I did the Ancestry.com thing a while back. Got the anticipated results for myself, bit of a letdown on the part of my kids, aka their father fibbed again, eh? Anyway, after hearing how far back these new guys went in DNA tracking, I decided to take advantage of one of their sales.
The results floored me.
They report origins by which generations back they show up in your heritage. The first several generations pretty much abide by the family lore. European all, either western or northern, but primarily from the British Isles. In school I recited my heritage as Irish-English-Scottish
(OK I said "Scotch") -Welsh-French-German-Danish-Swedish. Really
fast, as though commas didn't exist. I had wondered as I got older and learned a bit more history whether the tales of the Scottish side's wandering after fighting with William Wallace and facing the consequences by fleeing and changing the family name meant that there actually was some Irish in the family tree because they stopped there for a while, or whether the Scots clustered together, inhabiting Ireland without inter-marrying.
It's real Irish.
Really, that stuff wasn't a real surprise. The REAL shocks started in the 4th generation. I'm part Fin. OK, I can see where the Danes and Swedes co-mingled throughout the greater area during Viking raids, but only 4 generations back and nobody knew? That isn't all, however, for that generation. Try Southern Han Chinese, as recently as 1870 - 1930. Seriously? Those traits sure are hidden in my blond hair, blue eyes appearance. When something this oddball pops up, I have to wonder who knew what, who said what, who kept the secrets. I mean, there's a long history of bigotry and white pride in those older generations. Pretty cool addition, though.
Fifth generation: the expected plus now add Peruvian! Somewhere around 1845-1905.
Sixth generation adds Iberian and Tuscany Italian.
Seventh generation, more of what we've already seen.
Eighth gives nothing new.
Ninth throws another curve: Gujarti Indian.
By ten, there's so much Iberian popping up I start to wonder if that came along in the part we've always referred to as the French ancestry. Maybe the Italian as well? We need a time machine here, folks!
Eleven is the generation with the next big surprise: Japanese! Never saw that one coming. Nor the Punjabi.
Twelve shows the fun's not over. Let's add Colombian, shall we? Mind you, these are cited with such a place on such a chromosome, and are listed as 99% accuracy. We get a little more Peruvian there, lest we are tempted to forget it's there, Gujarati Indian as well.
The next surprise waits until 17 generations back: Puerto Rican. 18 adds another ancestor from there, and 19 goes back to more Southern Han Chinese. We're still doing the British and Northern/Northwestern European all through here, so at least some of my ancestors seemed to have stayed put, still located back 75 generations ago.
Punjabi pops up as far as 22 generations ago, Tuscani Italian 23, Peruvian 35, and Puerto Rican 51.
Here I used think it was interesting that I could trace ancestors from 8 different locales. Now I'm wishing I could track a whole lot of the unexpectedly interesting world travelers from as far back as 95 - 155 AD!
Next, once I can access it, I'll examine Rich's results, get their father's contributions. We know there's a lot of Norwegian in there, but he often told of a French ancestor who "took himself a wife" up in Canada from one of the First Nations people. There was an old family bible which kept track of generations, including a name change from Rouseau to Rosa. One entry of interest documented a wedding without listing a name, as phrased above, with the rationale that no heathens would ever have their names put in the bible!!! There was even an old photo-equivalent on the wall showing a large family where the presumed wife/mother was dark skinned. So I want to see if this new test can settle the questions debated among remaining family members.
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