KAREN’S ANCESTORS

Ancestry.com DNA estimates Karen’s biological ancestry as 59% England and Northeastern Europe, 25% Scotland – specifically NE Scotland, Moray, and the Northern Islands, 7% Germanic Europe, 5% Sweden & Denmark, and 4% Norway. From genealogical research done first by Karen’s mother Janet Miller Hesse and then expanded back by me, her geographic ancestry is diverse, agreeing with the DNA: 5/16 from England – religiously, 1/4 is Protestant and 1/8 Quaker, 1/4 from Scotland – Episcopal, and in fact some from the Moray area), 1/16 from Ireland and Catholic, and 5/16 German – from the state of Hesse, in which 1/4 is religiously Catholic and 1/16 was born Jewish with no evidence of having kept his religion in adulthood.

Records from England are reasonably reliable back to the 1500s and lines of Karen’s ancestry can be traced back with some confidence to that century. They include William Shreve, who seems to me to be the first Quaker to come to the United States, and whose son Thomas Sheriff was born in Little Compton, Rhode Island, around 1624. This is two decades before William Penn, widely mentioned as the first Quaker to come to America. There are two possible explanations for this contradictory information. Penn’s sailing was a public event; he sailed with permission of the King of England to settle in America and his ship contained only Quakers. Or perhaps William Shreve converted to being a Quaker after coming to the United States. Karen’s German ancestors came to the United States and Chicago with the large German migration in the third quarter of the 19th century. Her Scottish ancestors came first to Canada and then to Chicago in the last quarter of the 19th century.