Nationality of 7th Cavalry

[dave]

In our discussions about the Little Big Horn we have often discussed the role played by immigrants in the 7th.
I decided to find the percentages of the foreign born members of the regiment, but being too lazy to do the necessary research of enlistment rolls I looked on line for figures. I found the data below from a poster on another board and decided to poach them for my use.

Ireland:                17.0%

Germany:             12.4%

England:                4.4%

Canada:                 1.8%

Scotland:               1.4%

Denmark:               .98%

Switzerland:           .80%

France:                  .65%

Italy:                     .49%

Sweden:                .49%

Norway:                .33%


Regards
Dave

[dave]

My wife and I had thinking of having our DNA tested and sent our's off to Ancestory.com for testing. I expected to be be British, especially since my maternal grandfather came here from Wales, and Irish but the smaller percentages surprised me. I suppose I can claim to be Hispanic now that I came from Iberia.
My DNA results
Great Britain                79%
Europe East                 10%
Ireland                         6%
Italy/Greece                  2%
Iberian Peninsula           2%
Europe West              < 1%


Now my wife's was a little surprising
Great Britain               49%
Ireland                       18%
Scandinavia                  9%
Iberian Peninsula          8%
European Jewish           5%
Europe West                 5%
Europe East                  1%
Finland/Russia              4%
Europe East                  1%

My wife is a 5th generation Southern Baptist and needless to say we had a chuckle over her and now my kids being Jewish. Now she wonders which tribe? I told her it probably not the Levites since she could not be a priest. My kids are tickled to death and proud of Mama Sue. Who'd a thunk it?*
Regards 
Dave

*courtesy of Mortimer Snerd

[yanmacca]

Hey Dave, if your ancestors arrived in the States prior to 1920 then the top two totals would count as one, because the whole of Ireland was then part of Great Britain, in fact thousands of Irish men joined up to fight for King and Country in the 1914-18 war.

[Beth]

It seems that the 7th was a snap shot of was America was in the 1870's

[dave]

Yan
I knew that I was English with the last name of Elmore, 1 grandfather from Wales and Scots because my paternal grandfather's middle was McCoud, surprised that I was only 6% Irish but you make great sense about Ireland only gaining independence in 1920.
Regards
Dave 

[Beth]

I did a DNA thing with 23 and me. I have to admit that I was rather surprised by some of the results. I guess it just goes to show that our European ancestors got around a lot more than one would think.

[dave]

Come come girl and share. You couldn't have been more surprised than my wife and I when she found out she was 5% European Jewish.
Regards
Dave

[dave]

I was shocked that there were so many that came to America from England in the 1861-1890 era. I knew of the Germans, Irish and Scots from family records in the south prior to the War. There where famous fights between Confederate Irish and Federal Irish units, especially at the Battle of Fredericksburg. About 40,000 Irishmen fought for the Confederacy during the War providing almost 10% of all rebel troops.

The English did not have the flair of the Irish and just seemed to have blended into society quietly. The stiff upper lip of the Englishman evidently was on display and all accepted that image.
Regards
Dave

[carl]

Mar 13, 2016 2:34:52 GMT dave said:

I was shocked that there were so many that came to America from England in the 1861-1890 era. I knew of the Germans, Irish and Scots from family records in the south prior to the War. There where famous fights between Confederate Irish and Federal Irish units, especially at the Battle of Fredericksburg. About 40,000 Irishmen fought for the Confederacy during the War providing almost 10% of all rebel troops.

The English did not have the flair of the Irish and just seemed to have blended into society quietly. The stiff upper lip of the Englishman evidently was on display and all accepted that image.
Regards
Dave

Many left Devon in the mid to late 19th century.
My great grandfather immigrated to Illinois in 1850
with 3 grown children. His wife died, he went
back to England, remarried, and came again
this time to Minnesota in 1873 (along with
my grandfather who was 7 at the time) where
the 3 children of his first marriage were
then living.

[Beth]

Mar 13, 2016 2:13:21 GMT dave said:

Come come girl and share. You couldn't have been more surprised than my wife and I when she found out she was 5% European Jewish.
Regards
Dave

99.7% European

30.2% French & German
9.9% British & Irish
2.7% Scandinavian
0.1%  Finnish
34.1% Broadly Northwestern European
3.9%  Balkan
2.8% Broadly Southern European
6.2% Eastern European
9.8% Broadly European
0.1% East Asian & Native American
0.1% Yakut
0.2% Unassigned

I'm also 2.9% Neanderthal--average for Europeans is 2.7%

What I found surprising is the Scandinavian and Finnish because even though my dad's family is from a town that was settled almost exclusively by Norwegians, we were part of a handful of town members who considered the Germans.

And then there is the Yakut...

[dave]

I don't know if Ancestry does a test regarding Neanderthal or not so I am unsure if I have evoluted or not. Sue often thinks my troglodyte days are not over and I may not make it become Homo Sapiens.
Pretty cool that you have Native American/Asian and Yakut genes which makes you a real smorgasbord of nationalities.

I was surprised to be 2% Hispanic and 2% Italian and Greek since I have never discovered any family antecedents from the Mediterranean area. Being of Slavic stock was somewhat surprising as I had always been told we came from the British Isles.

I would recommend doing this DNA test just to have a better understanding of your heritage, especially those of us from former colonies of European nations. Someone, perhaps Conrad, could provide the percentage of which countries the immigrants of Australia came from. It would be interesting to see it compare with the US.
Regards
Dave

[BrevetorCoffin]

Mar 13, 2016 19:54:05 GMT dave said:

I don't know if Ancestry does a test regarding Neanderthal or not so I am unsure if I have evoluted or not. Sue often thinks my troglodyte days are not over and I may not make it become Homo Sapiens.
Pretty cool that you have Native American/Asian and Yakut genes which makes you a real smorgasbord of nationalities.

I was surprised to be 2% Hispanic and 2% Italian and Greek since I have never discovered any family antecedents from the Mediterranean area. Being of Slavic stock was somewhat surprising as I had always been told we came from the British Isles.

I would recommend doing this DNA test just to have a better understanding of your heritage, especially those of us from former colonies of European nations. Someone, perhaps Conrad, could provide the percentage of which countries the immigrants of Australia came from. It would be interesting to see it compare with the US.
Regards
Dave

. Piltdown?

[dave]

Pan troglodyte would be more accurate.
Regards
Dave

[deadwoodgultch]

Dave, in line with your immigrant thread I'm going to fill in some history for you on one of those and put a face on him. We have mentioned him on the board before, he established his home in Yankton SD after serving in the ACW. His great grandson was born there and attended SD State, the spawn of the older resident of Yankton has been in several Super Bowls.



Felix Villiet Vinatieri (1837-1891)

Felix Villiet Vinatieri was born Felice Villiet in Turin, Italy in 1834. His father died while Felix was very young. His mother, Amelia, a harpist, remarried two years later to Enrico Felice Vinatieri, a piano builder. The family then moved to Naples where his stepfather encouraged Felix's musical talents. By the age of ten, Felix was an accomplished violinist. He graduated from Naples' Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella in 1853 and subsequently taught there for about a year.

Felix became the director of the Queen's Guard of Spagnis, an Italian military band, at the age of twenty. He held this position for five years, during which time he became well known as a cornetist and performer of various band instruments.

In 1859, Felix and his sister Emmelia [an opera singer] migrated to America. In 1861, Felix enlisted with the Sixteenth Regiment of Massachusetts at Boston, as a musician. His second enlistment occurred in 1867 as Infantry Musician with the Twenty-Second Infantry at Fort Columbus, New York. He served during the Civil War, was sent west and discharged in December 1870 at Fort Sully in the Dakota Territory. He chose to settle in Yankton, Dakota Territory.

While living in Yankton, Felix met sixteen-year-old Anna Frances Fejfar of a music-loving Czechoslovakian immigrant family. The couple was married within the year in 1871. Vinatieri built a home with a studio in which to teach the young and for the purpose of composing music.

The US government announced that a military expedition would be sent to assess reports of gold in the Black Hills country. George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Regiment of Cavalry was assigned to duty at Fort Abraham Lincoln which was being established along the Missouri River in the northern half of Dakota Territory.

The Seventh Regiment arrived in Yankton on the Dakota Southern Railroad from Sioux City, Iowa, on April 9, 1873. With Custer were 800 troops, 700 horses, 202 mules, enlisted men's and officers' families, and aides. They camped there for a number of weeks to prepare for their long march north. During their encampment in Yankton, a ball organized to honor the officers. 

Seventh Regiment Cavalry Band at Fort Lincoln

The leader of the band that night was a lithe, trim, thirty-nine-year-old Italian named Felix Vinatieri, who led the band with gusto. Lt. Colonel Custer thought the music sophisticated for a wilderness town and asked to meet the band leader. He explained that his present leader had requested to be relieved. Custer liked Felix Vinatieri, and offered him the position of Chief Musician.

On May 7, 1873, the band rode out of Yankton for Fort Abraham Lincoln. On the lead horse was a proud Felix Vinatieri. Following his arrival at the fort, Vinatieri travelled to St. Paul, Minnesota, to enlist for a three year period as Bandleader of the Seventh Cavalry.

Mrs. Anna Vinatieri, reminiscing about frontier Dakota Territory, often told her grandchildren of life at Fort Abraham Lincoln, and spoke of Custer's love for band music. She told of George's and his wife Libbie's fondness of quadrilles (i.e. an early 19th-century ballroom dance, performed by sets of four, six or eight couples.)

Opening of the first clarinet part for "The Mosquitos of Dakota Waltz," by Vinatieri on June 14, 1874 

On June 26, 1876, General Custer, along with 276 men, were killed during the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The sixteen members of the band, who were mostly German, were spared, as Custer had left orders with band leader Vinatieri that the band was not to engage in battle, but to remain on the supply steamboat, Far West, moored on the Powder River. The steamboat served subsequently as a floating hospital, with the band members serving as medics as the Far West raced back to the fort, making the nearly thousand mile journey in fifty-four hours. Later when Libbie Custer wrote about the expedition's return, she noted the travel-battered condition of the instruments of the band.

Vinatieri was discharged on December 18, 1876, at Fort Abraham Lincoln, with a notation for good conduct. The family returned to Yankton where he had organized the Yankton band, serving as its director from 1868 to 1873 and 1886 to 1891.

He was well-known to and respected by all of the orchestra directors and musicians of the United States. He played his violin and cornet, as they were his favorite instruments. His army personnel records, instruments, and personal furnishings, which he had brought by riverboat from St. Louis, were displayed at the Dakota Territorial Museum in Yankton.

Vinatieri was credited with marches, waltzes, and mazurkas, in addition to two complete light operas, "The American Volunteer" and "The Barber of the Regiment." For these he wrote not only the music, but the complete libretto, including the stage directions. These compositions were two of the earliest of American operas, and the first operas composed west of the Mississippi. He expected to present "The American Volunteer" at the Columbian World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 but he died of pneumonia in Yankton on December 5, 1891.

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