I don't have a hometown. My children do but none of us lives there anymore. My sense of connection to a place would be the Midwest but to no particular state.
I certainly feel no connection to the Old Country, those places my ancestors lived before they came to the New Country. It's not only that I've never been to any of those places. It's that my people left that behind for whatever reason and I respect that decision to leave and begin again.
In the 2000 Census we had to check off a box for ethnicity. I debated that one. I might have said Norwegian because my mother's father's family were from Bergen and I was named for her father's mother. But I am not Norwegian and I won't check that box in 2010.
This map shows 2000 Census information by county. I was living in a "German" county in 2000 and I see I am living in a "German" county in 2009 (different county, different state, same Midwest). Some of my father's mother's people were German, but I am not German.
I admire General U.S. Grant's memoirs, which open famously:
I certainly feel no connection to the Old Country, those places my ancestors lived before they came to the New Country. It's not only that I've never been to any of those places. It's that my people left that behind for whatever reason and I respect that decision to leave and begin again.
In the 2000 Census we had to check off a box for ethnicity. I debated that one. I might have said Norwegian because my mother's father's family were from Bergen and I was named for her father's mother. But I am not Norwegian and I won't check that box in 2010.
This map shows 2000 Census information by county. I was living in a "German" county in 2000 and I see I am living in a "German" county in 2009 (different county, different state, same Midwest). Some of my father's mother's people were German, but I am not German.
I admire General U.S. Grant's memoirs, which open famously:
My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.I can relate.