Each side of the family is different. One has been here much longer than the other, though both came here from Germany if I’m not mistaken.
I think one side has been here for four generations (came here in the late-1800’s) and the other for several generations (came here in the mid-1700’s).
FindAGrave.com is a great resource for finding where your ancestors are buried & you can make a virtual cemetery. I volunteer there and manage several of my Family’s online profiles.
I plan to take my daughters on a road-trip to visit these sacred gravesites in person.
On one side, the first arrived in 1894 if I recall correctly and settled directly in the Midwest, far north of the Mason Dixon line. As such, they arrived decades after the abolition of slavery and had zero involvement with it.
On the other side, even though I would not be classified as “African American”, one of my ancestors was apparently an actual African American Slave in Louisiana.
I don’t know how people who support “Reparations” would justify obligating ancestors of people who came here as immigrants long after slavery was outlawed to pay reparations or if they’d support reparations given to someone like me who would be classified as “Caucasian”, which would seem to go against the ideas of the proponents of “Reparations”…
A family member traced our Dunham family to the 1600s in America. I don’t know how many generations.
My good friend Rosalie says, “I’m not African American. I’ve never been to Africa.” She was born in Texas. Sometime I call her “Tex,” or to tease her I will say she’s a Texan American. (Texas was briefly a separate country, but that was somewhat before our time.)
As Americans, we have been here since the time our ancestors came from Europe and drove the native American people off the lands where they had lived for thouands of years.
Another thought is that Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead.”
He also says in the Bible that he didn’t come to create a great feeling of family membership; rather he came to break the family apart, and extricate the one family member who is ready to follow him.
If family life is bringing us closer to God, it is good. That is the real family. There is only one family…because God is the Father of everyone on earth. As we progressivley cultivate our love for God, the symptom will be that we see everyone as a family member. This is not the flesh and blood family; it is the family of the spirit, which is the real family. Visiting graveyards, however can be very educational. It can remind us that these material families of the flesh, simply don’t endure, and that we should cultivate our eternal family relationship. We are all “prodigal sons” of the Lord.