilous. And yet they came from hither and yon seeking opportunity, equality, property, prosperity, and freedom. 

A couple decades ago, I followed my wife’s career path to several states I wouldn’t have chosen to live in and used my spare time researching the family tree. I had waited too long to ask either of my parents what they knew about their forebears. I suspect the answer would have been: “not much.”

I soon discovered, however, that a whole lot can be gleaned by immersion in archives. My search required considerable shlepping around to cemeteries, local halls of records, and  libraries. But even then it was fast becoming easier to access troves of information available on various online databases and by means of cooperation with other searchers on genealogical portals. 

I learned a lot, especially how long ago and from how far away my people came. Every one of them were pioneers of a sort who left home for this new world. We often speak of the American way and it turns out this is it: Moving on in search of a better life. Our history, folklore, and literature is full of it. Natty Bumpo the dear-stalker, Johnny Appleseed, Ishmael going to sea, Huck lighting out for the territories, wagonloads of pioneers moving ever westward.

I discovered my father’s family had lived for five generations around Columbus, Ohio but the earliest Monroe in his line, Andrew, came to America from Kirkwall, Scotland in 1620 and died in Virginia in 1668. Imagine what such a voyage would have been like in those days. His descendants continued to live in Virginia until a James Monroe born in 1787 moved west to the newly added state of Ohio around 1811. 

My paternal grandmother was a Trish born in 1879. Her paternal grandparents were both German immigrants. Adam Trisch was born in Oberphalz, Bavaria in 1819 and had reached America by 1833 apparently with an uncle. By 1844 he had married another Bavarian immigrant to Ohio, Elizabeth Schaefer. Her mother was Louisa Carl and both her parents, a Carl and a Selbert, had also been born in Bavaria.

They were not alone. It turns out Columbus in those years had a considerable German population complete with restaurants, breweries and even a German language newspaper.

Many of them, including my people, were farmers. In a visit to Germany I stopped in one of the towns from which they originated and met a local man with the same surname. He was a pig farmer and had a family tree on the wall. To our surprise there was the my ancestor. My host said the family never knew where he ended up. In Ohio, where he too raised pigs.

So far my American melting pot is made up of Scottish and German bloodlines, but not on my mother’s side. Her father was a Coutry which turned out to be an alternative spelling of his ancestors’ name. They were French Coutures. The earliest, Guillaume, arrived in Canada around 1600 from Rouen. They stayed for many generations in Quebec until they crossed the border for more employment opportunities in the 1880s and fetched up in Providence, Rhode Island where my maternal grandfather was born.

He married my maternal grandmother, Eleanor Williams in Ohio. She has both the most recent of immigrants in my line and some of the oldest. Her father was born in Baltimore in 1869, but both his parents were born in Wales around 1830. My grandmother’s mother was Ada Rumsey from a long line of New England stock, which originated with Robert Rumsey born in Wiltshire England in1608 and died in Fairfield, Connecticut. A generation or two later my Rumseys moved to Salem, New Jersey where they lived for a century until a few headed west to Ohio where the first was born in 1808. 

Thus, a midwest American kid made up of Scottish, English, Welsh, French, and German ingredients grew up in a midwestern rust belt town and went to school with other kids who could trace their lineage to similar places and to Poland, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Scandinavia, Africa and Asia. They attended a variety of houses of worship, and ate food from recipes brought from their ancestral homes. But they were all Americans. And it was a series of small miracles that we all were there together.

In 1782, the founding fathers chose a motto for the thirteen colonies who had joined to win a revolutionary war and create a new country: E Pluribus Unum. Out of many one. It remains on the great seal and our coins. We would do well to remember in these times of division and discord that in our diversity we are all part of one big melting pot of a country. We all watch the annual fireworks that remind us that wherever our various peoples came from we share in the independence we celebrate every July.