You realize that's going to be almost the entire population of the US, right? The amount of people who are descendants of the population as of 1776-1789 is vanishingly small at this point. Honestly, I don't think I've met anyone who can trace their history back to Revolutionary War. Even I'm technically a "7th Generation Immigrant"
1st gen = 2 parents
2nd gen = 4 grands
3rd gen = 8 grands
4th gen = 16 grands
5th gen = 32 grands
6th gen = 64 grands
7th gen = 128 grands
I got into genealogy some time ago. Tracked my dad's male line back to Germany. When I got a gene test, like 90% of my lineage is from British Isles. Almost no German! My paternal genotype matches up with exactly where I traced my German ancestors back to, so that's legit. I forget the number of generations but it was like 9 or so back I think. Early 1700s.
So, my male line is (was German), but that's like virtually none of my DNA. I've traced ~4-5 ancestors back to the time of the revolution. Any one of those people contributed a vanishingly small amount of my DNA.
My point really is just that if you go back to the point at which you are dealing with 128/256/etc ancestors, there's a really good chance one of them was around in America then, unless your family is very recently immigrated. You're also barely related to any one person!
1st gen = 2 parents 2nd gen = 4 grands 3rd gen = 8 grands 4th gen = 16 grands 5th gen = 32 grands 6th gen = 64 grands 7th gen = 128 grands
I got into genealogy some time ago. Tracked my dad's male line back to Germany. When I got a gene test, like 90% of my lineage is from British Isles. Almost no German! My paternal genotype matches up with exactly where I traced my German ancestors back to, so that's legit. I forget the number of generations but it was like 9 or so back I think. Early 1700s.
So, my male line is (was German), but that's like virtually none of my DNA. I've traced ~4-5 ancestors back to the time of the revolution. Any one of those people contributed a vanishingly small amount of my DNA.
My point really is just that if you go back to the point at which you are dealing with 128/256/etc ancestors, there's a really good chance one of them was around in America then, unless your family is very recently immigrated. You're also barely related to any one person!
Yeah... the "one drop" rule that these people operate under goes in the opposite direction.