Posted on 10/08/2017 1:10:31 PM PDT by madison10
I happen to be a member of one of the genealogical sites. Currently my DNA profile is 78% Western European and a typical native Western European is 48%. Which means 30% more of MY DNA came from the region than that of a native.
Thank God I am not in Europe welcoming the Muslim hordes.
Not boring at all. I find genealogy totally fascinating and have been having a ball researching my family tree for the past few years.
A few high points, and trust me I’m not bragging here, millions upon millions of people can trace to the same lines.
Earliest ancestor in the new world I’ve found so far is about 1610.
Can trace direct lineage to the Plantagenet kings of England.
Directly descended from William the Conquerer
Directly descended from Charlemagne
It can go the other way too, my 4th great grandmother may have been a prostitute at one time in England.
The sad part is I cannot trace my surname line back past my great great grandfather. It’s been a complete and total dead end.
Genealogy is at times tedious and taxing, but there’s always some surprise waiting around the bend.
I think I would trust the LDS websites more than any of the other sites. From what I hear some of the others sell their DNA data. What if they sell that information to insurance companies?
I have had good experiences with the LDS genealogy people. They have offices all around the country with people who really know genealogy. You can make an appointment and they have access to a lot of records. And it’s free.
It is possible, but a lot of my research is not recording on Ancestry.com, so I don’t have that good comprehensive record of the early Massachusetts or Connecticut settlers.
I just found out that my great x3 grandfather acted as a bodyguard to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons.
Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mothers to their children, never from fathers. So you may have the same mitochondrial DNA type as Cheddar Man, but you could not have inherited it directly from him, because he could not have passed it on to any of his children.
We are cousins. I also dead end on my name line. 1850 in West Prussia.
Hey Cuz!
My surname disappears right here in the county I type this from in Kentucky... about 1840.
The tests are actually quite accurate. It is the interpretation that is the tricky part.
I was just poking around on Ancestry.com, and it showed me a name that it had determined is a very close relative, based on our DNA results. Yep, I think my uncle is a close relative. My cousin popped up there, too, and it placed her as actually being more distant than a first cousin--but that makes sense because she and I share a grandfather, but not a grandmother.
Another factor I look at is the ethnic profile determined by DNA. I compared my uncle, my cousin, and my ethnic background. Uncle has Bantu and Indian ancestry like I do, but my cousin (his niece) does not.
Some variations in DNA are due to the nature of the molecule. Even identical twins do not have identical DNA.
I think I probably understand the nature of the tests run by companies like Ancestry.com better than the average person. I did my Ph.D. studying DNA.
Yes, I agree. There are ‘memories in our DNA.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck hypothesized that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism
Lamarkian inheritance was out of fashion for a long time but evidence suggests he might have been correct.
I am fascinated by what you just said. I connected with an ancestor who was 2 years old when his father died. His widow moved to California, a bold move in 1900. California has excellent records and good newspapers and I have followed this ancestor for a long time. I keep hoping he had at least one offspring but I have never found one. I have found three of his wives. Maybe there are more.
What have you learned about him? What was he like? What fascinates you? It’s all so exciting these connections!
I guess the only thing that would prompt me to get any DNA testing done is if anyone in my family and/or I had a mysterious illness — just to identify genetic issues. Also, searching for missing relatives would be another reason. Otherwise, I’m not wanting that info “out there” for any reason.
I’d assume that there may be employees at these non-medical agencies who may not be totally on the up-and-up. I’d hate to have a sample of my DNA available if someone wanted to pull something nefarious. I know; I watch too much Investigation Discovery Channel. :) And then there’s Uncle Sam, who I wouldn’t want to assist in having the info — although I figure they could get it now if they wanted it.
Wanting to get genealogy info just for kicks ... I dunno. It might not be worth the risk.
I have learned so much about him. His mother remarried and he was raised in Los Angeles. I have copies of his draft card from WW1 and WW2. I couldn’t find him for a while in his late teens. He was in college somewhere but I haven’t figured that out where yet. He came back to LA and married his first wife. There were 2 after that. That was a surprise but it was California.
I am not sure why I have been so fascinated by this ancestor. Maybe because he lost his father when he was only 2 years old. Maybe because his mother was able to move on as a widow in 1900 when women had limited opportunities and there weren’t even food stamps in those days.
Great Britain 58%
Europe West 18%
Ireland 11%
Scandinavian 5%
Italian 1%
Jewish 1%
Still feel slightly uneasy. However I got an inquiry from a daughter of a Vietnamese Woman who met a soldier in the conflict there 1969. We have a match in DNA with her unknown father. Happily she is in the USA now. Said the 19 year old soldier went back to Australia.
Making enquiries now of Australian relatives. She would like to know of him.
So he was raised with a strong mother figure, and probably respected women. Served in two wars, when he probably could have gotten out of the 2nd, so patriotic. Married 3 times, so ... hard to tell. Bad choices? Had an ideal that they didn’t meet? Just simple tragedies?
My father’s mother married 3 times. Father’s father at least 4. I hope they did better and were happier each time.
Strong women could do a lot for themselves. And especially out west, there were a lot of role models of strong women. Grandmother was the first newspaper publisher in Colorado. She divorced grandfather, and took a job in state government. Yours seems to be that same strong type. And tragic that he lost his father so soon. What do you bet she had a large garden, something you don’t find so often now?
You might want to check out the New England Historical and Genealogy Society. They have very good records for early Massachusetts and Connecticut settlers.
https://www.americanancestors.org/about
You also might want to try the local Mormon office. They have excellent records and have some good people who know the records and it’s free.
There is a definite advantage to having Mormons in a branch of the family. I perused my family tree in the on-line Mormon registry, and traced back ancestors for centuries.
Of course, I am a little skeptical of the records going back a millennia or more. While it is amusing to see my family tree going back to the first king of Britain some two millennia BC, I seriously doubt the accuracy of that lineage.
My father was an orphan, raised by a woman in the black neighborhood where my mother grew up. The story was that my father was probably part Jewish and part black. Maybe. The Air Force treated him as white, but supposedly his mother was the daughter of the Jewish store owner and either a black or a white guy. Since she didn’t know if he was part black (he looked white), he couldn’t go to a white orphanage and she gave him to a neighborhood woman.
When I had my DNA done, it turned out that the white part of me is mostly British & Irish and French & German. The little part of my Italian great grandfather also showed up.
I feel like the guy in the commercials who thought he was German and found out he was Scottish. And, perhaps it explains why I’ve always liked bagpipes and Gaelic music.
I don’t think she had a large garden. She was in a very urban area of Los Angeles. I think one reason she moved to LA was to get away from a cold rural area to a warm urban area. Who knows. But maybe I have her genes. I have a large garden and lots of firewood.
But I am so impressed that in 1900 she was able to somehow support herself and care for her child. And he grew up to at least connect with a ‘life’ partner.
I have been so impressed with how difficult life was back then. There was no social security, no welfare, and people had to work hard to keep a roof over their head. So many people lived in other people’s houses as servants. That was the only way to get food and a place to sleep. Hire yourself out. How she was able to live independently and not be indentured is impressive.
>>I have a large garden and lots of firewood.
I love it! Don’t you think it would have made them happy to know that they had an impact on a descendant? That they weren’t forgotten. I think that’s a gift you give them.
Geneticists are highly critical of the attribution of specific individual DNA to a particular nation or set of nations. Ancestry DNA has not fully explained its method and established it as scientifically valid. Experts regard such claims as beyond current science, which is mostly limited to population wide inferences and a handful of special cases.
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