In general, I try not to post anything personal here, but this is tangentially related to history and so I thought I'd share! Today I got in the results of my first DNA analysis which determined by ethnic makeup. I'd been curious to do this for some time; I don't speak to a large portion of my family for personal reasons, and so there have been many gaps and assumptions in my personal genealogical research. Before I get any further, I should note (and caution anyone getting one of these tests done) that they still have a relatively high standard of deviation and margin of error. I have not yet taken multiple tests with other companies, which will help me narrow down this deviation, but I found the initial results had a few surprises in store.
Firstly, and primarily, a bit of background. When I first started seriously studying history I, like many of my colleagues, sharpened my skills by putting together a family history for myself. On my mother's side this was quite easy; my maternal grandmother came from an upper-class Anglo-Welsh Catholic family, for whom records were easy to find. My maternal grandfather was a bit trickier, but I still got along fairly well. His family was an undistinguished mix of German and English, most of whom settled in Kentucky to become minor subsistence farmers.
However, on my paternal things were quite difficult. I haven't spoken to my father in many years, and I fell out of contact with my family on that side around the same time. To further complicate matters, most of that side of the family have always (since arriving in America, at least) lived in the rural Appalachian Mountains. This region was historically (and in fact remains) the poorest, poorly-literate, and badly documented region of America. Just for some perspective, at least when I was a teenager, I still had family who had no running water in their home and for whom the only access to electricity was from a diesel generator. As a result of this isolation, records can be quite difficult to come by and historians of this region depend on oral history to a far greater degree than in many other communities of the United States. I knew that my Grandmother was Anglo-German, but aside from that knew little specifically. My Grandfather was a huge mystery, made even more complicated by this test.
The assumption when I was a teenager, and that I carried until today, was that my paternal Grandfather was largely of native ancestry. He had a dark complexion, jet black hair, high cheek bones, and many other physical characteristics shared by many American Indians. More importantly thought, he always claimed to have been raised as a child in Cherokee, North Carolina on the Qualla Boundary, and he was known while alive to have spoken at least some of the Cherokee language. As a kid (we are not sure at exactly what age, but probably his early teens, and so probably the late 1940s or early 1950s) he fled this region, and was adopted by a family. He adopted their last name (now my legal last name) and left his old life entirely behind. We were never able to get more than this; my Papaw was a quiet man and refused to speak about his childhood, except to hint perhaps that there had been abuse in his home. To further complicate matters, as a kid I remember having family from near the tribal land in North Carolina present at large family gatherings, but never learned anything about them (as a result of living in Germany I never saw any of them past a very young age, and upon returning to the states my parents divorced and I ceased seeing much of that side of the family).
So as a result, I had always believed that I was some mix of German, Anglo-Welsh (with distant ancestors who were Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, as well as Norman French), and Cherokee. It turns out that my research was good on every point but the last one, assuming the DNA results are correct. So let's take a look!
Firstly, at least according to this test, I have no indigenous American, African, or East Asian ancestry. The last two are no big surprise, but the first was a shocker. If he wasn't a Native American, then what was my Papaw?
1. 40% Western European
This is settled on Germany, but may also include Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and France. This is not surprising; both my maternal Grandfather and paternal Grandmother are heavily German, and this came as nothing but a confirmation of my prior research.
2. 34% Great Britain
The site I used breaks down the British Isles a bit oddly; "Great Britain" includes all of the Islands but is centered and most heavily focused on England and lowland Scotland. Again, no surprise here.
3. 11% "Irish"
This was a bit surprising at first, until I realized that "Irish" on the site I used also includes Wales ("Great Britain" above does also). When combined this makes me roughly 45% "British" and more or less confirms what I already knew. There's probably a few Irish ancestors in my family's distant past somewhere, but I have never discovered any in my research.
4. 7% Iberian Peninsula
This is where things got crazy. Nothing in my research had indicated that I had any Spanish or Portuguese ancestry. This set also includes Moroccans and other Berbers, but to a lesser degree than Spanish or Portuguese. It seems likely that my Papaw was largely Portuguese or Hispanic, and he or his family hid this fact for reasons that I am unable to ascertain. I won't speculate here on the why, mostly because for the reasons described above I have no real way of finding out. It's possible that his later adoption in Kentucky wasn't his first, and he had been adopted by people of native descent as an infant. This would help explain those mystery relatives at the family functions as a young child, but again, I now have no way of knowing. Either way it's extremely interesting!
5. Trace Amounts
According to the test, I'm also 3% Italian or Greek, 3% Scandinavian, 1% Finnish, and 1% West Asian (Either Turkish, Arab, Persian, or Caucasian). The Scandinavian and Finnish make sense; the upper classes of Great Britain were largely made up of the descendants of Normans, who in turn were the descendants of Vikings. There was also quite a bit of exchange between the German states and Scandinavia, so this all makes sense (and I can finally formally claim to have at least some Viking in me!).
The Italian or Greek was a surprise, and the West Asian even more so. If I had to make a wild guess, I would say the Italian or Greek comes from one or two distant ancestors who married Germans or Englishmen. The West Asian was very surprising. My guess is that it's either just a weird outlier, or that it comes from that Iberian branch of the family. After all, Iberia was ruled to some degree by Berber and Arab groups until the renaissance, and populations of those groups remain in the country to this day. It's also possible I just have a Turkish, Persian, or Caucasian ancestor or two way back.
But that's it! I am hoping the next test I have done more or less confirms this series, particularly the Iberian bit as it will help to make this new mystery a lot more clear. That's it for today!
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