My Ancestry Adventure

I have always had a pretty good idea of my family background I listened to the stories from my mom and dad. I knew my grandparents and great grandparents came from Europe, so when my family decided to go ahead and do the ancestry DNA test I was pretty sure what it would tell me, but what if that wasn’t the whole truth? What if the ideas I held my whole life wasn’t my family history? What if I am not exactly who I think I am? 

Anytime someone asks me, I explain that I am half Irish and the other half Jewish and well that’s not exactly the split - it’s pretty close but my mother is really only half Jewish, her father was German and Irish I believe. My father is 100% Irish as the Blarney Stone as far as we know. What will these DNA test show? Is my dad really fully Irish? What other nationalities might be hiding in my mom and my dad‘s DNA? 

I eagerly awaited my DNA results and dreamed of emotional reunions with long lost relatives in Ireland.  Then my results finally came…..

This is me:

So it turns out that I am pretty much what I thought, I am mostly Irish 60% and a big part European Jewish 18%, but I was surprised to learn that I am 12% from Great Britain and 7% from Western Europe.  I even have just a tiny amount of Scandinavian and Finnish. This fits really well with what I already knew about my background. 

Parts of the results show the exact locations in the world where you are from.  This makes me really want to add more to my travel wish list.  I have heard of people doing ancestry based travel and this sounds wonderful to me.  To actually go and visit the places where you are from, to see them and experience them first hand sounds amazing.  I am definitely planning some trips to see the countries where my relatives are from and it looks like the Munster area of Ireland should be my first stop. 

Now for that romantic notion of finding distant relatives….

Ancestry.com also provides the ability to see all of your DNA Matches, in other words anyone who had submitted their DNA is compared to mine, and there are 276 people who are related to me (4^thcousin or closer).  My results include one first cousin and 6 third cousins.  The only challenge is that I have to pay and subscribe to Ancestry.com to have access to these people.  I guess that emotional reunion will have to wait a little while, but hopefully someday soon.  

Click here if you want to find out more about doing a DNA test to learn about your ancestors http://refer.dna.ancestry.com/s/azlaurie23