Monday, July 20, 2020

Who Am I?

RHYS BOWEN: How much do you know about your ancestry? John’s very distinguished family has a tree that goes back to 800 AD. That’s right, back to a time when people were living in stone huts and running around in woad. There’s probably one branch that goes back to a particularly silky sort of monkey in the age of hominids.  His family includes the uncle of Queen Jane Seymour, the Welds of Lulworth Castle and a grandmother who was born at Sutton Place. (not the one in New York, the stately home).


My ancestry--not so brilliant. So I’ve never bothered to trace my lineage, until I was stuck in Arizona with too much time on my hands. Then I signed up for Ancestry.com and started getting all these leaves. It really was fun. But no surprises. I’m not really the love child of Charles II. A lot I already knew. My father’s father came from Crediton in Devon. And they stayed there, and stayed. I can trace them back to the sixteen hundreds.  My mother’s father was from Wales, which makes tracing more difficult as they didn’t keep records as readily as in England. I can trace them back to around 1800 only. His mother was French and I can’t trace her at all--at least not through Ancestry.com. I expect there might be a French site but I don’t even know what part of France her father left. I do know she died in New South Wales, Australia.


My mother’s mother’s family came from East Anglia, which is why anyone who met my mother while traveling in Europe always spoke to her in German or Dutch. Very blonde, fair skin. Typical Angle or Saxon. And again they stayed on their little farms in East Anglia. I can trace them back to the fifteen hundreds. It’s all very boring. No criminal records show up. They all seem to have married very properly in church.


So what was my only surprise?  My father’s father died when he was two or three.  His mother married again and had a daughter with her second husband. Presumably she lost touch with her first husband’s family. However I found that my great grandfather--the father of the man who had died so young, was still alive until 1953. My father could have visited him, if he’d known. I could have visited him! That is so annoying.


And Ancestry.com gave me one big treat. I had lost touch with a dear friend from my college years. We had studied in Freiburg together, traveled around Greece with a backpack for three months together. She married a Syrian post-doc student she met at Oxford. I kept up with them until they moved to Syria then I lost contact. Over the years I tried to find her, but no luck and I suppose I assumed they’d stayed in Syria. I worried they were okay. Then I put her name into the Ancestry search box and found her marriage details. AND I’d been spelling her last name wrongly. I found her husband had been chair of Arabic Studies at London University, was a well-known poet and her daughter was legal counsel for a publishing house. I contacted the daughter and I have found Ruth again. Brilliant!


So who has used an Ancestry service? Any surprises--good or bad? And have you had your DNA done? I never bothered because I always assumed mine was British Isles. Now I’ve done my family tree I am glad I didn’t bother. 


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: No idea. None. I have never looked. I’m sure it’s Russia/Austria/Poland--but that’s the extent of it. I’ve mulled it over… but sigh. Never done anything more.


HALLIE EPHRON: My husband has deeply researched his ancestry using the databases at Ellis Island, ship’s manifests, and all kinds of material that’s now online. All of his ancestors are from Russia/Belarus/Poland. He’s connected with relatives in Israel and all over the US. Found others who are mathematicians and physicists (he’s a physicist). I confess, I am completely uninterested. My parents were enigmas enough.


JENN McKINLAY: I haven’t done any genealogy as it’s my mother’s hobby and she passes the information along to me. Not a lot of surprises except a few criminals hanging off the branches of the family tree, which makes me feel a bit more colorful. We’re a mixed bag of Russian/Polish/Irish/Scottish/English. Although, I did do my DNA and discovered there’s a small percentage of Israeli in there, too. I’m sure I’ll learn more as I’ve got Mom (former librarian) investigating!


LUCY BURDETTE: I have done both Ancestry and 23 and Me, researching for a future book of course. I was kind of hoping to find ancestors in Paris, as a friend of mine did. Alas, no Parisians but 49% French and German and Swiss, and happily, 31% British and Irish. When I retire, I swear I will spend more time getting to know my ancestors. My dad and cousin did a lot of work on his side, but my mom’s side is a mystery.


DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've done 23 and Me, and I was surprised, actually, at the percentage of Anglo-Irish DNA. Maybe there is some genetic underpinning for my love of Britain! So, about 80% English/Scottish, some northern French, which I had always suspected, and a smidgen of German and Eastern European. No Native American, which I, like Elizabeth Warren, grew up believing I had in my family background. Interestingly, I had ONE ancestor that was 100% Scandanavian, and ONE ancestor that was 100% West African. Fascinating stuff. Maybe one of these days I'll find time to do the genealogy.


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I haven’t gotten my DNA tested, but I’m the recipient of the work of several dedicated amateur genealogists (thought I suppose they’re all amateur, except for the folks at Debrett’s Peerage…) on both side of my family tree.


On the Spencer/Southern side, I can trace back to the beginning of the 19th century, with lots of Scots, Scotch-Irish and English names. No one stands out historically, although my great-grandmother Emily Pearl Payne Spencer had fourteen children while working as a nurse midwife  and  helping her husband Lemuel farm 400 acres in Tuscaloosa County. And she lived to be 91! I met her several times when I was a child; I wish I had been older and had been able to ask her about her life.


On the McEachron/Northern side, we can trace back to Neil McEachron who was born in Islay in 1680 and who emigrated to the Kakiate Patent in Orange (modern day Bergan County, NJ/Rockland County, NY) before settling in the western frontier of the American colonies in 1720 - the western frontier being the Adirondacks of New York. His grandson, Cornelius “Neil” McEachron fought in the American Revolution and married Katherine Acker (or van Aker) whose father, according to family lore, was from a well-off family in New York City and who served as an officer in the Revolution, and as soon as I confirm that, you BET Imma put my name in for the Colonial Dames Society. I trust you will all be suitably impressed.


Supposedly, all the McEachrons/McEacherons/McEathrons/McEacharn, etc., etc. in the United States (there are dozens of variations) are descended from the first Neil, so if you know someone with a version of this name, they’re probably related to me somehow.

RHYS: So how about you, dear friends? Any surprises? My daughter-in-law finds she is one percent Congo! Quite surprising for a woman who is Welsh, Croatian, Spanish and Mexican!  John found he was eight percent Iberian which confirmed that his Irish ancestry owed some input to the sailors from the Spanish Armada, wrecked on the coast of Ireland.

82 comments:

  1. Our oldest daughter decided to do all the ancestry search stuff . . . we’ve done a bit of it ourselves, but no surprises so far.
    We did the DNA thing with Ancestry; no surprises there, either. Mine is 72% Great Britain, 15% Ireland with the rest divided into small amounts between several European countries . . . .

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  2. I’ve already mentioned on here several times about my father’s, the Boone, side of my family. My mother did the research years ago (she’s been dead 25 years and it was years before that) the old-fashion way. She visited courthouses for records and talked to relatives and used some book resources. She was a fine genealogist. The result was, as I’ve said before, that we are directly related to Daniel Boone’s brother Edward, making Daniel my great-great-great-great uncle. There were some second marriages and second sets of children scattered throughout. I know the Boone ancestry back to Devon England in the mid 1700s. I think I could maybe go back a bit further if I took the trouble to do so. Also on my father’s side is a Native American who was my father’s grandfather, but whom I know nothing about because my father wouldn’t talk about it. I wish my mother had researched her family, too, but she didn’t. Her maiden name was Pollock and her father was a mail carrier who drove the mail wagon with horses. There was a Winter in her family on her mother’s side who was a doctor in their town, but that’s pretty much all I have.

    I would like to do one of the ancestry/DNA kits, but I’m not sure which one. I’m leaning toward the 23 and Me, but I’d like to hear more of what ones people here have used.

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    1. Kathy,

      Ancestry DNA may help you find DNA relatives, though I am not a fan of their Ethnic DNA analysis since they keep on changing the dynamics.

      23andme also did DNA analysis and they built a family tree for me. I discovered that my great grandfather had more than one sibling.

      At this present time, I prefer 23 and me.

      Diana

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    2. I remember being impressed that you were directly related to Daniel Boone, Kathy! I think you could easily trace Boone relatives in Devon as they didn’t move around much

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    3. Me too! I was impressed that Kathy is related to Daniel Boone!

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    4. Kathy, 23 and Me gives you a surprising amount of health information. It is absolutely fascinating what they can tell you! One of my tidbits was a predisposition for Restless Movement Syndrome, which I've suffered with since young adulthood, and I think my father did as well. When I told my doctor about the DNA test, he said, "Some German DNA, then." Apparently there's a strong genetic link!

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    5. Deborah, did your health DNA cover hearing loss? My DNA did that! I do not have to worry since I had years to learn how to compensate after losing my hearing so young from meningitis.

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  4. I did the Ancestry DNA, which yielded very high percentage Irish and Scottish, no surprise there.

    The Maxwells I can trace way, way back into Scotland, including Black Mary, who defended her castle from the Brits (or whoever), refusing to yield even when they had her brother hostage. My direct line showed up in Kentucky, and my triple G-grandfather headed into Indiana, was state rep, and founded Indiana University. On my mom's side it's half bullheaded Flahertys, who settled in San Francisco in the nineteenth century, and half Skinners and Lairds, who made their way from Nova Scotia to the Dakotas.

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    1. Edith, if my family tree information is accurate, my great grandfather who was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, has some Maxwell ancestors.

      My other great grandfather is descended from Indiana pioneers. My DNA shows a varying percentage of English/ Irish / Scottish / Welsh, depending on which DNA test.

      Diana

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    2. Edith, thanks! I think I also mentioned a sister of my 3x great grandfather who married a Quaker. I was shocked that the Quakers excommunicated him for marrying someone who was Not a Quaker. I thought it was only the Catholics that excommunicated members?

      Diana

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  5. Genealogy has been a hobby for decades and I actually spent most of yesterday trying to put a project to bed. I researched the suspected relative, born around 1798 in PA, and found a bunch of descendants, but couldn't firmly attach him to the family. And then the breakthrough! A low strength DNA match and a couple obituaries from Idaho and the connection is made! I've tested at ancestry and familytreeDNA and monitor 8-10 other kits of relatives. Maybe you've heard of mitochondrial DNA which is passed along via the mother's egg (so her sons get it, but don't pass it along, only daughters). That line connects to my French-Canadian great-grandmother, so that's been an interesting project also. It's an addictive, time-consuming hobby and I love it! And I've read a few interesting books in the genre too.

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    1. Katherine, congratulations on solving the mystery!

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  6. I don't have anything to do with genealogy myself. But my parents did it for a few years.

    They would tell me things that they though were interesting but unless I could claim a title or money, I didn't really have much interest.

    The only real thing that ever interested me was when they discovered we were related to the first guy hung for murder in the colonies.

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  7. Last night, coincidentally, my husband located a relative in Russia, a descendant of his grandfather's family... he knew that his grandfather and a few of his siblings came to the US and left 5 or more(!) sisters and brothers behind in Russia. This is his first clue to what happened to them. He's hoping to hear back from her soon and be able to sketch in vast heretofore unknown branches of his family tree.

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    1. Hallie, how on earth was your husband able to locate a relative in Russia? That's amazing!

      My cousins' father is probably a descendant of Genghis Khan. When I saw a Mongolian movie about Genghis Khan, the actor who played him really looked like my Uncle. His ancestors came from Russia.

      Diana

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    2. It’s reassuring to know that they have survived in Russia in spite of everything, isn’t it?

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    3. Amazing and reassuring - can’t wait to see what he discovers ... the wonders of the internet

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  8. My mother also did family genealogy the old-fashioned way. She had a computer but no internet. But still from her I learned that Abraham Lincoln and I share an ancestor which makes us something like 14th cousins. Amelia Earhart and several other notable people share that same ancestor. On the Ancestry site my sister determined that at least one branch of our family can be traced back to Britain's King Coelus, born 60 AD. There is also French and Swedish royalty which is interesting but I'm not sure how accurate any of it is.

    I did do my DNA and found no real surprises until lately. We just learned, however they do such things, that Margaret, my grandmother's grandmother, was actually her great aunt. DNA does not lie but it doesn't tell us how. I can think of all sorts of reasons why this might be the case but we will probably never know for sure. Or will we? If enough people to their DNA connections will be found.

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    1. Judi, that is interesting. Ancestry DNA showed my second cousin as my third cousin and we know he is my second cousin since our parents are first cousins.

      Diana

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    2. I think a baby was taken on by a sister who was married if it was inconvenient for the pregnant girl!

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    3. Rhys, my great aunt and her husband did adopt a baby boy. My great uncle's wife died in childbirth and he could not take care of the baby so my great aunt adopted her nephew. His children are my second cousins.

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    4. Judi, the explanation from Rhys was a response to your post.

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  9. Never done the DNA and probably won't. I know there is a good percentage of Austro-German and English. My mother's father was Croatian. I'm just not motivated to learn more. My daughter has thought about it, though.

    My mother's sister did a lot of ancestry research on her mother (I'm sure her father's family would be just about impossible), but if I remember correctly, they were sturdy English stock who farmed in central Pennsylvania. And that's about all I know.

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    1. Liz, I took the DNA for different reasons. With Ancestry DNA, it was to find out which countries my ancestors came from. Not sure now if the information is accurate with all of the recent changes like removing some countries and changing the numbers! I took the National GENO a long time ago to find out my haplagroup. I took the 23 and me to find out if I had any inherited medical conditions.

      Diana

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  10. Genealogy, archaeology--all that digging in the past is stuff I love. The internet opened up the genealogy info-superhighway with a bang--lots of good stuff out there. I've mentioned things I've learned in posts here before--like the fact that all of my ancestors came to America before the American Revolution. My Church grandfather was at one time a barber--and I found part of his ancestors through his grandmother--who was represented on her husband's death certificate by a last name with a question mark. I figured the informant must have known her only by Grandmaw or some such. But her ancestors came from Scandinavia and the first to come over to New York served as the ship's barber/surgeon. And not all of the information on the internet can be trusted--I discovered early on that an incredible Church genealogy that took the line all the way back to the 1300s in England was in fact partly made up--everything before the mid-1700s was fake. The person who concocted it had been known as a respected genealogist during his career. I have hopes of sorting out some of my lines through DNA--someday!

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    1. Sounds like some "extrapolation" was going on there, Flora!

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  11. Rhys, isn't genealogy fascinating? Regarding your mother's father's mother who was French - do you know her name? I wonder if her family were refugees from France because of the French Revolution? There were Two French Revolutions - 1789 and ? 1848 ? It is wonderful that you were able to trace your ancestry back to 1600s and 1800s.

    For some reason, I am having difficulties finding information about my maternal great grandmother's family tree. We THINK her mother was born in Spain. And I found my great grandfather in the 1910 census living in a boardinghouse in America. I know that my grandmother was born in 1909 and her parents married around 1908. My best guess is that when my great grandparents emigrated to America via Canada, only my great grandfather reached America. In the 1920 census, both of my great grandparents were listed with my grandmother and her siblings.

    Yes, I have been using Ancestry, 23andme, and the now expired National Genographic Project. I decided to take the GENO DNA years ago after seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal on an Ancestry show talking about her haplagroup. I wanted to find out what my maternal haplagroup was and it was really interesting! No idea why the GENO project ended.

    And I took the Ancestry DNA and so did my Mom. The Ancestry DNA is really strange now. Years ago when I took the Ancestry DNA, it showed more diversity. Now my DNA is "showing" fewer places! And I was able to save the original information, which I think is more accurate.

    The most surprising thing from the DNA tests was for my Mom. To our surprise, my Mom has 2 percent Irish DNA. My guess is that the Irish DNA probably came from Catholic refugees who moved to Spain and intermarried with my Spanish ancestors. My maternal grandmother looked like Maureen O'Hara. People thought she was Irish. Her grandmother was born in Spain.

    In my genealogy research, to my surprise some of my ancestors DID arrive in America before the Revolutionary War. My 7th great grandmother was supposed to be a descendant of Joan Plantagent who was born in Acre, the Holy Land (now Israel) because her father King Edward brought his family with him during the Crusades.

    When I look at my baby photo (never was a "fat" baby), I noticed the resemblance to the portraits that I have seen at the Scottish National Gallery.

    Even if you never take the DNA test, you can still see the family resemblances from family
    photos and portraits.

    Barack Obama's white mother and my father are 9th cousins through a common ancestor. I am having an interesting discussion with distant cousins who are descended from that ancestor. They claim that we are NOT related to Obama. I said "Look at the ears. They have the same ears." LOL

    Diana


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    1. If you go back far enough think of how wide the net of ancestors spreads! We may all be related!

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    2. My French great grandmother’s name was Bon and we know nothing more than her father was Jacques Bon.

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    3. Yes! I read an interesting article recently about how 90 percent of white Europeans are descended from Charlesmange.

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    4. Perhaps the name Bon was originally Le Bon or it could have been changed from a longer name like Bonet?

      I tried Wiki and I found this.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Bon

      Not sure if the wiki information is accurate.

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    5. Simon Le Bon's family was Huguenot.

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  12. Rhys, so happy for you that you found your friend Ruth again!

    I gave my daughter and son-in-law 23AndMe kits, several years ago for Christmas, and they HAVE NOT DONE THEM. I wish they would let my grandson take one, at least. Several people in our enormous family have researched our common family line, and I know at least one branch of the family goes back to 16th century Normandy. I know we have Hungarian ancestory, too, and Austrian/Bavarian. I guess if I want more I'll have to do a test myself.

    A friend E, a longtime neighbor, called me recently to give me some spectacular news related to DNA testing. Her son had gotten a call from the granddaughter of another neighbor to say they were half-siblings! E's husband B, who committed suicide several years ago after being discovered having an affair in their own house with E's mother's caregiver (!), was a renowned horndog. Our neighbor's daughter A, had been living with her dad for a year or two, and she was pregnant. I spotted A and the husband once, quite cozy, coming out of a local park. A later married the man she'd been living with for years (except for a few months while she was pregnant), and we always thought he was the father of her little girl.

    Nope. turns out, B was the father. And not only that, but the son also got a call from another half-sibling, a man who was B's son from a teenaged liaison.

    Wrong side of the blanket stuff had to go on through the entire course of human history, and I think that explains a lot of those weird DNA anomalies, don't you?

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    1. Karen,

      I just read an article from the BBC News about a man in England who was abandoned as a baby on the Embarkment in London. Your story reminded me a bit of his story because through DNA testing, he discovered that his father was married to someone else when he had an affair with his mother!

      Diana

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    2. I have wondered whether DNA research does more harm than good sometimes, revealing extramarital affairs

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    3. Rhys, in this case, it's made my friend feel better. Ever since he killed himself she's been tortured with guilt, feeling that it was all her fault. But with evidence of more than one affair, she feels way less so.

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  13. McEachern is a common surname in Dillon, SC, where my mother's family is from. So, if I'm not distantly related to Julia, some of my ancestors were at least neighbors with some of hers.

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    1. Alexia, did your family always live in SC? Diana

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  14. Hank,

    Wondered about your names. I thought you were Greek because of the Phillipi name and Ryan is an Irish name. Or are they your pen name for your novels?

    Diana

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  15. Jenn, interesting that you mentioned a small percentage of Israeli DNA since Israel was not established until 1948.

    Did you mean Israel from the Biblical times? I discovered (if the family research is accurate) that my ancestress Joan Plantagent was born in Acre, now known as the northern part of Israel, in 1272 when her parents were there during the Crusades.

    Diana

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  16. Rhys, I am so glad that you found your friend Ruth.

    Diana

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  17. Julia,

    That's fascinating about your family. I noticed your names are Spencer - Fleming. I thought of the Spencer family of the late Princess of Wales.

    Diana

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  18. Lucy,

    Your family sounds similar to mine. My ancestors include the British and French Huguenots who came from ? Picardy ? and Beune. it is funny because I had visited Beaune in France when we visited France.

    Diana

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  19. Another thought about ancestors - when I visited Scotland for a history conference, I remember the tour guide showed us the Duke of Montrose memorial at St. Giles church in Edinburgh and the crypt of Princess Joanna. Just recently discovered that my Scottish great grandfather is related to both of them! If the information is accurate, though.

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  20. When I was a teenager, my mom got into tracing my father's family with the help of a book a relative of his had written about three families that had sailed to the 'New World' in the 1600's and eventually the area that is Rapides Parish (Alexandria, LA). They came from what became Switzerland/Northern France. They were Huguenots, French Protestants who followed the teachings of John Calvin, and who, due to religious persecution by the Catholic majority, were forced to flee France to other countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pierre Robert, my 7x great-grandfather, was the head of the Robert Family that fled France with the two other families in the book. They arrived in Charleston (in what is now South Carolina) in 1686. He established the French Huguenot Church there, and the family stayed there for several generations. The move to Louisiana happened in the early 1800s.

    A couple of years ago I started using Ancestry.com, including taking the DNA test, but didn't do much with it really until this summer (because quarantine). Now I know that on my paternal grandmother's side, there are a number of circuit-riding Methodist preachers, spreading that "new" type of message to the "West" (Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc).

    My mom's family on my grandfather's side was Dutch, and there were a number of Dutch Reform Church ministers, including my great-grandfather and great-great uncles. They settled in New York and New Jersey.

    Most recently I have been working on my mother's mother's line. Apparently they were in the Colonies very early on, and I have found applications for relatives to become members of the Sons of the American Revolution, using the names of earlier relatives who fought in that War. Most recently, I think I have found someone who fought in the French and Indian War in 1755, so I'm wondering if that counts for the Colonial Dames, Julia! Now I have found people who were born in Wales before crossing the pond to settle, which makes me happy!

    One of the things that interests me most is the number of people across generations who were ministers of one kind or another. In addition to the ones I mentioned above, my father was an Episcopal priest for 45 years until he died, and I have also been an Episcopal priest (now retired) for the last 37 years.

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    1. Mary, isn't it wonderful to discover what is out there? I have French Huguenots in my family tree too.

      In my family tree, I have an Anglican clergyman, who was killed by Cromwell's men during the English Civil War, Protestant clergymen, a Jewish rabbi and a Catholic nun who left the nunnery to marry the love of her life.

      Diana

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  21. I didn't research my ancestries but while visiting an exhibition in Quebec City, there was a computer on which you could put your family name and it gave you the name and provenance of the first one that emigrated in Quebec. On both sides the first one emigrated in the 16!!.
    On the Chatigny side, Vincent came from a little community that I visited when I traveled in France. He married " une fille du roi " ( young women that were sent in the colony to make families) . They didn't have a lot of children and there are few of this name in Canada.

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    1. I'll have to visit Quebec when the border opens again.

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  22. Have any of you read Michael Connelly's recent FAIR WARNING? It kind of scares one about relinquishing DNA data to these genealogical places. There is no one really controlling what they can do with it or how they can sell the data on to others.

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    1. Thanks for the recommendation! I was reading LINEAGE MOST LETHAL by S.C. Perkins and one character DID NOT want to know about her family genealogy because she thought that she already knew the story. She was happy to find out that she was wrong!

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  23. Curiously, the novel that I am reading now is constructed as lettres sent between Quebec and Larochelle in France relating the first years of the " filles du roi ". The timing !

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    1. Totally get the thing about coincidence! I just finished reading an Advanced Copy of LINEAGE MOST LETHAL by S.C. Perkins.

      What is the name of the novel that you are reading now?

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    2. It is in French : Enquête chez les Filles du Roi by Diane Lacombe

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    3. I think I remember some French from my French language classes :-)

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  24. Much as I love these stories and much as I love the tv shows about ancestors, I'm not optimistic about tracing my own beyond US immigration. All 4 grandparents came to US from what was then parts of the vast Russian Empire. World War 1, the breakup of the Empire, World War 11, Nazis, concentration camps, the Iron Curtain, the breakup of the USSR? There are not a lot of records and I'd have to hire a researcher who is there and speaks the languages. I have tried to work out some of the geography/history and it is maddeningly complex. One of my grandfathers was from Russia/Kingdom of Romania/Russia/ communist Romania - now it's Moldava! And he called it Besarabia, a name that was not a political entity since the middle ages! (As far as I can tell. I could be wrong.)

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    1. Triss, it would be really interesting to do your DNA, even if you couldn't trace specific people.

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    2. Agreed that it would be interesting to get a DNA test.

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  25. My daughter's paternal grandmother was German and her father is Scottish (actually born in Berwick, which is just across the border into Northumberland.) My son-in-law has done Ancestry.com, but I'd love for my daughter to do 23 and Me to trace her German/Scottish/English ancestry. Also, her grandmother gave her a very detailed German family tree, but her handwriting was so hard to read that it's like deciphering hieroglyphics!

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    1. If it’s old German script. I can read it! They had different characters until WW 2

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    2. Deborah, was her Scottish father's family Jewish? I wondered because a friend's grandfather was born in Scotland and his whole family is Jewish. His grandfather's parents were born in Jewish part of Europe. Another friend's grandfather was born in Wales, even though his Jewish family came from Eastern Europe.

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    3. Rhys, that's so interesting! I'll ask Kayti if she might scan a page and send it to you!

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  26. I did the Ancestry.com thing with the DNA. No real surprises, just the allocations. My paternal grandfather emigrated from Sweden when he was a teenager. Half his siblings stayed in Sweden, half came here. And I never met a single one! His wife was a Huston and a not-near cousin of hers traced the genealogy from Scotland to Northern Ireland to here. Sam Houston is the most famous relative. My mom's family is a real mixed bag; rolling stones who were always moving. My particular DNA popped up as 46% England, Wales, Belgium, Channel Islands; 23% Sweden (no surprise there);17% Ireland and Scotland; 14% Norway. That one was a surprise. We'd always been told Swedish, English, Irish, Scottish, with a little Dutch thrown in. I guess that should have been Belgian. Wales is new, as is the Channel Islands. I've never had the desire to trace the lines and connect with different people. Frankly, it confuses me. I wind up thinking we're all related so why am I doing this?

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    1. Pat, my original Ancestry DNA showed 40 percent Britain (including Scotland and Wales), 2 % Irish, 2% Iberian peninsula, 1% Greek /Italian, 6 % West Europe (including Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland), with bits from Scandinavia, Asia, and a mystery one percent.

      NOW the Ancestry DNA changed to 2 percent Sweden, 5 percent Germanic Europe and 10 percent Britain ????

      This did not make sense because I would have to be at least 25 percent Britain (my grandmother was born in Britain and her father was born in Scotland).

      23andme shows 35 percent Britain and 10 percent French!

      Diana

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    2. What I don't understand is why my sister doesn't have the same percentages!

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    3. Pat, I recall the FAQ section answers that question.

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  27. I'm into genealogy since 2008. I did DNA testing with National Geographic. No real surprises, but I can trace to Caesar Augustus easily. Charlemagne shows up about fourteen different places. Alfred the Great and Malcolm Canmore are in my line. I can show family line from every country in Europe, including Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, and Turkey (Byzantine Empire), I guess we're saying Greece....Isaac Comenos...The one who lost Constantinople to the crusaders in 1204. Immigration to the United States began with Jamestown and Plymouth. It has been a real education. I think this is how history should be taught in school, (if it were possible). Start with each students family tree.

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  28. Rhys, I was reminded of something.

    Recently, I asked Jacqueline Winspear on her Facebook Page about where her name Winspear came from because I was thinking "Shakespeare" since both names had "spear".

    Diana

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    1. Did she tell you? I'll ask her when I see her. We should be having coffee this week

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    2. Rhys, yes.

      That would be an interesting conversation. I think Jacqueline Winspear mentioned north west England and before that, probably Viking stock. Her response was about 4 weeks ago. I look forward to reading her memoir in November.

      Diana

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  29. Two quick bits:
    An ancestor on my father's side went to Alaska for the gold rush and was never heard from again.
    An ancestor on my mother's side once had the chance to purchase the area that is now Hazelton, PA for 12 barrels of fish.

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  30. Our two children are foreign adoptees. We did Ancestry and got really lame results to begin with. (100% native American with North, Central, and South America marked) (100% Asian with all of Aia, and I meanAL, marked.) Over the years they have improved their data.
    Our daughter is 98% native Peruvian and 2% French!
    Our son is 80% Korean and 20% Japanese. (WWII "comfort woman" for the invading Japanese?)

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    1. Libby, happy to hear that there have improved their data. Were there DNA matches to your adopted children?

      Diana

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  32. I've loved researching my family tree since I was a teenager. I've found my first ancestor came to the US in 1610 as an indentured servant in Jamestown. I was surprised to find a number of Quaker ancestors, including Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr, and Ruth Buckman, who traveled to Pennsylvania with William Penn and met her husband at his son's wedding. I have traced my family back many generations and have found royalty and saints, but the biggest discovery was tracking down my grandfather, who my father never met, and connecting with cousins on that side of the family in Newfoundland. I never would have been able to do that without AncestryDNA

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    1. Marcia, that's amazing!

      Were you a teenager when you found out that your first ancestor came to Jamestown? It was only recently that I learned that I have French Huguenot ancestors in addition to an indentured ancestor who came to Virginia / Maryland from England.

      Diana

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