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Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

My family had always been told that my great grandfather came from Germany. But I did the Ancestry.com thing, and they reported 72% Norwegian but no German. Are these tests infallible?
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

MadTownSioux said:
My family had always been told that my great grandfather came from Germany. But I did the Ancestry.com thing, and they reported 72% Norwegian but no German. Are these tests infallible?
Click to expand...

Norwegians are pretty much infallible--that's gotta mean something.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

MadTownSioux said:
My family had always been told that my great grandfather came from Germany. But I did the Ancestry.com thing, and they reported 72% Norwegian but no German. Are these tests infallible?
Click to expand...

They are not infallible although the companies that do so would like you to think so. It is conceivable that although he came from Germany, he was not German/.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

Ralph Baer said:
They are not infallible although the companies that do so would like you to think so. It is conceivable that although he came from Germany, he was not German/.
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I think there is a better chance that he was someone with Norwegian ancestry, living in Germany, than the test being wrong.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

I have taken autosomal DNA tests with both FTDNA and Ancestry. Both state that I am 100% European (Ashkenazi) Jewish. I have at least one 4th-great-grandparent who was Sephardic which means that I am at most 98.5% Ashkenazi, perhaps less. :D

BTW, it continues to amaze me how inbred Ashkenazi Jews are. I get matches almost every day with people who aren't likely to be related to me more recently than the Middle Ages.
 
Ralph Baer said:
I have taken autosomal DNA tests with both FTDNA and Ancestry. Both state that I am 100% European (Ashkenazi) Jewish. I have at least one 4th-great-grandparent who was Sephardic which means that I am at most 98.5% Ashkenazi, perhaps less. :D

BTW, it continues to amaze me how inbred Ashkenazi Jews are. I get matches almost every day with people who aren't likely to be related to me more recently than the Middle Ages.
Click to expand...

That's the reason the wife was screened to see if she was a carrier for certain conditions. The jews in her family came out of Lithuania.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

I have a few friends who took both tests and they don't agree. One of them got an update recinding the original results and giving more 'specific' results.

As a medical person I would be very leery to have a non-medical genetic test as a screen. The medical screens are very specific and usually targeted after meeting with someone who is trained to figure out what is best. I wouldn't even begin to think I had the expertise to figure that out.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

leswp1 said:
I have a few friends who took both tests and they don't agree. One of them got an update recinding the original results and giving more 'specific' results.

As a medical person I would be very leery to have a non-medical genetic test as a screen. The medical screens are very specific and usually targeted after meeting with someone who is trained to figure out what is best. I wouldn't even begin to think I had the expertise to figure that out.
Click to expand...

I think that most people take these tests in order to find out where their ancestors came from. The second greatest reason is for genealogical purposes. There is overlap between the groups. I think that medical reasons is a distant third, and it may even be fourth if there are more adopted, artificial insemination, or out-of-wedlock people who take these tests in the hope of finding their birth families. (I have gotten several messages from the latter group.)

The different reasons for taking the test is probably why a great many people don't reply when you wrote to them. Originally, I thought that people only took these tests for genealogical purposes which made me wonder why so many did not reply.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

Ralph Baer said:
I think that most people take these tests in order to find out where their ancestors came from. The second greatest reason is for genealogical purposes. There is overlap between the groups. I think that medical reasons is a distant third, and it may even be fourth if there are more adopted, artificial insemination, or out-of-wedlock people who take these tests in the hope of finding their birth families. (I have gotten several messages from the latter group.)

The different reasons for taking the test is probably why a great many people don't reply when you wrote to them. Originally, I thought that people only took these tests for genealogical purposes which made me wonder why so many did not reply.
Click to expand...

For some reason the last few weeks a bunch of people have been talking about this around me. Most of them did it not for genealogical reasons. It surprised me
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

Ralph Baer said:
I have taken autosomal DNA tests with both FTDNA and Ancestry. Both state that I am 100% European (Ashkenazi) Jewish. I have at least one 4th-great-grandparent who was Sephardic which means that I am at most 98.5% Ashkenazi, perhaps less. :D

BTW, it continues to amaze me how inbred Ashkenazi Jews are. I get matches almost every day with people who aren't likely to be related to me more recently than the Middle Ages.
Click to expand...

If I learned anything from House, it’s that Ashkenazi have a much higher risk of neuro disorders like CIPA.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

MadTownSioux said:
Zink
Click to expand...

Hmmm, definitely not a Norwegian sounding name. Very interesting. I tend to believe the DNA results, but there is definitely some kind of story there. If his family came to Germany several generations before him, the odds of the family continuing marrying Norwegians, and not getting German blood at some point is very small, IMO. So, that leads me to believe that him or his father/mother were the generation to move from Norway to Germany. There was famine in Scandinavia in the mid-1800's, which is what drove so many Swedes and Norwegians to come to the US during that era, I suppose it is equally likely that a decent population of them went to mainland Europe too. I also suppose it is likely that a culture like the Germans is much easier to integrate with, if you have a German sounding name, thus the name change. That would be my theory, but it would really interesting to do some more digging, to find when his family got to Germany.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

I reached out to my Aunt Pam and Uncle Sam on my Mom's side to ask some questions:

1. Am I the only queer in the family, present or past?

2. Am I the only grad student in the family, past or present?

I'll be surprised to get an answer, knowing we don't talk... the last time I saw them was my Mom's funeral in 2010.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

So it turns out I have some interesting family history. One of my first ancestors in the American colonies became fatherless as a kid. His dad worked on fishing boats and went to sea in 1655 never to be seen again. A judge ordered that a local would take over the family land (what? a woman own land? Crazy talk.) for his own profit. He was hard on the boy and his mother (as if losing the father and then losing their land wasn't enough) and the boy held a grudge. And held it. And held it. In 1692 his daughters came down sick, and one died. Did I mention this was in Salem, MA? He accused the wife of his tormentor of making his children ill. By the end of summer the woman, and two others, had confessed and were executed for practicing witchcraft.
 
Re: Geneology Thread: Where did we come from?

ticapnews said:
So it turns out I have some interesting family history. One of my first ancestors in the American colonies became fatherless as a kid. His dad worked on fishing boats and went to sea in 1655 never to be seen again. A judge ordered that a local would take over the family land (what? a woman own land? Crazy talk.) for his own profit. He was hard on the boy and his mother (as if losing the father and then losing their land wasn't enough) and the boy held a grudge. And held it. And held it. In 1692 his daughters came down sick, and one died. Did I mention this was in Salem, MA? He accused the wife of his tormentor of making his children ill. By the end of summer the woman, and two others, had confessed and were executed for practicing witchcraft.
Click to expand...
:eek:
We only have the church shunning people for making babies out of wedlock
 
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