Friday, January 27, 2017

So White I'm Almost Invisible

My friend, Ronald Tipton, was generous enough to give me the Ancestry.com DNA test for a Christmas gift. He was very interested in what my results would be and so was I.  After all, for decades I have said I was mostly Welsh and now maybe I would find out I was really Eastern European.

It takes a while for the processing, 6 to 8 weeks, and they emailed they were moving slower. Probably a lot of people got the kits for Christmas and it swamped the lab.

Then the day finally arrived, January 23, 2017. The results were in.

I was not Eastern European. Well, I do have 1% Eastern European DNA.

Most things I am not.  I have no Asian, Pacific Islander, European Jew or African traces. I have less
than 1% of Greek, Italian or Native American ancestry

I guess my most exotic, if you can call it that, is 6% of me is Finland and Northwest Russian. They are pretty pale complected as far as I know.

Western Europe, you know, primarily  France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg and they ever popular Liechtenstein account for 18% of me.
22% is Irish and the remaining 52% in of Great Britain.    

Interesting I suppose, but not quite $100 interesting (well, $99 actually). I'm just a white guy...wanna go to the Gap?

But it didn't really tell me what I wanted to know. Great Britain covers a bit of different elements. I wanted to know how much I was Welsh and how much I was Scotish, as well as English. It didn't break it out that far.

And where does this info take me? They gave a list of 283 people, who might be 4th to 8th cousins. Key is "might". The only certain matches they gave me were my 2nd Great Grandparents.

I guess I expected more, so it was disappointing. I don't think it was worth the amount of money it cost to do.