User blog:NuclearVacuum/The Wondrous World of "Alternate Ancestry"

Over the years, I have established a rather large People:list of people:0 who will be Alaska:0:0ns in this timeline. Today, I hope to explain my criteria and methods for a field I shall call "alternate ancestry."

Background
It all started with a simple question for the 13 Fallen Stars timeline &mdash; Which nation would each of America's presidents (OTL) lead in this timeline? While the first few dozen presidents were easy enough to figure out (since they were born in the ), it became more complicated the longer time has passed (as more presidents were born outside the colonial borders). Would (being the first president born west of the  be a n in TTL? Would  (born in California) even be born?

From out of the blue, LG came and introduced me to several sites which could answer my questions. He showed me that both Hoover and Nixon's ancestries go back to Pennsylvania. He also helped with complete my presidential list (which can be viewed here, for those that are interested).

When I began incorporating these new methods into the Russian America timeline, it initially proved to be more difficult. Instead of looking into which of the Thirteen Colonies an individual originated from, I was looking into what [European] country. I had to go deeper into research and also determine whether I included all people or those simply associated with the. In the end, I chose the former, which I hope to explain my reasonings.


 * Most Helpful Sources I've Used


 * Ethnicity of Celebs
 * Geni.com
 * WARGS

What are the Trends?
Before we can determine who could be an [alternate] Alaskan, we should first ask how how we can deduce such a thing. To better understand this, let's look into the history of an immigration to the. What are the trends? Is there a noticeable pattern?

To keep things simple, let's use the as an example. The home islands are inhabited by four distinct groups:, , , and. For British emigres, where would they choose to settle (outside the home islands). The short answer: EVERYWHERE! The long answer: they mostly chose to settle in areas which had large numbers of Britons.



I've come across a wonderful map by RedSnowCastle over on Reddit which should easily explain this. On their map, Britons are colored in red and pink. Outside of Europe, most chose to settle in, , and the. All four were once part of the British Empire, and all (aside from the USA) are part of the. While there does exist a few pockets of Britons living in  and, the aforementioned four are the clear winners for having a large British populous.

Next, let's look at the. Outside the, they clearly dominate the territories once controlled by the. The are concentrated in  and. The in [southern]. In short, it clearly appears that Europeans tend to settle in areas which once belonged to the respective colonial empire (for the most part).

However, this leaves out two groups which didn't have (long-lasting) overseas empire to settle their people: and. Despite this, these two have massive populations outside of Europe. Do the same trends exist with them? Let's see.

Let's start with the Germans. On the mentioned map, they clearly dominate the, though large pockets also exist in , , and. Why would most Germans wish to settle in the United States? While there were a variety of reasons, I believe the biggest one was culture and linguistics (making it easier to integrate). The second group are the. The clearly dominate Argentina, Brazil, and ; with a small pocket in the USA. Similar to before, culture and linguistics could explain why Italians chose to settle more in South America instead of.

In conclusion, I believe European emigres prefer to settle in areas which have well established connections to their homelands. Be it on a colonial or cultural one.

What Makes a Good Alaskan?
Using the data above, I have established a criteria using three different groups of potential Alaskans.



The first group will include the and all who were subjects of the. This group would be dominated by, , , and. This group would also include, , , , , , and (among the most significant peoples).

The second group will include (those outside the first group). Given that Alaska would be the only nation in the Western Hemisphere to have an Orthodox culture and majority, I could see many choosing to settle there. This group would be dominated by, , , , , and. If we were to include other (such as the Armenians), than this group could be expanded to include, , , , and.

The third group would include the remaining (not mentioned in the first two groups) and the other peoples of. The first half would include, , , , and. The second half would include and. The non-Russian and non-Orthodox Slavs may chose to settle in Alaska due to cultural and linguistic connections, while the Scandinavians may choose to settle for geographic and climatic reasons (given that and  IOTL have large Scandinavian populations).

I've included a simple map to visualize all of this. The dark green areas include people groups which would have a a 9/10 chance of being Alaskan. The lighter the color, the less likely it becomes (the lightest being 1/10). The orange areas are places that I have extracted peoples to become Alaskan. By this, I mean I've focused mostly on looking into the ancestries of and  (as these people chose to settle in North America). The pink areas I will need to explain in a future blog (as Asian settlers work very differently from Europeans).

Conclusion
Like I mentioned in my first blog post, this is by no means an exact science. While I like to think I've improved over the years and accounted for most scenarios, a wrench can always be thrown into the works.

There are plenty of examples of people who would appear to meet the aforementioned criteria, but turn out to be duds. An example of this would be, who had a chance at being. His father was actually of Russian royalty and nobility, he had close connections with the  and. His mother was a full-blooded Canadian.

Than you have cases where someone doesn't appear to meet any of the criteria, but a simple search showed that they are. My favorite example of this would be, the creator of . His mother's family is Norwegian and they specifically settled into North America through the. His father is ethnically, but they immigrated from and  (making him "").

While I'm not an expert in this field and have made many mistakes in the past, I hope this will help explain my mindset in regards towards my list of alternate Alaskans and the like.