Trump mocks Elizabeth Warren’s heritage AND #metoo

[GMDino]

So I wanted to do a fairly brief post on these DNA tests and genealogy.

I've been dabbling in genealogy for 20 years on and off.  And I have done one DNA test (through Ancestry).

Family oral histories are how most of us "know" what are heritage is...providing we even care.  

My mother is "100%" Italian.  Her great-grandparents on one side and grandparents on the other came directly from Italy.  My father is a mutt.  But we always "knew" there was German from his father's side and French and Swedish from his mother's side.

Years of research showed most of that is true.

But on my dad's side his grandmother was nearly 100% English.  And his mother's side was more convoluted.  The main patriarchal line has been in PA since the early 1700's.  But the name came either through Canada OR from the south via New Orleans.  Either one would confirm the French blood probably.  But when you have that many generations back living in the US you get a mix of other lines that has a little bit of everything.




So when I did my test I wasn't surprised to see most of the results...including some Northern Africa.  Close to Italy.



My mother would not accept that the results said I was anywhere from 45-55% Italian because she "knows" she is 100%.  I tried to explain that through trade, travel, wars and invasions NO ONE is 100% in most places in the world.  But her "story" will never change and she refuses to take a test herself.


Over time Ancestry refines your results.  

The last time they removed the North African portion and replaced it:



They also refined the ethnicity results:



So the refined, updated results are more in line with what we "knew" from being passed down from generation to generation...except for that Benin/Togo part.

That's gonna take a lot more research!  

The point I was getting to was that none of this is an "exact" science in the sense that results can be refined and updated as the science gets better.  But we cannot fault someone for believing their family "story" either as it is sometimes the only version of their past/history that they have.

One last sidenote:  We had speculated that there may be some Native American on my dad's side based on one old picture of his Great Grandmother as a young woman and some other women who were unidentified.  



But we didn't have a "story" about it.  It was conjecture based on where the family moved through the years.  We didn't EXPECT to find any and we did not.  If we had it would just have confirmed a theory not a story passed down.