For Christmas my father-in-law got me an Ancestry DNA Kit. I was so surprised and excited. I had wanted one, and probably mentioned it in his presence one day when a commercial was on. I fill up the tube with saliva and put the package in the mail. After a few days I got an email that my kit had been received. About two weeks after that they told me that it was being processed. And a couple weeks after that I had my results!
Now, I started doing family history research over ten years ago so most of this wasn't a surprise. I knew about my English, Irish, Scottish and German ancestors. I even knew about my Viking (Scandinavian) roots. I have never found any Spanish (Iberian Peninsula) or Italian or Greek (Europe South) ancestors. And I certainly had no idea what Melanesia was! I was very surprised that there was no Native American in my genes. There are so many family stories!
I loved that they show the migrations. They all migrated straight to the South! Backing up my previous post, I am so very Southern. On my DNA homepage there is a lot of information on these people groups and the migrations. It is fascinating to read. Although it did confirm much of what I already knew, it also created more question. So I did my favorite thing... research!
First thing - what is Melanesian? Ancestry showed this:
While that was informative, it wasn't very helpful. That I knew of, none of my ancestors traveled to New Guinea - much less stay long enough to bring back some of their DNA!
I read many articles and blogs on the subject of DNA testing for genealogical purposes and most of them said that Science just isn't advanced enough to trace where you are coming from. You can take multiple tests from multiple companies and they will almost always come back different. Different companies have different algorithms but in the end it is always at best an educated guess. That sounded reasonable to me. The ones I was uncertain of were labeled as "Low Confidence Regions" so I just decided they were errors and ignored them.
Still, my DNA results have been invaluable to my research. They have filled in so many gaps that I never would have been able to fill. My maternal grandfather's grandfather was a Smith. Even if that hadn't been his last name I would have had trouble with him. I could only find him on one census and he went by W.F. Smith. There was no wife listed. It wasn't much to go on. I have been trying to track down his family for years. I found a family that was a possibility but no way to prove it. DNA to the rescue! While the region information was interesting, the best part is that I am now connected to thousands of DNA cousins. So all I had to do was make a list of all of the members of the family that I suspected was his and start going through my cousins and looking at their trees to see if any were descended from that family. Ancestry makes this very simple by showing you the people you have in common on your trees. And guess what! I found my Smith cousins! The gap was filled and I can now trace my Smith line back to Colonial America and who knows how much further. This is just the first of dozens of times I have been able to use my DNA cousins to help fill in blanks. Some of them I have started communicating and sharing with.
My DNA cousin connections have definitely been the most beneficial part of the service but I still wanted to see if I could get a little more from my Ethnicity Estimate. I found that I could download my raw DNA data onto my computer and upload it to other testing sites for a small fee. So I did some reading and chose to try Family Tree DNA. I uploaded my data and in about 24 hours I had my results. And to my honest surprise, they matched my Ancestry results!
European - 96%
Jewish Diaspora - 2%
Oceania - <1 p="">
<1 br="">Southeast Europe -<1 1="">
<1 br=""><1 br="">Siberia-<1 1="" p="">
These are labeled differently but other than the Siberia they matched. Jewish Diaspora refers to Sephardic Jews who lived on the Iberian Peninsula. (Remember the Spanish Inquisition? Those Jews.) I am interested to see if I can find who (and how far back) this DNA would have come from! Oceania is their word for the Australian, New Guinea area and Southeast Europe is back to Italy and Greece that was mentioned in the Ancestry results!
I went back to researching and learned a few more things about how my results may have come about. Many Native American groups have refused to give DNA samples so companies have no reference point to compare to. I also started looking at how people first came to America. They traveled from Melanesia and Siberia! I think this is my Native American DNA from when they were native Pacific Islanders and native Siberians!
DNA science will continue to expand and as they do, my result data will change. The companies will update it as their algorithms change and as they learn more about it. I am excited to see how this will affect the future of genealogy!
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