Why do you think your ancestors settled in whatever state they did?

34 comments

1. Cuz that’s where the other people of their ethnicity settled.

2. If you built a farm here, they gave you the land for free.

3. Mormon pioneers. We’re still around.

4. They came over from Japan to work on farms in California, and we’re still here (not on farms for the most part, although one branch of the fam has a landscaping business).

5. They were jewish and left brooklyn due to getting hate crimed. Moved to AZ since this was peak “move to the desert for health reasons” time in the 1930s.

6. They got off the boat and said “fuck it, I’m done”

7. The great Scottish migration to North Carolina in the early 1700’s.

   Not sure if any of my paternal relatives still live there. Migration to Georgia then to Florida then to Alabama by 1820. Extended family to Mississippi and Texas. I know there are quite a few throughout the southern states I mentioned.

8. Thanks to Andrew Jackson I would assume.

9. It’s where the boat stopped.

   A few of my relatives are still in the area, but we’re mostly in other parts of New England.

10. They were weird religious zealots so they left Holland, but Provincetown was too sandy.

11. One side of my family settled here because they were cigar factory workers in Key West. Later my great great great grandfather owned a ferry that traveled between Habana & Key West.

    Later I had family settle in Miami during the Freedom Flights of the late 1960s and the Mariel Boatlift in 1980.

    We just sort of followed their footsteps here.

12. My dad’s maternal side after being exiled from Canada were first sent to France. They were then sent to settle Louisiana with other exiled Acadians. His paternal side came over from Ireland. Probably because a few 100,000 other were coming to same area, because it was a port city and mostly Catholic.

    My mother’s side mostly came over on slave ships. So they didn’t really have a choice.

13. My Southern ancestors settled in Virginia and North Carolina because that’s where people settled in the colonial period and where they bought and were granted lands as Englishmen. Why they moved west is a mystery, but eventually they made their ways to Mississippi for good farming or whatever, before heading to Alabama for the cotton mills and to my home state of Florida because they liked the beach.

    For my Yankee ancestors it’s even easier – they went to Detroit, Michigan to work in the factories, as much more recent German and Flemish immigrants.

14. Because they’ve been there for thousands of years

15. Because they were slaves

16. Because some king gave them a shit load of land right there.

17. The pioneering spirit got them as far as Oklahoma, then the Dust Bowl pushed them on to eastern Oregon.

18. Land was received for service rendered in the colonial army.

19. My family never came to America. America came to us.

20. They were coal miners in Poland and moved to be coal miners in Pennsylvania. It was a terrible decision.

21. Government gibs

22. Because the slave owner did.

23. Cause God said to leave the united states to practice polygamy, so they went to Mexico… Then the Mexican American war happened and look who rejoined the union.

24. They saw cheap land and were farmers. The decisions made themselves basically

25. Wagon got a flat.

26. My ancestors settled in Illinois probably because of the large Polish community there.

    I still live in not just the same state but also the same city they did (Chicago).

27. I’m told a giant buzzard left us here

28. Because my 3x great grandfathers were masochists deep deep down in their frozen, icy hearts, and felt the need to live in a place where the weather matched their soul.

    But really, it was for land. They moved out here, settled it, farmed it, and then claimed it. It was basically free, if you could survive and thrive on it. Then they just got married and stayed. And so did their sons, etc.

29. I don’t have to think, I know.

    They were indentured servants, which was somewhat common in the late 1600s and early 1700s. People would agree to work for a set number of years in exchange for someone else covering the costs for them to move here.

    And yes, I still live in the same town, let alone state.

30. All of my ancestors were from northern Europe and Minnesota had the cold, dark winters they were familiar with, felt like home.

    Many family members still live there, I do not.

31. My ancestors were Mennonites in Pennsylvania for a long time, then one of them decided to fuck off with Daniel Boone for adventures or something. They wound up in Kentucky but how we got to Ohio is a little fuzzy.

32. The were fleeing a civil war and others of their nationality were in New York. “They” are my parents, from El Salvador, and it was the 1980s lol. Still loads of family over there.

33. Probably because they were too poor and too unfamiliar with the country to leave their ethnic enclaves in NYC.

34. Trail of Tears, although Oklahoma wasn’t a state at the time. And yes, some of us are still there.