But now that you know, you should probably enroll in some Berlitz courses.

I'm not expecting any surprises since 3/4 of my family arrived "on the last boat," as my mother described it, but I'd welcome learning more...

Thanks for sharing with us and have you ever checked out this DU Group?

Ancestry/Genealogy (Group)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1156

I thought because we had the same parents, that was it. We only share 51% of our genes. I guess that would be right after thinking about it.

Since it said if you're female, it's helpful to have a "close male relative" do it as well to get more information. He's not interested either, but I told him that all I need from him is a little spit, LOL.

I do know another brother/sisters who did it and their combinations came out much differently, too. My maternal grandparents and one set of paternal great grandparents emigrated so I already know where they came from (Poland and Ireland), and my paternal grandmother can trace her father's family back to early Dutch immigrants - but her mother died quite young so that's where the possible mystery comes in.

The male line is the easiest to trace so it is easier to verify the DNA results than with the female line.

Of course, sometimes that does not hold true. in order to trace my mother's father's line which hits a brick wall in 1978 in South Carolina, we got our male cousin to have his DNA tested. Not one of his closest DNA matches takes us farther back than we already knew.

The closest relative is a young man who was the result of a sperm donor and is trying to find his father. The next closest DNA relatives are some men whose surnames do not match - one was rejected from the DNA project for his surname and told to go the surname group my cousin is in. He was told his ancestor was likely the result of an "undocumented paternity event" which totally cracks me up.

On the other hand, on my Dad's side, my DNA results connected to a woman whose second husband was supposed to be an American who moved to Canada. I'd never believed that story since my documented ancestor had nothing that linked him to the American, but the DNA connecting the woman to that man seems solid. Unfortunately most of the people who have that linkage in their trees on Ancestry have some really messed up trees with no sources at all. I'm going to have to do a lot of research to see if I can nail this down.

Another line was proven back to immigration entirely by happen chance. I was researching Crow family lines from South Carolina. In doing so, I found a Crow who was married to a Newman. Mom had never been able to take her Newman line past South Carolina but that Crow - who might have been a relative of our Crows - married a sister of our Newman! With that information I was able to trace his parents, his baptism (in New Jersey), his travels to Philadelphia, then to the western parts of Virginia, and his move to SC - and why. I'd still looking for our Crows - but the other Crow turned out to be related to my husband's family in Kentucky!

your ancestors came from Europe, no surprise there - couldn't be anywhere else, really.

Some smarmy American GI during WW2 had his way with an innocent British girl, my wife is the product of this act of indiscriminate breeding.

Wife's American branch records tales of Indian blood in the family tree. (Sound familiar?)

Truth is my wife is 3% Sub Saharan African, her DNA test says so. No Native American blood at all.

But it was a convenient way to explain the darker skin in some members.

Wife has told her US relatives, bit of a chuckle here and there. So no racism to be detected there, I'd say.

Wifey has been in contact with a genealogy expert in the family and managed to trace her ancestry back to someone 50% African-American. How good is that?

Haven't done mine, I KNOW I'm 100% Viking! (A DNA test would just burst that bubble. So why bother?)

Excerpted because this sounds a lot like the family story told to my grandfather's cousins (he was the youngest of his father's kids, and they had migrated a little away from the rest of the family, but genealogy sites show other stories we might not have heard). Apparently the dark-skinned people who occasionally popped up in the line that had married white were all traced back to a specific relative who they claimed had some Native blood.

Y-DNA from his male descendants shows his Y chromosome is definitely European (though not a recorded child of any of the others carrying the same Y chromosome that we've found, nor have we found any owning slaves, but that could be the family we haven't found -- some counties they lived in are amongst the "burned counties" insofar as records), his military enlistment records show "black" for hair and eyes, "dark" of skin, and he always identified as "white" in Census records. They found a court record where he got a much higher punishment for a crime in TN than others involved, which the other people who had searched his line saying that supported Native ancestry. But I don't think so.

Regardless, if so, the man fought for the US Army in the Creek War, and as an enlisted US Army person rather than fighting for the tribes that sided with the US in those conflicts. Certainly can't claim him as having any legitimate ties to Native ancestry if he decided to fight for the white man and ever after identified as white.

Others in that Y chromosome clade have identified as "Melungeon". I have a feeling that if I run my DNA, if there's anything undiluted from that time left in my DNA, it's going to be African and not Native.

I am 46% Swedish (and, they had the right locations listed), 31% English, Wales and NW Europe, 21% Norway, but the surprise was 2% Ireland and Scotland as my g-g-grandfather was the son of an Earl. In fact, we had the diary he wrote during his escape from Ireland during a religious battle...I think that was the reason. The diary is now in the state's historical museum. I should think that section of my dna would be higher.