My Experience With Ancestry DNA

Up until last week, my family’s ancestral background was like a game of telephone.

You know, the game where kids go around in a circle, whispering a phrase into each other’s ears to see how twisted it gets by the end?

In my family, all I ever really knew about our background was what one person told another person that someone might have once told them about how this person said that someone came from this or that nationality.

Was that confusing? Yeah, I thought so too.

That’s why I did an Ancestry DNA Test.

Honestly, after all the he-said-she-said I’ve heard about my family background, I was prepared for the results to say anything.

Surprisingly, the results were actually, well, surprising.

But let me back up a tiny bit and explain why I really wanted to do this test and why this genetic game of telephone came about.

BACKGROUND

The women on my mother’s side of the family all bear a very strong resemblance to one another.

We all have dark hair. We all have dark eyes. We’re all short. And, with a few exceptions, we all tend to tan very quickly in the sun.

We always assumed the strong genetic characteristics had something to do with our ancestry. Over the years my mom and I have played this guessing game, wondering where our ancestors might have come from. We came up with plenty of theories, but we didn’t really have a way of confirming any of them.

I talked about my mom’s less-than-traditional family in a post I wrote shortly after mine and Scott’s wedding. She and her sisters were placed into a foster home as kids.

Because of that history, there’s a lot we’ve never known about mom’s biological family.

It’s not the same story on my dad’s side of the family, but I still have very little information about where those ancestors originated. Both of my dad’s parents have been gone since I was a child.

All I can ever remember anyone on that side of the family saying about family ancestry was when Papa convinced my sister and I that he could count in “Cherokee” because someone in his family was part-Cherokee (Just FYI…he was absolutely pulling our leg, but we were too young to get it).

RESEARCH

Wanting to learn more about my family’s background isn’t new.

Off and on over the years, I’ve actually used Ancestry.com to try and research historical records and build a family tree.

Unfortunately, I never really found any answers.

On my mom’s side, I hit a lot of dead ends. At one point, I did manage to trace one person all the way back to either England or Wales, but the record wasn’t very specific. In many cases, I would find one birth record or marriage license that listed a name…and that was it. As much as I dug through records, I couldn’t find any other mention of those people.

I successfully traced back two or three people on my dad’s side of the family to England in the 1600s. But then I also came up with some of the same dead ends as my mom’s side.

It wasn’t all for nothing though. I was able to research far enough back along some lines to find that some of my ancestor’s settled in the northern area of North Carolina very close to where my family still lives today.

So while I might not know a lot about my family’s history, it’s cool to know that a lot of that history happened in the same area I’ve always called home.

DNA TEST

With the lack of historical records to guide me, I finally decided the only way I’d ever answer the question “Where do we come from?” was to take a DNA test.

There are several options for genetic DNA testing, so I did my research to make sure I picked the right one.

Ancestry and 23andMe are the most reputable brands on the market with the most samples to compare against. I ultimately chose Ancestry because its database for pinpointing geographical markers is currently the largest. (On a side note, I will mention that 23andMe is a better option if you’re more interested in health-related DNA testing).

The process was very simple.

Ancestry sends you the kit, you spit in a tube, seal it, put it in the prepaid shipping package, and drop it in a mailbox.

They also provide a number for you to register your specific kit (which tells them who the DNA sample belongs to) and, once you register it, they send you updates about your test.

I opted for text updates and was able to know when they received my sample, when it was processing, and when it was done testing.

Also, while Ancestry advises that DNA test results take 4-6 weeks, mine only took about 3 weeks.

So…what did I find out?

THE RESULTS

As I mentioned, I was prepared for my test results to come back with almost anything.

But I still managed to be surprised.

Not by what my results said, but by what they didn’t say.

All those theories my mom and I came up with? Totally debunked.

The very few he-said-she-said rumors we were told? Not true.

The England/Wales/Northwestern Europe and the Scottish/Irish results were expected.

Even the tiny percentage from Benin/Togo (a small region of Africa) wasn’t surprising.

The only result that did catch me off guard was the 2% from Norway. I mean, I know stereotypes aren’t necessarily true, but, people of Norwegian culture are generally portrayed as tall and fair. So, you know, the exact opposite of me.

The other interesting part of Ancestry’s DNA testing is its DNA matching. Basically, they compare your genetic markers to other people in their database and can tell you if you’re likely related.

Because of that feature, I was able to find one of my dad’s relatives in the database. By comparing my DNA results to theirs, I was able to more closely pinpoint from which side of my family my genetic markers originated.

I learned that all four markers originated from my dad’s ancestors. And by process of elimination, my mom’s side is very likely only English/Welsh/Northwestern European and Scottish/Irish.

CONCLUSION

So, I got my answers…at least, some of them anyway.

I’m still curious about where and when my ancestors came from, but I know more now than I was able to only guess before.

But I’m not quite through with the genetic testing yet. Now I’m curious to see if what I learned about both sides of my family will hold true if other members of my family test their DNA.

Which means…Mom, you’re up next.