My Ancestry

 

As a child, I understand I confused people by telling them that I was half Mexican and half Indian.  I can imagine how puzzled they must have been since I was so blond, and so white!  It made perfect sense to me.  After all, I was born in New Mexico so I must be Mexican, and besides, there were a lot of Indians in New Mexico.

As I grew older, I learned that my father’s ancestors were German and my mother’s were from Scotland.  Many of my father’s relatives were named Von Behren and my mother’s maiden name was McClain.

When I started blogging last March, one of the first bloggers I met was Nathan James from The Relative Cartographer.  He is very interested in genealogy and writes many stories about his family, some true and some fiction.  I have been fascinated by his work and it peaked my curiosity.

A few months ago, a friend told me he had learned what percentage of his DNA came from various countries in the world.  I was intrigued and decided to do the same thing.   For $99 and some saliva, 23 and Me, the largest DNA ancestry service in the world, provides “ancestry-related genetic reports.”

I learned the results of my tests on Tuesday!

I am:

99.5% European

Northern European

39.4%  British & Irish

14.1%  French & German

3.2%    Scandinavian

35.1%  Broadly Northern European

 

Southern European

0.8       Italian

1.3%    Broadly Southern European

0.6%    Eastern European

4.9%    Broadly European

 

Sub-Saharan African

0.3%    West African

< 0.1%     Broadly Sub-Saharan African

 

East Asian & Native American

East Asian

< 0.1%  Broadly East Asian

< 0.1%  Native American

0.1% Broadly East Asian & Native American

 

< 0.1% Unassigned

 

I was quite surprised by how high the British and Irish components were.  When I shared the results with my brother, he said his understanding was that our father’s relatives were Prussian and that our mother’s were Scot Irish.  He hopes to learn a lot more about them in the future.  I don’t know that I have that level of curiosity, but I’m very happy to have learned the information from this DNA test!

 

19 thoughts on “My Ancestry”

      1. Cool! Loved your post … it reminded me of my Mom when I was growing up … she’d say we were black Irish … and sometime errant Jews and another time we’d be maybe French Huguenots … it was a fun game. Hope you enjoy photography 101 and have a great week! 🙂

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  7. This is a great post! The DNA test is interesting, & I think I might do the same. I have started a search for relatives, but genealogy takes so much time, I had to decide if I wanted to paint or search. I really want to paint! But the DNA test lets someone else do the work, & for a reasonable amount. Thanks for the interesting information, along with a very useful post!

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  9. I think the most exciting thing about DNA is that it proves we are all a little bit of something and not at all what we expected. And I believe that is a good thing. I know my family is Irish/Scotch/German/French for the most part. If I have the money I would love to know more.

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