Earlier in the summer we had the opportunity to do the beta DNA testing through AncestryDNA. Since we only have part of the story on my Husband's side, we decided this would be one way that we might possibly connect with some cousins or other relatives. Unfortunately that has not happened yet. But it is still pretty interesting.
One of the things the testing determines is a percentage of ethnicity. This is where the big surprise came from on Hubby's test! We suspected his would be close to half British Isles with names in his tree like Hardcastle, Peyton, Cannon, Sullivan and Collier. But guess what? Not a speck! His ethnicity shows: 50% Central European, 45% Scandinavian and 5% Uncertain. We laughed - I'm the one who is 3rd generation born in America from Swedish immigrants on my Dad's side. I'm the one with the Johnson surname and here my Hubby is 45% Scandinavian!
Two explanations for this could be that we have no idea what is on the hidden side of the tree and many from the British Isles came from Viking stock. Another factor is that DNA is a complicated thing! It's hard to say how it all gets mixed up and what goes into making us who we are. Having identical twin daughters, we see this every day. They have the same DNA and yet are unique individuals in every sense of the word.
Well, this fall, Ancestry offered another opportunity for the DNA testing which is $99. Thanks to a great sales month (Thank you customers!), I was able to slip this into the budget and it was soon my turn to "spit in a tube." The testing is done through saliva and is able to test both sides of the family. Next came my turn for surprise!
My ethnicity was as follows:
75% British Isles
16% Central European
8% Eastern European
1% Uncertain
British Isles did not surprise me as my Mom's paternal side were Puritans, my Mom's maternal side came primarily from Scotland and Ireland and my Dad's maternal side has a lot of Irish. Central European explains the Germans and Dutch on both sides of the family and I knew my great great Grandparents came from Poland and Slovakia, not to mention that some of the Germans came from the part of Germany that is now Poland. 1% Uncertain. I can buy that.
But where is the Scandinavian? This is where the SHOCK came in! I can trace my ancestry in Sweden back to about 1600. Are you telling me that none of these people were Swedish? There is a possibility that my family came from elsewhere to Sweden as at one point Sweden controlled a lot of countries, even though today we don't think of them as a "super power" country. But all the way back 400 years, none of them were Scandinavian? The only other thing I can think of is that since I am female and I only get an X from my father and that the Swedish would come down through the Y chromosome, that is why. I don't understand the complexities of DNA well enough to understand this. Do any of you?
It is fun and I already connected with someone in my Wolcott family tree and hopefully I can connect with more. My hopes was to find other people I am genetically related to, which might solve some of my brick walls. It just depends on who does DNA testing and the more people who do, the more possibilities will come up.
This whole experience has made us curious. The Ancestry DNA testing is fun and is helpful for connecting through their site. In the realm of DNA testing, it's fairly inexpensive. So I do recommend it. However, now we would like to know more than that DNA test is designed to share. So I will start saving up pennies to try testing at Family Tree DNA. They have a variety of levels of different testing and claim to have the largest available databases to compare testing with. So, hopefully our DNA family adventure has only just begun.
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