May 2, 2015, 8:39 PM

My father told me that his grandfather (therefore my great grandfather, I think his mother's father) was full Apache. I saw said great grandfather's grave and there is a little portrait of him on his headstone and I can see the distinctly Amerindian look. Also his name was distinctly un-caucasian. That's a neat cemetery which exists in Rye, Texas next to a little country church all alone on a quiet highway. My father is planted there with both of his parents and many of his mother's siblings.

Then it turns out that my mother's mother comes from Oklahoma and brought with them some Cherokee, which I kind of wrote off because it seems like everybody in the US is "part Cherokee". Mother's mother turns out to be related to Edgar Allen Poe. Also mother's mother's uncle lived to be almost 100 and was an oil painter (artist) in Arkansas. I have some of his paintings now. He was very good and mostly did landscapes.

The rest of everyone I am related to has been in the US forever. My family name is English in origin and I am aware of an ancestor that moved to Virginia in the 1600's, presumably from England. Over time they moved west and spread out. One of my great uncles became a Vice President of the United States. He has that name. There's also a huge state park named after him and stuff, but these days people forget about him because most people forget the VPs, which is fair.

My mother's father's father came from a family that has a homestead in East Texas, which I have visited. It's a nice place. Unfortunately a lot of the people out there are freaking crazy. I don't have much to do with them. Mother's father's mother is from a different family mostly from Georgia and North Carolina. I have been out there and met them. They seem nice, but distant.

Short answer: Mixed but mostly caucasian. People used to assume my father spoke Spanish because of how dark skinned he was, but that's because he worked in the sun a lot and thanks to aforementioned Apache ancestor he tanned.