DNA...

When I was a little girl, my family was the most important thing in my life.  I knew who they were and by extension, who I was. (By family, I mean my parents, siblings, grandparents and cousins.  We were all very close and they were my family.)

As I grew older, I began to wonder if maybe all wasn't as it seemed.  At one point I started to wonder if maybe I was adopted.  Of course, that could have just been wishful thinking.  :-)

When I hit my early twenties (early 1990's), I started to really wonder where I came from.  I started asking questions of my older relatives, especially the two grandparents I had left (one from each side).  I heard so many weird stories.  Rumors of chicken/horse thieves from one line, Native American ancestry on another line.  Some said we were from Scotland and some from Ireland, some from France and some from Wales. But there was no real information...just rumors.

During that time, I was bitten by the genealogy bug and began to seriously research my ancestry.  I bought and borrowed books on how to do so, joined Rootsweb (a free online genealogy community), and started haunting cemeteries and courthouse record rooms.  I wrote for documents in places I couldn't visit, sent letters and questionnaires to family members (both close and distant) and wrote down everything I could find in weird disjointed ways.

Over the years I built up a lot of information. I searched online, exchanged emails with like-minded people across the country and even printed a couple years worth of newsletters for two of my main family lines.  I even considered applying to a specialized college to be come a professional genealogist.  It was very consuming.

In 2004, a medical crisis knocked me out of my loop and I gave up.  I just didn't see the point when there was no one to whom to pass the information.  For many years my collection sat in plastic tubs, hidden in attics or closets.  I didn't really want to look anymore.

I don't know what caused me to start back.  I think the burgeoning of Ancestry.com and the "ease" of it.  I say ease, because a lot of ancestry information is from member trees and you have to be careful to take anything from someone's tree with a grain (sometimes a bag) of salt.  

Then Ancestry came out with their DNA tests.  I thought about it, when it first came out, but I was in an everything's a conspiracy frame of mind and it didn't seem safe.  I've continued to play around at researching off and on over the past 10 years.  I've found some interesting things and some frustrating things.  But I continued to be comfortable in my family knowledge.

Two months ago, I did something I never thought I would.  I submitted a DNA kit to Ancestry.  I'd had no luck finding those elusive Native American ancestors that we supposedly had and was running into brick wall, after brick wall on other lines.  So, I went for it.  

Turns out, I'm definitely not a Native American descendant.  In fact, I'm basically British/European, with a tiny portion Finnish/Russian, Iberian and from Asia central.  What?!?!

Once I started looking at people I matched to and seeing where we connected, I noticed that there was a line missing.  I contacted a cousin from this particular line that I knew had been doing research and asked if he'd submitted the test.  He had, but we didn't match.  What the *!&%@???

We talked more and he has lots of matches to other ancestors down this particular line, but I don't.  I have one match to a great-grandfather on this line but it also lists his wife (my great-grandmother) as a common ancestor.  I have lots of connections through her line, going way back.  But none on him.  Hmmmm...

Because of the common ancestor connections to her, I know for sure that my dad is my dad, and my grandfather is my grandfather.   So either my grandfather was not of his father's bloodline, or my great-grandfather wasn't of his father's bloodline.  Oh boy.  

I have no idea how to figure this out.  It isn't like I can call them up and ask.  They've all passed on years ago.  

I'll be honest.  I don't know why this matters so much to me.  No one else in our family cares or is even interested.  I've no one to pass the information down to, so why does it matter?  

I don't know.  It just does.  It always has.

Maybe I just really love a good mystery....

Anyhoo...

This is what I've been up to the last few weeks.  Lots of time spent sifting through "matches" on Ancestry and trying to figure things out.  

I have determined that it might be a glitch in their system/testing as my cousin and I have a mutual cousin who we both match to and it's the same family line.  So...

Hmmm, I didn't mean for that to be such a long post. 

So, tell me...have you researched your family history?  Does knowing where/who you come from matter to you?

I'd love to hear your research stories or why it does/doesn't matter to you.

Thanks for stopping in for a read...
love & blessings
~*~