Genealogy

I dabble in a few hobbies, mainly things like knitting and cross stitch, but the one that I've probably been involved with the longest is genealogy. It started when I was a little kid looking through the family desk in the living room and finding old photographs and listening to the stories about the people.

With the advent of the internet and genealogy software it has become MUCH easier to find the names of ancestors and things about their lives. Now one can even do a DNA test to see what your ancestry is. I just did this and will be having a more detailed test done soon because of the surprise I found when I did my first test.

My paternal grandparents came to America from Denmark and only 2 generations back there was a French ancestor as well on that side of the family. My maternal grandparents were from Russia but were ethnically German and one great-grandmother was Polish. Nothing at all unusual for this 2nd generation American kid growing up in the upper midwest of the United States. I was not at all suprised when the largest groups of my ancestry were eastern and western European and Scandinavian.

BUT what really blew my mind was the fact that I have DNA in common with over 20% of people living in Great Britain! I have no English ancestry or relatives, no English surnames to be found anywhere. Then I remembered some history from high school and also college about Danes settling in Britain in the 700s. Evidently they not only settled in Britain, but some British must have gone to Denmark as well. WOW! Here I've been chatting with quite a few British on here and I didn't realize my ancestry in common!

So I guess what I'm getting at, is that if you have any interest in where you come from I recommend at least keeping a notebook and maybe having the test done. You might find a surprise like I did!

How much does it cost to do the test?

Karl, I got the tests through Ancestry.com and they are very basic. The cost was, including tax and shipping, $108.00 US.

Youre genealogy sounds so interesting.

I have done mine and my husbands. (We're english) and though I knew my dads mum had irish father I didn't know his great great grandparents had come over from Ireland before the famine.
Also his great grandfather went off to make his fortune in the australian gold rush when his son was three years old, he never returned but lived in Australia as a miner for fifty years
My mum has ancestors who migrated to Utah with the pioneers making my tree interesting but not as varied as some.

Jana wrote: I dabble in a few hobbies, mainly things like knitting and cross stitch, but the one that I've probably been involved with the longest is genealogy. It started when I was a little kid looking through the family desk in the living room and finding old photographs and listening to the stories about the people.

With the advent of the internet and genealogy software it has become MUCH easier to find the names of ancestors and things about their lives. Now one can even do a DNA test to see what your ancestry is. I just did this and will be having a more detailed test done soon because of the surprise I found when I did my first test.

My paternal grandparents came to America from Denmark and only 2 generations back there was a French ancestor as well on that side of the family. My maternal grandparents were from Russia but were ethnically German and one great-grandmother was Polish. Nothing at all unusual for this 2nd generation American kid growing up in the upper midwest of the United States. I was not at all suprised when the largest groups of my ancestry were eastern and western European and Scandinavian.

BUT what really blew my mind was the fact that I have DNA in common with over 20% of people living in Great Britain! I have no English ancestry or relatives, no English surnames to be found anywhere. Then I remembered some history from high school and also college about Danes settling in Britain in the 700s. Evidently they not only settled in Britain, but some British must have gone to Denmark as well. WOW! Here I've been chatting with quite a few British on here and I didn't realize my ancestry in common!

So I guess what I'm getting at, is that if you have any interest in where you come from I recommend at least keeping a notebook and maybe having the test done. You might find a surprise like I did!

Thank you Jana for that info, my husband is very much into this and his working on his, and also won a competion for a specialist to make him up framed paper work of his family tree, we are from the uk, he as heard recently of DNA and maybe will look into this. A small world hey.

I come from a family that’s so absorbed our lineage ( www.jewett.org ) that they’ve written 4 books about it (two are digital), and these aren’t short books either. The first one is 517 pages long, with very small script, the second one is 672 pages long, again with very small script. They (we, I guess) also have a Facebook page that allows you to go to Zazzle.com, where you can buy all sorts of crap with the Jewett family crest on it. If you’re hearing a peculiar sound while reading this, it’s the sound of my eyes rolling.