Before he came to America in 1876, my great-grand father Gustav Fryxell lived a life of such hardship in rural Sweden chat I can barely imagine it. One year, the family's lone cow starved to death. Another time, young Gustav lost his coat, and the family was too poor to buy a replacement, so he had to stay indoors the whole long, dark Swedish winter. No wonder he and his brother decided to seek a better life on the other side of the Atlantic.

On the other half of my family, the connection to Europe is much further back in history, and most of my mother's ancestors were pretty well off in the old country — in their case, England. My seventh-great-grandfather Francis Stanfield, for example, lived in Cheshire until inspired to join William Penn's Quaker migration to America. When Francis, his wife, Grace, and six children boarded the Endeavor for the New World in 1683, they were accompanied by nine servants.