Fergie Not Full-Bred Enough to Represent

We already knew that pop star Fergie descended from sheep thieves. Now we learn from Latina magazine that she has Hispanic ancestry as well.

“Yes, I have Mexican in my ancestry,” said Fergie. “My Dad's grandmother was born in Guanajuato. I’m very proud of it; that’s probably where I get my fire! I’m mostly Scottish-Irish, though.”

So, why all the ambiguity around her latinidad before, you might ask? “I don’t go around claiming it big time,” the singer explained, “because there are many more full-bred Latinas that are out there to represent.” [Link]

First Fox Was a Fuchs

Vicente Fox's grandfather pursued the American Dream all the way to Mexico.

Fox's family name is actually Fuchs, a German name that was changed to Fox at some point. His grandfather, Joseph Louis Fox, was born in Cincinnati in 1865, attended Woodward High School and moved to Mexico at age 32. His son, Jose Luis Fox, married Mercedes Quesada and had nine children, including Vicente Fox Quesada, who served as president from 2000 to 2006. [Link]

A Pretty Normal American Family

Stanford University history professor Richard White knows that not every illegal immigrant speaks Spanish.

White found that his grandfather tried to immigrate from Ireland through Canada in 1936 because he could not get a visa under the quota laws.

"He tried to come through Detroit. It was hard to get caught at Detroit, but he managed to get caught," White said. Back in Canada, his grandfather called his brother, a Chicago police officer, who crossed the border and met him there. The two then walked to Detroit, his brother flashing his Chicago policeman's badge to U.S. customs officers who waved the pair through.

"I wouldn't be here, my brothers wouldn't be here if illegal aliens had been rounded up and dragged out," said White, a 1992 Pulitzer Prize finalist. [Link]

As White argued in a 2006 article, our public discourse on immigration should focus less on abstract principles and more on the concrete, complicated practices that shaped family histories like his own.

My other grandfather nearly got deported back to Russia, where he was born, for crimes of "moral turpitude," until he became, as my father liked to say, the only Democrat ever pardoned by Herbert Hoover. My wife's father spent his last demented year in Arizona trying to persuade his wife to rent a jackhammer to cut into their slab foundation and hide the money from the Mexicans, whom he thought were about cross the border en masse. My brother-in-law was born in Mexico, and became a citizen in the last amnesty.

I consider myself part of a pretty normal American family.

Mitt's Mexican Cousin

Today's Boston Globe has a story about the side of the Romney family that remained in Mexico after Mitt's ancestors returned to America.

Mike Romney, a school administrator in this small town in the Mexican desert, and Mitt Romney, a candidate for president of the United States, have never met.

But the two distant cousins are just a year apart in age, and both are descendants of the same great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, who fled the United States and, at the direction of church leaders, helped create this colony 122 years ago as a refuge for polygamous Mormons. [Link]

His Persistence Paid Off

Here's a family that'll cause your genealogy software to pitch a conniption fit.

After confessing to him that she was still in love, an elderly Mexican woman aged 91 years said "Yes" to her 98-year-old boyfriend - with whom she has lived for 70 years and has 42 great-great-grandchildren - and the pair finally wed last June 2 in Guanajuato in the center of Mexico. [Link]

Campaign Rocked by Immigration Scandal

The records of U.S.-Mexico Border Crossings recently put online by Ancestry.com reveal something shocking about a certain presidential candidate whose father was born in Mexico.

Ancestry.com couldn't locate records showing when Mitt Romney's parents and grandparents returned to the United States to live.... [Link]

Before you get alarmed, let me assure you that I have already notified the Department of Homeland Security about this situation, and that proceedings are underway to deport Mr. Romney and his fence-jumping family back to Chihuahua.

President Bush has weighed in on the issue, saying that if Congress would promptly institute his guest-worker program, the Romneys could stay in this country and do the jobs that Americans don't want to do—like picking lettuce and talking to Bill O'Reilly.

Mexican Mennonite Marriage Muddle

Hundreds of Mennonites now living in Canada may lose their Canadian citizenship because their ancestors married in Mexico. Some 7,000 of the church members moved to Mexico and Paraguay in the 1920s, and many have returned to Canada in the years since.

Many of them married while living in Mexico, and that's what is causing the problem now. They were married by the church, and Mexico doesn't recognize church marriages as being legal.

That means their children were born out of wedlock, and they — along with their grandchildren and even great-grandchildren — are not eligible to be Canadian citizens. [Link]

Would You Believe 999?

Bill Doering's statement last week in an AP article that "some 1,000 early Mexican settlers are buried at Kings Valley Cemetery" in Oregon has the locals scratching their heads.

“I got news for you, honey. There weren’t any Mexican people out there at that time. I don’t give a hoot what this dude says,” said Audrey Theurer, a local historian and former clerk of the Kings Valley Cemetery Association.

“It’s just ridiculous. Period,” said Earle Greig, who is a descendant of the family from which the tight-knit community takes its name.

“One thousand is a pretty big number,” said Mary Gallagher, curator of research and history at the Benton County Historical Museum.

“I don’t see how that many burials could take place without locals being aware of it. ... The history of the community is not that long. Things like that get passed down. That’s not going to go unheard-of,” she added. “This is just something I’ve never heard of.” [Link]

A Curious Canine Query

Randy Seaver spotted this post to the Chihuahua, Mexico, message board at RootsWeb.com:

I finally brought my baby (Female Chihuahua) home Thursday and she turned 8 weeks old yesterday (06/16/06). I read in a few books and article that Chihuahua puppies were one of the top ten hardest to house train. Mine hasn't used the potty inside once in the last 3 days, she goes outside sniffs a few seconds squats and pees/poops and all she seems to do is sleep. And I mean sleep. Which is my question. I wrap her up in her blanket and she probably sleeps 22 hours of the day. I have to wake her up to eat and of a night at 3pm to go outside. Might she be sick? [Link]

Before offering advice, Randy wisely asked for the dog's "pedigree."

Grandparents May Have Been 'Unlegally Documented'

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted yesterday on CNN's "The Situation Room" hosted by Wolf Blitzer that his grandparents may have been the sort of immigrants that some members of Congress are eager to deport.

BLITZER: Give us your -- tell our viewers who aren't familiar your personal story, how you got to where you are, your grandparents, your parents. They struggled, they came here. I don't know if they came here legally or illegally, but give us the story.

GONZALES: Well, three of my grandparents were born in Mexico. They came to Texas. My parents -- both of my parents were born in Texas, extremely poor. My mother...

BLITZER: But when they came to Texas, were they legally documented, were they unlegally documented?

GONZALES: You know, it's unclear. It's unclear. And I've looked at this issue, I've talked to my parents about it, and it's just not clear.

But in any event, my mother had a second grade education -- my father had a second grade education, my mother had a sixth grade education. And my father worked construction.

And so for me, my life represents the American dream. There are so many wonderful opportunities in this country. And that's why you have such a pull for people to come into this country who simply want a better life for themselves and for their children. [Link]

California Does the Least It Can Do

From Scripps Howard News Service:

Mass eviction to Mexico in 1930s spurs apology

By PETER HECHT
Sacramento Bee
28-DEC-05

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Carlos Guerra was only 3 years old when Los Angeles County authorities came to his family's house in Azusa and ordered his mother, a legal United States resident, and her six American-born children to leave the country.

It was 1931. The administration of President Herbert Hoover backed a policy that would repatriate hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans, more than half of them United States citizens.

Amid the economic desperation of the Depression, Latino families were viewed as taking jobs and government benefits from "real Americans."

[snip]

On Sunday, Senate Bill 670 — the so-called "Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program" — becomes official. It acknowledges the suffering of tens of thousands of Latino families unjustly forced out of the Golden State that was their home.

[snip]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill Oct. 7, but vetoed a companion measure — Senate Bill 645 — that would have created a commission to study paying reparations to survivors of the 1930s repatriations.

[snip]

Jose Lopez Sr., was a factory worker at the Ford assembly plant when his family was ordered to Mexico after nearly two decades in the United States. He wound up cutting sugar cane and died in poverty in the Mexican state of Michoacan.

"I think an apology is the least they can do," said his son, Jose Lopez, 78, a retired autoworker in Detroit who came to testify on behalf of the California bill.

[Read the whole story]

tags: genealogy, family history, family tree

Putting Your Ancestors to Work

From The Arizona Republic:

Mummies in Mexico: It's a living

Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Nov. 1, 2005 12:00 AM

GUANAJUATO, Mexico - The mummified baby sits alone in a glass case, its blue sweater still buttoned against the chill of death, its pale hands resting on the disposable diaper it was buried in.

Across the room, three severed heads gaze at the wall. A little girl with the face of a zombie clutches a smiling doll, and an infant in a baptismal gown laces its gnarled fingers as if in prayer. All were evicted from the city cemetery after their families stopped paying the rent on their graves.

[snip]

As if the real mummies aren't creepy enough, the $5 admission includes a campy chamber of horrors called the Room of Death Worship, where museum workers have used real body parts to assemble skeletons of Count Dracula and other legendary undead.

[snip]

"The purpose of this museum is to help maintain the entire city," [Guanajuato Mummy Museum Director Felipe] Macías said. "It's a business by which the dead of Guanajuato are giving something back to their city."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Head South of the (Iowa) Border

From The Mexico (Mo.) Ledger of Nov. 1, 2005:

Englishman searching for his roots, ends up in Mexico

by ZACH MORTICE

Ledger Staff Writer

Over an all American lunch of tenderloin sandwiches and french fries, a little bit of family history was made Wednesday at the Jackson Street Diner.

It was the first time in possibly centuries that the two branches of the Bickleys - that is, the Devon, England Bickleys and the Mexico, Mo. Bickleys, saw each other face to face.

[snip]

Documents Roger and Anthea [Bickley] found in England showed their relatives left for someplace called Mexico, Mo., but they initially envisioned their ancestors in much more tropical surroundings. They weren’t sure why John Howard and Samuel Williams would have chosen ‘the other’ Mexico to escape England’s mid-century depression.

“We didn’t know about state abbreviations,” said Anthea.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]