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!
Living, Learning and Letting Go 