Genealogy - The DNA Thread

[Hot Pepsi]

I’d like to do this. My dad’s side of the family is from southern Germany, broadly, and my mom’s side is from England with maybe some Irish and Scottish people in there somewhere, but I’d love to be more specific. Maybe I’m part Viking.

[Sporting]

Which part of southern Germany?

[Sits]

Maybe I’m part Viking.

According to Adam Rutherford’s very good A Brief History Of Everyone Who Ever Lived, anyone with European heritage is descended from Charlemagne (and all his European contemporaries with descendants).

[Hot Pepsi]

Which part of southern Germany?

I’d have to get the details from my mom, but I think mostly in Swabia in Baden-W?rttemberg. We used to have bunch of family around Ravensburg and the cousin my grandmother was closest to is still there in her 90s, but the nieces and nephews are spread out a bit more.

[Hot Pepsi]

According to Adam Rutherford’s very good A Brief History Of Everyone Who Ever Lived, anyone with European heritage is descended from Charlemagne (and all his European contemporaries with descendants).

I thought we were all related to Gengis Kahn.

[Sporting]

I’d have to get the details from my mom, but I think mostly in Swabia in Baden-W?rttemberg. We used to have bunch of family around Ravensburg and the cousin my grandmother was closest to is still there in her 90s, but the nieces and nephews are spread out a bit more.

My partner was born in Ravensburg.

It would be very interesting to know where this cousin is and any other details.

[Hot Pepsi]

Cool! I’ve been there twice. It’s lovely.

[Sporting]

Bit busy now with stuff but would be great to exchange notes etc

[San Bernardhinault]

Ravensburg's quite lovely. One of my best friends got married there to a local bloke.

[Nefertiti2]

Those of you who have uploaded your DNA I would check your agreement

https://twitter.com/reuters/status/1291059000247816192?s=21

[Nocturnal Submission]

I'm not sure why exactly, probably because of my son's interest in the subject, but my family bought me a DNA test for my birthday a couple of months ago. As discussed upthread, such tests can throw up some very awkward results but I was fairly sure, for various reasons, that my father, sister and son (all of whom have had their DNA analysed for the particular website) were indeed who I thought they were and that I didn't have any more children than the two I'm currently aware of. However, my daughter has been promoting the "what if you're actually Auntie C's son" line, my sister being quite a lot older than me, which did slightly make me wonder.

Anyway, the results are finally in an everything looks as it should, certainly as regards my immediate family. There's are lots of unrecognised names amongst the cousins, which is unsurprising given some of my grandparents' lives and the fact that we get down to the 4th-6th cousin level. It's nice to see Alyshia Miller-Powell there, though.

My ethnicity estimate is 89% England, Wales and NW Europe, focused on the Midlands and Devon & Cornwall, particularly Devon, (my paternal line is very Plymouth-centric), 8% Germanic Europe and 3% Ireland & Scotland. Not even a hint of the exotic.

So, everything is pretty much exactly as expected. I think my kids were hoping for some skeletons to fall rattling out of closets so I'm sorry to have to disappoint them. Then again, there seems to be a widespread fear amongst people of all ages that their parents aren't who they say they are, so if my kids feel comforted by the results it was all worthwhile.

[Nocturnal Submission]

My ethnicity estimate is 89% England, Wales and NW Europe, focused on the Midlands and Devon & Cornwall, particularly Devon, (my paternal line is very Plymouth-centric), 8% Germanic Europe and 3% Ireland & Scotland. Not even a hint of the exotic.

I've been updated, apparently. I'm now 55% England & NW Europe, 13% Scotland, 13% Germanic Europe, 8% Wales, 6% Norway and 5% Ireland.

[ursus arctos]

It's amazing what they can do with CRISPR now

[Third rate Leszno]

The DNA test thing is interesting, I hadn't realised how it could add anything specific.

My mother has done a fair bit of research on our family tree, which is another that seems to be almost exclusively English (and white).

On her side, both her parents and indeed everyone going back to the 1700s is from either Devon or Cornwall. Her Dad died on the Prince of Wales in WW2 but by this point it appears that my Gran had already taken up with another fella, who she married in due course and I grew up knowing him as my Grandad (although I knew he wasn't a blood relative). My (step) Grandad was personal valet to Lord Mountbatten for a while before he moved the family (including my mother) to Georgetown near Paisley when he got a job at a munitions factory after the war. They then moved to West Cumbria in the 1950s when he got a job at Calder Hall power station.

Quoting myself here, but a bit of an update if anyone is interested.

Late last year my mother decided to do one of those DNA tests, and received the results over Christmas. Apart from 5% Icelandic/Faroese heritage, there was nothing unexpected in the bloodline, but things became rather more interesting when she began looking at the suggested matches within the Ancestry database and found a chap who could perhaps be a 4th cousin or something. The thing was, this fella's grandad was a sibling of my Mam's stepfather's Dad. Not her real father, her blood relative, but her stepfather. And his DNA was closely matched to my mothers...

There seems to be only one explanation - that my Gran was intimately involved with my stepgrandad about 8 years earlier than we had previously thought - to the extent that it seems very likely he was actually the father of my Mam. We know they were both living in Malta at the same time, and her husband visited whenever he was on shore leave from the navy - which I guess left her plenty of time to get to know my stepgrandad. As you might imagine, my mother has found this rather disconcerting. There's very little she can do to investigate further as all parties are long dead - although she could get in touch with a cousin on her (real - or maybe not...) Dad's side and ask them to do a DNA test to see if it matches with hers at all. The downside of this is that the only ones that are relatively close cousins are Canadian and the closest living relative on that side is a wrong' un with convictions for drug dealing who only surfaces when he thinks there's personal benefit to him in doing so.

[scratchmonkey]

I've been updated as well, I'm perhaps unsurprisingly 100% European, broken down as follows:

- 90% Northwest European, 75% British and Irish, with London, Glasgow, Cork, and Dublin areas specifically, then 12% unspecified Scandinavian, which is the only surprising bit
- 10% Spanish/Portuguese, which makes sense as my Great-Grandmother's parents were both from the Azores, although she was born in the Kingdom of Hawai'i

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

- 90% Northwest European, 75% British and Irish, with London, Glasgow, Cork, and Dublin areas specifically, then 12% unspecified Scandinavian, which is the only surprising bit

Northern England, and ireland are good places to find scandinavian markers, they ran the northern half of your country, for a long time, and they founded all of our urban centres.

[scratchmonkey]

Northern England, and ireland are good places to find scandinavian markers, they ran the northern half of your country, for a long time, and they founded all of our urban centres.

I'm American, the point stands though.

[Gangster Octopus]

What is the genetic makeup of real North Americans?

[scratchmonkey]

What is the genetic makeup of real North Americans?

I mean, "real" real would mean descendents of those who crossed the Bering Strait way back when.

I think my fairly homogeneous ancestry is a bit of an outlier for people whose family has been over here for a while (aside from my Hawai'ian great-grandmother, the most recent immigrant I'm aware of was my Irish great-great-grandfather, who came over in the 1820s, and my mother's side is eligible for the Daughters of the American Revolution).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I mean, "real" real would mean descendents of those who crossed the Bering Strait way back when.

I think my fairly homogeneous ancestry is a bit of an outlier for people whose family has been over here for a while (aside from my Hawai'ian great-grandmother, the most recent immigrant I'm aware of was my Irish great-great-grandfather, who came over in the 1820s, and my mother's side is eligible for the Daughters of the American Revolution).

er sorry about the whole english thing, but looking at your stats you can see where I might have gone astray!

Stephen colbert has 32 irish great great great grandparents. It can be done, though should it? He also pronounces his name wrong.

[Femme Folle]

Here's my updated breakdown

[Femme Folle]

Interestingly enough, 23&Me has different updated numbers. I wonder which is more reliable/accurate.

[Artificial Hipster]

Mrs H got me a DNA test for my birthday last year. Having had a subscription to Ancestry for a while I didn't expect to learn anything I didn't already know but I did get one pleasant surprise. I forget the exact figure but a sufficient percentage of my DNA is Gujarati Indian for me to be satisfied that at least one of my Irish ancestors serving the British in India during the 19th century immersed themselves in the local culture somewhat more than the others.

[TonTon]

Aha, so thanks Nocturnal Submission for pointing me here. Have I been here before? Dunno, anyway, a mate had a sub to the newspaper archive site thingy which is running out and so he was asking if anyone wanted anything looking up so I asked him if there was owt in the Hands press about my maternal grandad or his dad, who had the same names and were both coppers (briefly in my grandad's case, he then became a station officer in the fire brigade. In Portsmouth. During WWII. He died young, at 53, long before I was born. Well, not that long really, just 7 years. I always thought of it as long. I guess I was younger then).

Anyway so yeah, turns out my mum's dad's dad jumped in front of a train, and it took his head off. So there you go, you learn something new every day.

[ursus arctos]

Yikes

The stuff families choose to "disappear"