How Much Do You Know About Your Ancestry?

On my dad's side I had my Canadian grandmother & German grandfather.

On my mom's side I had a Canadian great-great grandmother Dion, supposedly making me a very distant cousin to Celine Dion.

There's also some English, Irish, Welsh in there somewhere. Lots of tall ancestors, pale skinned like me.

My great grandmother traced the line of mother's back to the 1400s. My dad's uncle did a family history back to the 1600s with a lot more branch tracing. Basically both sides have been in North America since the beginning of English settlement. On the matrilineal line I can trace back to the first colony governor and aristocrats in North America while my dad's family were farmers. We've had some immigrant marrying into the family over the years but all German, Netherlands and mostly north North Eastern European in origin. I did a DNA test recently and I am 60% English, 20% German and a rough mix of North Eastern European to add in. My Mom did a DNA test and she had half a percent Asian that I apparently didn't inherit so there was some non-European in there at some point in the family line.

As for stories, my great granother hitchhiked from Pennsylvania to California during the Great Depression while pregnant with my grandmother. She decided she wanted a job and there were none in Pennsylvania. So she told my great grandfather he could follow, or not, but she was going. He did end up following and arrived two months after her. The house they bought during that time they lived in for the rest of their lives.

Both of my parents father's died when they were teens. So I didn't have any living grandfather's. My Dad's dad had a rough life in general; he grew up in a cabin in the woods miles from anything. His mother died in childbirth while his father (my great grandfather) died when he was a young teen. His two uncle's heard that his father had passed so they went to the cabin. They split all their brothers possessions and kicked my grandfather out of the cabin to fend for himself because they wanted the cabin. My grandfather made his way to civilization, found a job and saved up enough to get a train to California. Once in California he joined the Navy and served for a few years. Once he left the Navy he met my grandmother, they married and had two kids. Sixteen years later they had another child and then my father, as a friend for his sibling. My father's brother turned out to have early onset schizophrenia around the same time my grandfather developed complications from a lifetime of smoking. My Dad doesn't have any memories of his father except him being in and out of the hospital. He passed away when my Dad was around 11.

My Mom's dad was a huge bear of a man. Also in the Navy but also a survival trainer, amateur boxer and volunteer fire fighter. He was the guy every other guy looked up to, very literally since he was 6'9" but also heavily muscled. His helicopter went down over the ocean on a rescue mission during Vietnam, only a life raft was recovered.

Wow! Fascinating family "tails"! Per family oral history, Indigenous -- Chickasaw, Caddo, Comanche and Cherokee, and Black Irish. One ancestor's name is definitely north African, so I would think there are some ancestors from there in the mix. No genealogy test, as I've heard and read they can be wildly inaccurate, as in one African-American woman's test showing she is white because there is at least one white ancestor in her family tree, and two full biological sisters' profiles coming up quite different from one another. I've read that the results of these tests are government knowledge and can be used for very nefarious purposes, as well. So no thanks on that.
There are LOTS of fascinating family stories on both sides, so I could write books, I guess. One is that the Irish couple on my mom's side came over separately, him first, and then she was shipped over as well when it came to light that they had married. That doesn't make sense to me, as Irish Catholics at that time had to "publish the banns" notifying the community of their union, and so it would be common knowledge, not secret as was implied by the story. Anyway, one of their descendants had 13 children. That's about all I know about them, except that the family name is supposedly traced to the Galway area.

Lari said:

But do you know where in Yugoslavia? Because I remember as a child saying that's where some of my family was from and being corrected that they were Croatian. Even when they were stuck as one country, everyone knew what they were.

My dad's mom's family is Croatian, and some cousin actually traced one line back to Italy in the mid 1700s when that Italian first migrated across the Adriatic to Croatia. Most people on that side were fishermen/sailors.

My dad's dad was Slovak for the most part. Someone was adopted so we don't know who their parents are and if they're Slovak, too.

Someone on my dad's side of the family supposedly helped work on the Suez canal when it was being built.

On my mom's side, my great great Irish grandmother was seeing and predicting when people would die as a child. No one liked that, so they sent her to the US to live with a priest cousin or something. Her daughter, Jewel, was married to a Texan and was told by doctors she was barren. Then there was an altercation with workers down there in Texas, her husband was shot and killed and I believe she was shot as well, came back up to IL where she married my great-grandfather and went on to have ten children, of which my grandfather was number three.

My mom's mom's side was German/Polish/Bohemian/Eastern European as well.

The only surprise on our DNA test was Scandinavian, which we still don't understand. We also got a bit of Iberian Peninsula, and a tiny bit of Middle Eastern, but it was basically all European and the regions we expected.

Man, I write too much.

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I'm pretty sure it was Vilanos, I am not sure of the spelling, and they spoke of Slovenia,
a lot of the food was "Slovenian", pastries, sooo good. nut rolls, chicken fried in lard!!

tarasgirl06 , yes DNA results do vary significantly from family member to family member not because the test is inaccurate but because we do not all inherit the same DNA. My DNA comes back 50% Sicilian, which makes sense because that is where my mother’s parents were from. My sister, same mom, has DNA that is only 47% Sicilian. So apparently one or both of my grandparents had a smidge of something else, which my sister inherited and I did not. If you do decide to do a DNA test, have someone else in your family do it as well. One thing that is interesting with the African ancestry is that they can tell you which part of Africa your ancestors came from. I have DNA from four different regions.

susanm9006 said:

tarasgirl06 , yes DNA results do vary significantly from family member to family member not because the test is inaccurate but because we do not all inherit the same DNA. My DNA comes back 50% Sicilian, which makes sense because that is where my mother’s parents were from. My sister, same mom, has DNA that is only 47% Sicilian. So apparently one or both of my grandparents had a smidge of something else, which my sister inherited and I did not. If you do decide to do a DNA test, have someone else in your family do it as well. One thing that is interesting with the African ancestry is that they can tell you which part of Africa your ancestors came from. I have DNA from four different regions.

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TYSM for that info! But what about the woman I wrote of, who, because she had a white ancestor (and who doesn't, in this hemisphere? It's pretty common) was declared white by the company that did the test? It rattled her pretty badly...

tarasgirl06 said:

TYSM for that info! But what about the woman I wrote of, who, because she had a white ancestor (and who doesn't, in this hemisphere? It's pretty common) was declared white by the company that did the test? It rattled her pretty badly...

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I don't know which one she did, or when. The ones my brother did didn't "declare" anybody anything. Assigning race is pretty fraught anyway; I can't imagine any company trying that now. The tests just tell you what percentage of your bloodline came from which place.

I don't know much of my ancestry.
Paternal side - My great Grandparents immigrated here from Germany and my great Grandfather helped to start the Lutheran ministry in the U.S. (grandmother's side)
My other great Grandfather I have traced to England, but that's it. (grandfather's side)

On my mother's side. They were all Seminole Indians and didn't keep great records. I do know that one of them was in the Seminole wars, but can't find anything else.
All I know for sure is that my mom was part of the Bear Clan and moved to AR with her sister, where she got married and moved to Phoenix when she was 16. I have family in FL and on the res, but I've never met them. (I do know my Aunt and Cousin, still in AR).

tarasgirl06 said:

TYSM for that info! But what about the woman I wrote of, who, because she had a white ancestor (and who doesn't, in this hemisphere? It's pretty common) was declared white by the company that did the test? It rattled her pretty badly...

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I don’t know who she used for the test but they don’t declare you anything. They provide a percentage breakdown of every ethnic/nationality group in your DNA. And white isn’t one of them but many different nationalities. Ancestry at least also gives you a list of individuals who have matching DNA grouped by how close the relationship his. So for example, my sister and aunt show up as “close family”.

susanm9006 said:

I don’t know who she used for the test but they don’t declare you anything. They provide a percentage breakdown of every ethnic/nationality group in your DNA. And white isn’t one of them but many different nationalities. Ancestry at least also gives you a list of individuals who have matching DNA grouped by how close the relationship his. So for example, my sister and aunt show up as “close family”.

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Hmm. That's what she said in the interview video, and maybe she misstated.

I am Welsh/English on my father's side and German/Dutch on my mother's side. There is a family story that we are related to the English royals about 4000 times removed.

My father did genealogy research by traveling around the midwest and getting info from relatives. We were just farmers ("good peasant stock"). He traced ancesters back to the 1700's in VA. They moved inland through KY and to IN.
He wrote a "history" for the family. The best thing is that he found a diary kept by a young boy in KY in the late 1700s. He talks about being in a log cabin and having bears attack. He also talks about Indian attacks nearby. Then the diary just ends. Did he find a girl? Were they attacked by Indians? We don't know.

But I am proud to be descended from the settlers who made this country.

rgwanner said:

I am Welsh/English on my father's side and German/Dutch on my mother's side. There is a family story that we are related to the English royals about 4000 times removed.

My father did genealogy research by traveling around the midwest and getting info from relatives. We were just farmers ("good peasant stock"). He traced ancesters back to the 1700's in VA. They moved inland through KY and to IN.
He wrote a "history" for the family. The best thing is that he found a diary kept by a young boy in KY in the late 1700s. He talks about being in a log cabin and having bears attack. He also talks about Indian attacks nearby. Then the diary just ends. Did he find a girl? Were they attacked by Indians? We don't know.

But I am proud to be descended from the settlers who made this country.

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You should look into the old census records. They can tell you a lot about many things and connections. Everyone filled them out so they are a pretty good record.

I know quite a bit about my ancestors as they kept a lot of records and did a lot of research. My ancestors follow the history of the US pretty much. The earliest ones settled in Virginia (one in 1622), lived there for several generations, immigrated to South Carolina, lived there for several generations, moved to Alabama, lived there for several generations, then moved west to Arkansas and Oklahoma. Many interesting stories have come down to us. Several ancestors served in the Revolution, and Dad went to the National Archives and got copies of their receipts (for goods donated) and discharges. A great grandfather and great great grandfather were both captains in the Confederate Army. The 2x grandfather was the last soldier killed in Alabama during the Civil War.

I took the Ancestry DNA test some time ago, and was just sent an update based on further research of theirs. Mine is now 91% Great Britain, just what I had expected the first time.

On my mother's side, someone researched her surname ancestry back to 1000 AD. I found it on the Internet and printed it out. Those wills from the Middle Ages are hysterical. You wouldn't believe the lists of ancient weapons. One ancestor about that time was hanged for poaching on the King's land. Guess he was a Robin Hood of sorts.

So I'm an American through and through. I can't claim a mother country anywhere else.

I'm a 100% West European mutt. My mom says that our ancestors are from 10 different countries. I am mostly German though with Norwegian and Swedish as the secondaries. One long line of my ancestors were Norwegian farmers from Gol. I am only sure of one of the other seven countries and that is France.

About how much does it cost to have a DNA test done? and someone mentioned the government knowing about the results?

My paternal lineage is traced back to Germany. Both my grandparents immigrated from there in the 20's. The only cool thing is the family still has a 'castle' and acreage in the mountains. My sister has visited it, only one wing open and kept up now. I have lots of sterling flatwear with their crest on it, and an old family bible in German with dates back to the 1600's. I remember my grandparents receiving Christmas packages each year with silver tea sets and other silver items.
My maternal side is largely unknown, one grandparent from Germany, one mostly German with some Irish/English thrown in.

The DNA results from genetic testing companies are open source, which means anyone can have access to them. They are actually being used now to solve cold cases. You would be better off getting genetically tested through your doctor; that way the records are sealed under HIPPA.

I've done a ton of research on my ancestry. On my father's side we are cousins of the missionary David Brainerd, and somewhere in there is Blackfoot ancestry. The Brainerd/Brainard family can be traced back to the de Baynard family in England, which came about as a result of the Norman Conquest. One of our ancestors on that side, Thomas de Baynard, signed the Magna Carta in 1216 and was an ally of the Welsh and Marcher lords who forced King John to sign the document.

On my mother's side, we are direct descendants of King John via his illegitimate daughter, Joan, who married Llywellyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of Wales. Llywellyn largely instigated the creation of the Magna Carta and Thomas de Baynard was an ally!

My mother's father was a Gordon (Clan Gordon--we were Jacobites and fought at Culloden). My mother's mother was Irish and a direct descendant of an Irish Redcoat who became a good friend to the individual described in the Johnny Cash song "As Long As the Grass Shall Grow." Somewhere in there we are cousins of Samuel McKinney, who became a war hero during the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. And, my great-great-grandmother was Francis Albina McKinley. Her sister's grandson was William McKinley.

vyger said:

You should look into the old census records. They can tell you a lot about many things and connections. Everyone filled them out so they are a pretty good record.

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There is only one snag in that, however. My paternal line is Dutch, and when the Brits took over they Anglicized many of the family names, ours included, so we had to find out the original spelling to continue our research.

Mia6 said:

About how much does it cost to have a DNA test done? and someone mentioned the government knowing about the results?

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Ancestry’s normal cost is $99 but throughout the year they will have sales where they drop the price to $69. Takes six to eight weeks to get results.

susanm9006 said:

Ancestry’s normal cost is $99 but throughout the year they will have sales where they drop the price to $69. Takes six to eight weeks to get results.

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Yikes, I didn't know how expensive it was.