DNA, and Reaching Back Through Time

I know that in thirty years DNA tests will probably be something antique and outdated.  However, at the moment, they are quite the rage.  I remember probably ten years ago when my mom was talking about a DNA test that could tell us something about our paternal line, but since we are a thin line of female only children, it wouldn't mean much. We felt rather defeated. Now, just ten years later, people are finding relatives and even biological parents and siblings through a commercial DNA test supplied by Ancestry.  And just yesterday, John was telling me about a blood test where birth defects can be detected in an embryo by taking and analyzing blood...from the mother.  I can only imagine where we will be in ten more years, or thirty, or a hundred.

So Glo ordered me a test as a Christmas present.  I appreciate that Glo has always been my genealogy buddy, tagging along with me through the years to different genealogical sites, or listening to my stories from my childhood, or comforting me when I feel rather alone as a McMillin/Apgar child.  As we've already read, she loves a good story, and along with that, she has faithfully kept a journal since she was a small child, recording for posterity her own story.  I actually broke down in tears when I opened the gift at Christmas, because it would be a gift that wouldn't soon be forgotten.

I won't lie.  I didn't expect any surprises.  Both my mother and I have done extensive work on our lines, and my dad is from some pretty famous lines (the Apgars alone), so I think I could have given a good guess what the results would be.  However, when the results came back this week, I still felt some shock and surprise, and a lot of awe.  This opening page was interesting and not exactly what I expected:

Okay, first off, just call me Wonder Bread.  I mean, it doesn't get much whiter than that!  And those "other regions"?

Not even "Europe East" or "Europe Central".  Nope, as Mark so aptly put it, I'm "white on white on white."

When I think of my genealogy, these are the lines I think of:

Apgar (Germany)
Van Dorn (Netherlands)--I've had multiple people in my life ask me if I'm Dutch
McMillin  (Scotland)
Matchett  (Ireland)
Frank (Germany)
Ainlay (France)

Seeing, however, that I'm 60% English, I had to take a better look back at the genealogy fan chart I created for myself probably ten years ago and that always hangs close to my computer.  I'm incredibly proud of this chart.  I filled it all in by hand, with a font that I chose, and I love it.  And why so big?  What can I say?--I'm a visual learner, and a visual processor, so having this to look at is very helpful.  And I have spent many hours starting at it, trying to figure out some kind of connection.

Over the years, I have filled in some of the blanks but haven't had time to actually take the chart out of the frame and write them in.  But taking a close look, here's what I see (going from left to right, and guessing at some of the names):

Apgar (Germany)
Sutton (English)
Hoffman (Germany)
Schuyler (Germany?)
Anderson (English)
Young (English)
Van Dorn (Netherlands)
Sutton (English)
McVicker (Scottish)
Smith (English)
Clarke (Irish)
Barber (English)
Eaton (English)
Johnson (English)
Knowlton (English)
Webber (Germany?)
Parsons (English)
Ball (English)
Hull (English)'
Coe (English)
Morris (English)
Thomas (English)
Sutliff (English)
Crosby (English)
Cole (English)
Graves (English)
Ensign (English)
Goodman (English)
Bushnell (English)
Jones (English)
Latting (English)
Wright (English)
Flagler (English)
Beidleman (Germany)
Kinney (English)
Deemer (English)
Kurtz (Germany)
Keller (Germany)
Bauman (Germany)
Smith (English)
Miller (English)
McMillin (Scotland)
Budd (English)
Rathbone (English)
Cretcher (English or German)
Oldfield (English)
Pollock (English)
Ramey (France)
Cooke (English)
Tanner (English)
Rodgers (English)
Corbin (English)
Duke (English)
McLaughlin (Scotland/Ireland)
Linley (English)
Pearce (English)
Moon (English)
Humphries (English)
McDaniel (Scotland/Ireland)
Pratt (English)
Hall (English)
Glover (English)
Hays (English)
Matchett (Irish)
McBride (Irish)
Kuntermann (Germany)
Uhrig (Germany)
Frank (Germany)
Mechling (English)
Glace/Glaess (Germany)
Ainlay (France)
Watson (English)
Walker (English)
Dudley (English)

HOLY SMOKES!  Typing this out for the first time makes me appreciate how English I really AM! In fact, the word "English" is starting to look really weird to me after typing it out so many times.  I think I've spent so much time researching my Matchett and Apgar lines that I never really thought about the English lines.

The chart on the wall goes out to my ninth great-grandparents (births in the early to mid-1700s), but surprisingly, for some of those lines, I can go further.  Two or three generations further through my own research, and through the research of others, I can go back into the mid-1500s (my Dutch line is rather well-researched).

But here's the cool part.  Let's revisit my DNA test and see what else it tells me:

(At this point, can you tell that I have taken classes on how to present and write family histories?  I got As in all of those classes :-))

There are two sets of migrations listed for my family:  New York Settlers, and Tennessee & Southern States Settlers.  I read several months ago that Ancestry has collected DNA from countries around the world (of their own volition and not waiting for people to send them in), and Ancestry uses those more "pure" results to match samples from around the world.  So people who have families who settled in Tennessee match the DNA results of people who still live in Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, because of course, those are the people who settled the Tennessee area.

I'm sure that different people get different numbers of migration patterns.  When I think of my children, they would have my results along with John's family which includes immigrants from Greece, Ireland, England, Poland, Germany and Croatia.  So they would certainly have a longer list than mine.  However, mine is interesting for a couple of reasons:

The New York Settlers are my dad's family.  They have lived in New England for centuries.  Yes, centuries.  My father was born in Rhode Island, and his brother and his family still live in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  And I kid you not when I say they embody everything that being "from" New England suggests:  they play hockey and soccer legitimately, they drink heavily, they are arrogant, they are non-religious, they attend or teach at prep schools like Eton, and they would never dream of moving.

The Tennessee & Southern States Settlers?  I'm not lying when I tell people that I am a Southern woman (people always think I'm from Michigan, but I quickly correct them).  This line is purely my mother's.  My mother doesn't have anyone from New York, and my father doesn't have anyone from the South.  My mother's family spent generations in Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas, and they were simple people.  My mother's grandfather owned a store along the railroad line in Seward, Oklahoma where she remembers barrels of fig newtons being sold (she still loves fig newtons to this day), where her aunts and uncles would fight over oil prices and money, and where, for entertainment, her grandparents would sit on the front porch at night and count red and blue cars that passed by.  This is the world that I was born into in Big Spring, Texas.

When I zoom out of those results and take in the "big picture", here's what it loos like:

See that 1700 box at the bottom with the red and yellow circles?  The red circle represents my Southern States Settlers, and the yellow circle represents my New York settlers.  Look at when they came to this country.

That's right, Baby.  1700.  And as I have already mentioned, I had settlers who came earlier, but Ancestry doesn't have a box that goes back any earlier ;-)

My family has been in this country for over 300 years.  I mean, I know I already knew that, and yet seeing it officially kind of blows my mind.  I had ancestors who helped settle Brooklyn, NY, and who bought tracts of land from William Penn to settle central Pennsylvania.  My ancestors were here on this continent before the United States of America existed, and there are some who swore allegiance to the King of England.  My Dutch ancestors were here just one hundred years after Christopher Columbus arrived.  When I think about those people and the courage they had to come here on the ships that existed at that time, it's pretty darn amazing.  This country was nothing but pure wilderness and land and "the unknown".  That takes some courage, that's for sure.  And of course my New England settlers became very rich for the most part.

I spent the better part of the night just staring at the results.  As I've written a million times before, I feel very alone on this earth, not part of any family at all, except for the family I've created.

And that's where I find hope in all of this.  I have to look at these results to feel any connection to any family which came before me (and again, I'm soooooo thankful to Glo for doing this for me...and tears are filling my eyes again because I'm just so darn grateful for her), but you know what?  My kids don't.  They can reach back just one generation and find all the love and hope and support that they need to know that they belong to someone on this planet.  Just today, I was rereading the post that Glo just wrote for me about five things that she loves, and I was struck with this picture she painted of her and John at Halloween:  "I will always remember running across lawns, the darkness in between each house where the lights don’t quite reach the grass, the uneven ground, my running shoes not matching my costume with Daddy in front or beside me, a little limp to his gait as he kept saying 'Come on Glo!'"

That's a memory that will anchor Glo if she ever wonders where she comes from. And there are so many more for each of my kids. They may never care about the people who came before them, and they may not want to know what percentage of what nationality they are, but they will always know that they are loved, that they have their own family stories, and that they are Kennedys through and through.

Thanks again, Glo. You're the best!