Posted on 02/02/2022 9:49:22 PM PST by BenLurkin
My whole family did the tests, and unless the results indicate that one individual is a "cuckoo," the findings are usually so vague and at times laughable (my Jewish-Russian mother-in-law discovered that she had "Peruvian" ancestry!) there's no possibility of harm being done (unless you are completely naive and place too much faith in the tests).
For medical use, such tests serve a great purpose, to warn potential parents what recessed genes may be passed on to any unborn children.
THOSE tests are much more refined, and provide detailed findings about specific gene sequences and the possibility of hidden genetic disorders! Here the possibility of the subject suffering psychological distress is much greater!
Of the people who really get into ‘researching’ their family tree, I have found some are truly just curious, while others are searching for something that is missing in their lives.
This is a different topic. Anyone who has invested any effort in seriously researching their family tree will experience NO surprises when viewing his "ancestry.com" test results.
Some are searching for something that would explain why their lives are developing as they presently are. It’s almost like consulting a Quija Ouija Board for answers.
True.
Regards,
Yeah. It means nothing to a person today if his ancestor was a king, or poor, or held slaves.
Ancestry.com is fun.
I also found an ancestor like yours. Got sent to the colonies for stealing chickens in England as a 16 year old.
That’s like one of 64 or 128 of my ancestors in pre-Revolutionary times it’s been so long.
And you found this out through a DNA test? Not through actual genealogical research?
No one who has invested a mere month of effort in researching his family tree would be surprised by the DNA test findings.
Regards,
I’ve known of so many adoptees that were bats. Obviously their mothers were bats, got knocked up, and had children who were put up for adoption, and inherited their mother’s batiness.
Like your mum slept with randos and you and your siblings are all different halvsies…. Truth.
A friend tested his DNA thru ancestry.com and was pleased with the results, I had an account with ancestry that I gave my mother who was into genealogy, I decided to test my DNA it came back 25% Eastern European Jew, my mother didn’t believe the results and got her DNA tested it came back 50% Eastern European Jew, the Jewish heritage came they her father who died when she was a child, all we know was he immigrated to the US in the early 1900s and went by the name of Thompson, hardly a Jewish name, he also was an orphan
Mommy’s baby, Dady’s “maybe”. Some things never change.
“Like your mum slept with randos and you and your siblings are all different halvsies…. Truth.”
Yeah, but I responded to going way back in the lineage, not anything contemporary.
Your story proves my point.
Any reasonably intelligent adult in the year 2005 with access to an Internet connection and with a few names and dates supplied by the family Bible or old letters and such should have been able, within four weeks, to trace things back several more generations.
Unless you have a "mystery person" like your grandfather in the mix - that is obvious!
My remarks above obviously do not apply to people who are 1) adopted or 2) have a near-ancestor "without a past."
So, "her father died when she was a child." Well, didn't her mother have any papers on her husband? Old keepsakes (birth certificates, photos of her dead hubby's siblings and parents, etc.)?
(Never could understand how effectively some people would erase their pasts - die without leaving behind memoirs, family stories, photos, old birth certificates, etc. - stuff everyone of course takes and today digitizes and places on the Internet so that distant cousins can profit from them.)
Regards,
Well, you obviously can't go "way back" if already your near-ancestors are "black boxes!"
No use researching dear old great-great-great-grandfather's sod-busting days in Minnesota if, in fact, your grandmother's 1930s neighborhood milkman was "very popular" back in the day!
Regards,
This is why paternity tests should be normal for every baby.
I did a trace on my ancestry and have 6 Presidents, several high profile actors/actresses and going back 30+ generations, I found Kings, Barons, Earls, Lords, Ladies, Queens, Princesses- even Vikings.
I figured the fireworks would come from my father’s Sicilian side but, surprisingly, it was my mother’s side.
www.familysearch.org
It is easy to trace parts of your ancestry so long as things were recorded when the events happened, births, deaths, marriages, etc.
In my mother’s case, her biological mother died when she was a toddler, the father remarried and had another child and the father died shortly afterwards, leaving my mother and 2 siblings to be raised by her stepmother. All this happened before my mother was 11 years old.
It’s obvious my Grandfather’s name was changed at some point, but after years of research we can’t find anything to indicate when he came to the USA or where he immigrated from.
Just to show you how things change, my Grandmother on my Father’s side of the family was born in 1906, she was born out in the middle of the woods of rural North Florida, there were no hospitals to go to for the birth of my Grandmother, a midwife was present to help the mother thru birth, no birth records were ever recorded, we don’t know exactly what day or year she was born, the 1906 date was a best estimate.
In fact when I was a child, as a family we went on a vacation to Canada, which required a birth certificate to enter, my Grandmother could not produce a birth certificate because her birth was never recorded, we had to get an affidavit signed by people who knew her as child to say, when they thought she was born.
Her birth was a little over 100 years ago, imagine what the records were like 200 years ago or longer.
Can confirm.
A family moved from up north to here in NC when I was in high school. Beautiful family - successful, wealthy, kind, hard working - except for their daughter who was my age. She ran around, got pregnant, stole, broke in people’s homes, lied and ended up in prison. She even stole a watch from me when she came over to see a movie. Her bf threw their child down the stairs causing him brain damage.
My heavens, I just looked her up on an inmate website and she has dozens of felonies- mostly B&E, possession of stolen goods, larceny. She served over 10 yrs in prison.
Definitely ‘nature’ not ‘nurture’.
I know someone who found out through an Ancestry DNA kit that the man she thought was her father is not. Also, she has a half sister who was adopted.
Irish? What a dastardly mistake!
/sarc
Forget formal birth records! For me, the mystery remains as to why the written correspondence, photo albums, specific keepsakes, etc. left behind didn't provide enough clues.
Even a hundred years ago, people wrote letters to each other, containing vital bits of info like, "Visited with your cousin Clem last Saturday, the day after the big July 4th celebrations here in Podunk Town. He'll be marryin' next week - 17-y-o girl named Anna Reilly from neighboring Bumfunkville, father (blind in one eye) is the pastor of the Anglican Church. Anyways, Clem, he says he got discharged from the Army on Feb. 2 last year because..."
When you digitally scan those hundreds of precious letters - love letters, angry letters, etc. - which those people presciently saved, because they held such high sentimental value, and then pick them apart for key words which are then used for Internet searches...
I have 19th-century obits published in the Danish-language church newsletter of the Minnesota town from which my maternal line hails...
Regards,
You don't say it, but I assume that this woman was adopted, right?
Regards,
That’s true for some but not others, 100 years ago, or longer it was a struggle to survive day to day.
There was no electricity, no one had a car, no one had a telephone, no one had quality medical care, every day it was hard to find enough food for everyone to eat.
Basically there was no Government to speak of, my Grandmother was lucky she got to go to school and learned how to read and write.
A lot of people did keep correspondence, but many did not so keeping track of things like births, deaths, etc were not kept or recorded.
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