General Ancestry DNA (truth and consequences)

[rdrr]

This is going to be a bit of a long one so bear with me. TLDR; I found out recently I am not who I though I am. My Ancestry DNA kit hasn't matched my father since 2017.

Family secrets; You have them, we reveal them! That should be the tag line for Ancestry DNA.

I went on a trip to my ancestral homeland in 2017 and bought some Ancestry DNA kits for my father and I to find more about our family. I thought it would be an interesting gift for Christmas, but it fell flat with my father. I was always told that I am suppose to be half Finnish, half Swedish on my father's side, and an European mutt on my Mother's side. I did submit mine and my results came back a little skewed, but explainable. 28% Swedish check, 3% Dannish/Estonian, and 20% Polish/Russian. Which could fall in line with my lineage, because my Finnish cousins said that they really don't know where the family came from originally, and that the surname is rare for Fins.

So my Dad had a stroke in April 2020 (at the height of covid in my area), and we almost lost him due to hospital resources being limited. Anyway his recovery had me constantly visiting and spending time with him. As expected with post stroke patients he has had anxiety and become fixated on his life. He brought up to me that he alway questioned if he was my actual father, but went along with it when my mother said absolutely. I passed this off as just his new personality and him always spouting his usual crap that men get raked over the coals by women in this world. I'll add that his jerkdom around this topic has gotten worse after the stroke. It's almost if the filter we all have, got completely removed. Anyway other circumstantial evidence on this being wrong is that my brother and I look a lot alike. Also I have some resemblance to my great grandfather. I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on.

Two years later he makes a point of it, to find out once and for all if he is truly my father. Since he now needs my help with simple tasks like filing his taxes he asked me to log into his ancestry account to order a DNA kit. When I finished up the order, I noticed he already had submitted the kit I got him for Christmas in 2016, and another in 2018. So he already knew since I had been talking all that time about my results. I am unclear as to why he now wants to reveal this secret after 55 years of being my father, and I am unclear of how to actually feel. By the way, as time has gone on Ancestry has recalibrated their results and my Swedish and Danish are now 12% and 1%, and I logged in later to my Dad's account when I wasn't in the room with him. He is 58% Finnish and 38% Swedish, and non of the names that we match for close cousins match.

 

[DT]

Wow!

Heck, I guess if you're OK in your head about things are, take it with a grain of salt, we've done some Ancestry stuff, it's pretty scatter shot, and I'm not sure if it would really validate anything, but if you really want to know more, it's at least a starting place.

What we did find super interesting, was building the family tree, where it attempts to match based on name, location, other demographic data you can enter or review (they have a lot of census data available). The wife's lineage as we expected was very Italian, with a good mix of Polish and mine went off into a surprising Portuguese direction along some of the expected Irish, English and Creek-Seminole Native American.

 

[Edd]

I might feel differently if I had kids, but I have zero interest in my heritage. My parents are dead and no siblings.

Strictly my personal POV, but knowing I’m related to a good person or bad doesn’t change anything for me. I’m the same dipshit regardless of ancestry.

 

[ronntaylor]

Still debating going through these tests after a younger sibling got in touch with an elderly relative and found out some startling info: our maternal grandmother was raised in a white family. I always suspected as much. Thought she was biracial (but due to the "one drop rule" considered herself Black/African American). Turns out she was adopted into a white family. Her true roots are Indigenous with her mother full and her father at least partially. We know where her mother is buried, but her father disappeared after he gave her away (Aunt Tina's description for the initial informal adoption by the white family).

My younger brother plans to visit Virginia this Summer and Fall to track down physical records, visit the gravesite of our great grandmother, and our grandmother's adopted family to gather more info.

 

[DT]

I might feel differently if I had kids, but I have zero interest in my heritage. My parents are dead and no siblings.

Strictly my personal POV, but knowing I’m related to a good person or bad doesn’t change anything for me. I’m the same dipshit regardless of ancestry.

Yeah, it doesn't really change my perspective on/off myself, but I do find it sort of interesting (and I'm like you, no living parents, only child). Our little G is really into it, maybe because of not having any living grandparents (wife's folks also passed) and also being an only child, it probably gives her a little "I'm part of something" sort of feel. She's also intrigued by the Native American connection, apparently a distant relative left a settlement, married into the local people.

With my ancestry possibly being Native American + Irish, it's an, umm, interesting suggestion - and certainly stereotyping - about my personality and temperament

Still debating going through these tests after a younger sibling got in touch with an elderly relative and found out some startling info: our maternal grandmother was raised in a white family. I always suspected as much. Thought she was biracial (but due to the "one drop rule" considered herself Black/African American). Turns out she was adopted into a white family. Her true roots are Indigenous with her mother full and her father at least partially. We know where her mother is buried, but her father disappeared after he gave her away (Aunt Tina's description for the initial informal adoption by the white family).

My younger brother plans to visit Virginia this Summer and Fall to track down physical records, visit the gravesite of our great grandmother, and our grandmother's adopted family to gather more info.

You know, my uncle (on my Mom's side) used to talk about some "distance relatives" who were the children of "people who worked the farm", who were predominantly African American, and I very vaguely remember attending a funeral when I was young, like maybe 9 or 10, and being introduced around (which is always fun at a funeral ...) and meeting a great-something, and/or 3rd-ish "cousin", who I recall being these beautifully different people. Pretty neat, and that's the sort of really fun stuff services like Ancestry can uncover.