Community Chat

[grzbela]

I have a friend that is a geneticist and she is a big fan of the Nat Geo project as it contributes info to a larger research project.  She is no a fan of the 23 and me because of the potential to sell you information.

I did the Nat Geo and was really suprised at the results.  My brother is waiting for his feedback from Ancestory so it will be fun to compare notes.  

[golding76]

Thank you, grzbela.  I would be very interested to know if there were any significant differences in the results you and your brother receive.

[golding76]

Barbara, you certainly have delved into your ancestry to a cellular level (could not resit that one) .  I haven't had coffee yet, and this was a lot of information for me to absorb, but what an impressive line-up of ancestors, I must say. 

No wonder you are exquisitely fashiionable, too.  

Thank you for letting us realize how diverse American lineage can be.

[Barbara in Virginia]

Goldie, Yes, and how diverse English ancestry can be!  In addition to the invading Normans who were actually Scandinavians, a large part of England was occupied by the Danes during the Danelaw period.  Also my northern England Strothers, which I have two lines of, were also descended from Scandinavians.  But their coat of arms bears a remarkable resemblance to the French de Coucy family. Also,  Queen Phillipa, an ancestress from Hainault the wife of Edward III,  referred to Strothers she visited in Northumberland as "cousins".  It just gets curiouser and curiouser!  Something else to bear in mind is that because so many marriages were arranged, and both husband and wife had affairs, the documented father of a woman's child may not in fact have been the biological father!  It gets pretty wild!  Could be that some of the lords who were sent to Ireland and Scotland and married local princesses were not the biological fathers of the children their Irish and Scottish wives bore.

I am intrigued by the Nat Geo test as from what I read the locations are more precise.  So I might do that one as well.

[ALRATIBA]

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@PurpleBunny wrote:

@ ALRATIBA wrote:

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@golding76 wrote:

If I am remembering correctly, I once read that both sexes from the same family must be tested to gain a full, correct picture of the ancestry.   There is a patrilineal line and a matrilineal line.  Anyone else know about this?  Is this so? 

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@golding76

Yes - females don't have Y-DNA which is passed from father to son.   

Males have both the Y-DNA and the mitochondrial  DNA (mtDNA) from their mother.  The males do not pass along the mtDNA to their children.  That always comes from the mother. and passed along the maternal line.

The genealogical society I belong to had a DNA seminar back around 2005 - presented by FamilyTree DNA and testing was available (for sale).  I had mine done and picked up a kit so my brother could be tested for the Y-DNA.

I've had my kits upgraded periodically as new tests become available through FamilyTree DNA.  I'm glad we did it.  Worth the expense.

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So if just a female has this done, will she get a full picture of her "own"  DNA Ancestry?  Does the male relative just add to the full "family" ancestry or do women need it to complete their "own" profile?

My sister is having this done and she says it will give her 100% information about her. Which is all she cares about.  Or is she missing information from my father's line because she does not have a Y chromosome?

I hope I'm making sense. 

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@PurpleBunny   

Depends on which test you have done.   

We did specifically mtDNA and Y-DNA - for our particular research purposes.  We weren't interested in our mix of "nationalities" - rather our "ancient ancestry."  We had been tracing family history for years and have a good paper trail back many generations.  We know where everyone came from.  

 I believe Ancestry and others companies  use different DNA markers in their testing.  

[golding76]

Barbara, I re-read your lineage details just now.  Your 3% "Italy/Greece" must be similar to what my cousin's wife found in her heritage breakout.  Were they ever surprised that his all-American girl had Greek blood.   

You are quite a melange, all in all, don't you think?  America's gene pool must be one of the most complex in the world; can you imagine what it will be in 50 years?   

[golding76]

Most likely, the reason "Italy/Greece" exists as a unit is because of the ancient settlements of Greeks in Italy.  I've always known that the Greeks settled southern Italy and Sicily, and I guess they left their genetic imprint.  

Just saw this online:

 Southern Italy, which was called Megale Hellas, and Sicily were colonized by the ancient Greeks; one colony North of Naples as far back as c. 750 B.C. The Greeks brought both the Ionian and Dorian dialects with them. Large areas of Greek speakers in Calabria, Apulia, Lucania and Sicily were still around at the end of the Late Middle Ages. There were a few, small areas that remained Greek speaking after the Renaissance era. The near extinct, surviving language of the Greeks in Italy is known as Griko.

Note the sentence that I boldfaced.  An Italian American friend of mine says that she remembers something said about her grandmother, that she spoke a "strange language."  That grandmother in Calabria probably was speaking some form of Greek, I bet.

[shoekitty]

@JaneMarple

I have identical twin daughters.  Both my daughters had daughters for their first birth, sons for the second and daughters for their third and final birth.  What is weird is both the first born daughter ( my granddaughters) look like each other.  No kidding.  When together people ask if they are twins all the time.

[golding76]

I believe it.  

Has this ever happened, too?

I have no daughters but my brother does.  The young females who most resemble me in our family, however, are the daughters of a first cousin and a second cousin, respectively.  Their mothers look nothing like me.  And yet, there are resemblances between them and me.

Their hair color and texture look nearly identical to that of my hair when I was young.  (My hair had a certain, individual look to it.)  To me, this is so odd the way genes go into retreat and emerge somewhere else, out of nowhere.  

The daughter of my mother's brother looked much more like her than I looked like my mother.

[Barbara in Virginia]

Yes, it is fascinating.  Each of us gets half of our DNA from our mothers and half from our fathers. But what comprises each half from each parent can vary greatly from sibling to sibling with the same two parents. And on back.

One remarkable experience I had was when I saw a distant cousin from waaay back in England in one of the shelter publications.  She was also an interior designer.  We were the spitting image of each other and even our rooms looked very similar!  Same styles, same colors, everything.  When I showed the magazine to a cousin he said "Oh, there you and your red living room are published in a magazine!"  He thought it was me and my living room!  There were also other remarkable similarities.  We both were crazy about horses and rode, also had a great affininty for the Spanish and the Spanish language.  And although she lived in her brother's inherited great English county house a la Downton Abbey and the like, she preserved the public rooms for public tours and lived herself with her family in the attic.  Something I would have done.  Her preference!  I always intended to write her and send her some pictures but never did.  I found two of her daughters on Face Book and the strong resemblence to them is also there.  It was also there in the portraits of some of the female ancestors in the public, formal rooms.

But she got the grand house and I got the boat LOL!

Ancestry says that their DNA reports go back 1,000 years.