Featured Help Identifying English Keepsake Box – Family Heirloom with Cottage Image

I had some Iberian ancestry pop up once. My hunch is that's from Roman soldiers in Britain or some such. Everyone with southern English ancesty probably had some roman soldiers creeping around the back door.

 

Never bothered to do a DNA test for ancestry since females only get results for their maternal side - we can cross reference with close male paternal relatives, but I've only a very few cousins, and we're not at all close, so wouldn't really want to bother any of them. Do have genealogy on both sides going back to the early 17th century, good enough for me...

~Cheryl

 

Good enough. My sister had her dog's DNA done too. Doggie is a rescue, so they wanted to know what they'd adopted. She looks like a pittie/lab mix. The verdict was about 39% pit, 10% lab and 51% mushel. Acts like a love sponge.

 

Same deal for doggie-DNA - only the maternal side for females...

~Cheryl

 

I have a hunch mushel about covers Daddy Dog too.

 

Autosomal DNA testing gives results from both sides. I believe most commercial DNA tests nowadays are autosomal.
Of course you never get the complete picture, whatever test you have done.

Agree.

 

Ahhh, the progress they've made since I last considered doing it...

~Cheryl

 

??? I got paternal side matches

 

Good! As AJ already said and I've acknowledged, there has been progress made and changes in DNA testing available since I looked into it a few years ago.

~Cheryl

 

Neither the first nor, I’m sure, the last time AJ posts a good answer while I’m still composing an answer

 

Come to think of it, all but one of the cousins who've cropped up on Ancestry were paternal. Only one maternal - a first cousin I've known since I was in diapers.

 

I did a DNA test, and got pretty much what we expected - British Isles - even though we have genealogy back to the 17th century in America - BORING! But I started getting contacts from mitochondrial matches in Poland. That didn't make any sense until I read that there were Scottish trading colonies in Poland from the late 15th century. They got around.

 

The Scots certainly did. And marrying a local woman meant having valuable local trading contacts and an interpreter as well as a spouse.

 

So that's why the multiple "cousins" on my Dad's side doesn't show up on ancestry? I wondered about that.

 

My paternal cousins that showed up are all seconds and thirds, if not further out. Dad was an only child, so there were no first cousins on that side at all.

 

As already acknowledged, typical DNA tests are autosomal DNA tests and do show the paternal side... hmmm, wonder why your "cousins" didn't show up?

My sister and I had a small surprise with our DNA tests (my brothers wouldn't/won't do one)... we're 1% Ashkenazi Jewish! Since my mother did a DNA test and showed none of this heritage, we know that it came from dad. We're quite proud of it.
I'm also 1% Spanish, through my mother, another pleasant little surprise!
I'm 51% "Central and Eastern Europe" and the rest is mostly "Germanic Europe" and "England & Northwestern Europe".
DNA testing is such an interesting thing to do, despite it's imprecisions, and I've no regrets. In fact, during my UK trip this past July, I met up with a "second cousin once-removed" found through Ancestry dot com and now I've a new friend.

 

My dad's family adopted relatives if someone was a relative by marriage or locality. The two Uncles my dad talked about often always puzzled me; where were they on the family tree? Nowhere. One was an uncle's brother-in-law. The other was his grandmother's upstairs neighbor and also the son of her bestie, who may or may not have been a distant-ish cousin. Nobody knew for sure.

 

My husband is quite amused that he found out he's 17% Ashkenazi Jewish. His mother always insisted they were 100% English. LOL.

 

mom kept secrets