This is funnier 'n hell, and makes me proud to be Dutch. I was essentially an orphan, having lost my dad, also an orphan, in France in 1944, before my birth. As a consequence I knew nothing about my background, only beginning to suspect I was Dutch sometime in the early '70s.

Knowing of my lack of history, a Mormon lady did genealogy research for me as a Christmas gift a few years ago. Among much else, she discovered that the first De Witt born on this continent arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam in the year 1600 - 20 years before the Pilgrims and 67 years before the Dutch sold the fort to the English, who renamed it New York. There were De Witts in New York 150 years before there were Comanches in Texas.

So much for "We're all immigrants here."

Makes me proud of my Dutch heritage as well. Prouder than the coffee bars of Amsterdam.

I wish I were somewhat Dutch, now. That was bigly funny.

During my one brief visit to Amsterdam I was at the hotel bar after the business day. In my effort to enjoy the local culture I asked the bartender if he would serve me a Heineken. He replied "No I will not! You will have a Grolsch!". I said "Yess sir!"

My Dad always said we were part Pennsylvania Dutch, and for most of my life I thought I had Dutch heritage. Then my niece and I did our genealogy several years back and discovered belatedly that our Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry was German. Oh well. I guess English, Irish, Scottish, French, Swiss and German is OK.

Ok, this was funny, and in a good way. Not mean-spirited.

@BillH: The story goes that the early "Dutch" settlers in Pennsylvania told the English residents they spoke "Deutsch", which was then corrupted into "Dutch". There's probably something to that. There was no unified German nation at the time, so these folks couldn't say they came from "Germany"; they'd have had to say they came from the various German principalities, some of which were pretty obscure. Bavaria or Prussia, sure, but who would have heard of Oldenburg or Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt? Sounds Dutch to me...