Got my Ancestry DNA back

[chowmama]

And I'm actually fairly impressed. My husband, who's more interested in it, has tried a couple different sites and included me.

The first was the Genographic Project, which was run by the National Geographic Society before they got bought by Rupert Murdoch. The data was interesting, but didn't get into actual families.

The second was a group I don't remember the name of. The results were really odd for both of us. Very romantic details - I mean, some Tuscan?? For both of us? Really? All DH's known ancestors go way back in Ireland on his father's side and his mother was half Irish, half Polish. He's been working the genealogy and has enough hard data to confirm this. We came to suspect this was a huge pile of crap.

My ancestry is a lot more obscure and further muddled by my paternal side's tendency to change stories to suit whatever they wanted it to be at the moment. Some of what Dad said may have been made up by him, some may have been stories he was told by his parents and grandparents, and some may have actually been true. I know WWII had him denying we were all that German - he placed our family in a border area that switched ownership frequently. Not so much; DH's genealogy research puts us a little north of dead center. The genealogy did verify one story, which was that Dad's paternal great-grandfather was a foundling. Knowing him, I never believed it. When we found it was true, I was dumbfounded. And my mother's side - her father had an Irish surname. When I asked her where they were from, she said "I don't know - Iowa?" So I could be anything.

Anyway, Ancestry ran the DNA and connected it with others, some of whom had family trees. No romance, no Tuscany. DH's is consistent with his research. Mine was mostly interesting because of the family trees. They had no way of knowing who I was, and still connected me to some very unique shared surnames. That kind of backs up the results.

Anyway, it's official. I am the whitest person in any room. And the most boring. I kind of suspected it - like George Carlin said, 'I don't even try to tan, I just try to neutralize the blue." But the better part of my DNA seems to be English, so at least I'm in a mixed marriage.

[CanonRay]

1. Upload it to GEDMATCH and you'll get more hits.

[Mme. Defarge]

2. I developed an extensive family tree using the Ancestry app.

I loved using other members’ trees for researching potential ancestors, but in the newest version of the app I am not able to access other public trees.

Any suggestions?

[Ocelot II]

3. I did the Ancestry DNA test a few years ago

and it came up exactly as our known family history indicated. And I am also one of the most boringly white people in the world - Norwegian and Scottish. But I also signed up on another family tree website, Geni, which some other relatives had started, including some shirttail relatives in Norway. They have found ancestors going back hundreds of years, and every now and then I get another email where they've found some seventh great-grandparent or a cousin ten times removed or something. They apparently have access to some very old records. It's kind of interesting.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

4. My family name is spencer

One of my ancestors was the king of England's keeper of the stool.

My family crest had 3 seashells on it. It was incorporated into the british royal flag.

Yeah pretty interesting. English,german irish and a smidgen of native american..
My mom was into geneology,she discovered all this stuff and researched it all..

We even had a witch in our family who the christian menfolk would not let be buried on hallowed ground,so she was buried under a big oak tree with female pall bearers,the men refused to carry her. But when they got sick they came to her for help rather than the church where they'd pray about it.

Fascinating the stuff you can find from family history.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Conan O'Brien: "My people don't tan, we implode." nt

[Chainfire]

6. My DNA results only had one curious finding.

I knew that both sides of the family was from Northern Europe, and the results confirmed that, but the interesting thing was one tiny bit of Pacific Islander. The DNA also disputed family legend that we had a significant percentage of Native American DNA, none was found.

15 years or so ago, I was big into doing family research and was fortunate enough to find a distant relative who had been seriously working on it for over 20 years. She had the family history, on my Father's side, back to 1066.