Expecting the Unexpected

I know, I know... I said "soon," and it's almost a year later.  Shame on me.  But this post has been in the works for a while, I promise. :-)

There is a whole side of my family tree that is still waiting to be discovered.  In the meantime, I'm left to ponder all of the infinite possibilities surrounding my heritage from that branch.  They could be from anywhere...  even Africa!  With this level of uncertainty, I was looking VERY forward to my AncestryDNA test results.  Maybe they would finally give me a clue about this side of the family.  I already know that one set of ancestors are from Germany, and that another set are supposedly from Scotland.  So I hoped that I would get some confirmation on these origins.  And of course, as all of us are told if we live in the USA, there is the elusive great grandparent who was full-blooded Native American - usually Cherokee, specifically.  Perhaps my test results would solve several mysteries.

So let's check it out, shall we?

(Click for a larger image).

These are my personal results.  Now, of course there is a lot more to it than this, but this is the most concise visual "summary" of my heritage.  I have to say that I was surprised to be less surprised!

As I said, I already had heard from various family members that we had Scottish ancestors, and being a Caucasian American, of course I figured that there would be a significant amount of overall British Isles in my background.  Germany, also, was expected and so Central Europe was not a big surprise.  Not quite sure what to think just yet of the percentage, though.  I've just brushed the tip of the proverbial iceberg where my German ancestry is concerned, so it makes me curious about whether there could be other Central European countries involved.

The one thing that I actually was surprised to see was Southern European.  I did mention there is a whole 1/4th of my ancestry that is currently a mystery.  I have a strong feeling that perhaps it's that 1/4th that contains the Southern European blood.  The uncertain is just that... uncertain.  I've watched some of the seminars ancestry.com has had and asked about this personally.  To sum up from memory, when it comes to this DNA project, ancestry.com has certain regions where they've obtained DNA.  There are 20 of these regions where they can compare your submitted DNA to their reference DNA panels, and thus come to a conclusion about your ethnicity.  If you have "uncertain" in your ethnicity results (and I imagine almost everyone would), there could be a couple of reasons behind it.  Either you have some ethnicity from a region in which AncestryDNA does not currently have a reference panel, or the percentage of your "remaining" ethnicities are so small that it is difficult to accurately classify them.

So while I was expecting the unexpected - to perhaps find some African or Eastern European - it turns out that my DNA ethnicity is slightly less interesting than that.  However, I was still surprised by the Southern European finding, and can't help wondering what part of southern Europe my ancestors could have come from.  Italy?  Spain?  Portugal?  For reasons I can't quite explain, part of me is hoping for some Italian blood. :-)

I'm still learning about all that the AncestryDNA program has to offer and how to make findings based on my results, but I've heard and seen a lot of people ask if it's worth it.  It's hard for me to answer a strong, resounding "YES!" at the moment because, well, to be blunt... it's $99.  As I'm about to enter my 7th year of marriage this fall, I can tell you that $99 is not something we have just lying around waiting for a frivolous DNA test to be spent on to feed my obsessive genealogy hobby.  But it made a great birthday gift! :-)  (Thanks mom and dad!)  And this certainly bumped it up a few notches of worthiness.  (Now if $99 is chump change for you, then I would most definitely say it is worth it).

What, then, would make it worthy of that resounding "YES!"?  Well I'll tell you:  In the process of watching some of the informative videos that Ancestry.com has created about the DNA program, I have come across a surprising but extremely relevant bit of information:  You don't have all the DNA you think you have.  That's a topic for another day, but my point is that if I could afford another $300, I'd order a DNA kit for my sister, my mom, and my dad for more thorough results and information.  THAT would be absolutely worth it.  Maybe someday it will happen and a little more will be revealed!

Interested in checking it out for yourself?  You can purchase the DNA kit now on ancestry.com.