A series of posts by Daryanani & Bland staff sharing their immigration stories—how they (or their families) came to America and/or how they came to work in the immigration law field.

The stories of people’s cultural backgrounds, how they came to America, and the cultural traditions they brought with them are fascinating to me. That’s part of why I became an immigration attorney and why my own family’s immigration story is one that I have thoroughly explored.

My mother’s side of the family comes from England through a line that can be traced back to the earliest American settlers, including a Francis Drake (who our family thinks may be a descendent of the Sir Francis Drake but have yet to confirm) who settled in the colony of New Hampshire. An alleged religious dispute with the Puritans caused him to move his family further south. With multiple generations of my family living in Connecticut, it’s ironic that I was already living in Brooklyn, NY when my mother and aunt decided to start a genealogy research project and discovered that my great-great-great-great-grandfather Theodore Drake spent most of his life in Brooklyn, NY and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery—only blocks from where I live now. Theodore Drake turned out to be an interesting character. If I were on the show Finding Your Roots (if it ever comes back on the air—thanks Ben Affleck and Henry Louis Gates Jr.!) he would surely be the character they focus on (apart from Sir Francis Drake).