A long time ago I watched a program on PBS or National Geographic about DNA testing to find a person’s ethnic make-up and ancestors; to see how various peoples migrated around the world. It was really interesting and I always thought I’d like to have some genetic testing done to see where my people came from. I kind of knew…my mom and my grandma always talked about family, our ancestors; they were also big on family reunions. I knew my dad’s family, on one side are Polish/Russian (or German?East German aka Prussian– found that out from a reunion and some research a cousin had done) and French on the other side; I know this mostly because of their names: Kress and Shay, shortened from Krzewinski and Czajkowski (my paternal grandfather’s families) and Charboneau (my paternal grandma’s family). My mom has always said her family is English, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch, German, and maybe Spanish or Italian…also, maybe French and Irish. Basically, I am a medley…but still I wanted to do the genetic testing just to see if there were some surprises.
Then I saw that ancestry.com was offering DNA testing. I thought, “Cool! I want to do that some day.” I couldn’t resist ordering a kit this past June…
I ordered my kit, got it quickly. It was easy– it is a saliva test. You have to fill a vial and send it back to the lab, then register your test online. Results would be ready online in 6 weeks. I did all that and decided I should start a family tree so when my DNA test was registered I could find some cousins on ancestry.com.
In July I started with a 2 week free trial on ancestry and began working on my tree. I got a good start just from memory of all that I had heard from my family already. I actually quite proud at how much I could remember. Before I knew it I had 700 people on my tree. Some families are easier to trace than others because some are more researched than others. I knew a cousin had already done extensive research on my mother’s paternal line. What surprised me was how easy it was to trace my dad’s maternal line. My grandma Marjorie was a Charboneau. At one time her family lived in Detroit and I had heard tell of a farm in Monroe County, Michigan. A couple of years ago, my friend Melissa and I did some cursory research into the Charboneau family and found out that the family was among the first settlers in Monroe County. I was excited to find out more, and excited that it seemed fairly easy to trace my Grandma’s line. Lots of research had already been done, and there were lots of records. Her maternal line, my great-grandma Charlotte had been a Knaggs…there is a whole book written on that family. It is online for free! What a valuable resource. I traced/researched farther and found out the Knaggs family was actually Dutch and English– surprise, surprise! I thought my grandma’s family were French but here is a whole other branch I knew little about. I traced the Knaggs family back to their arrival in the Americas– they came through New York and Pennsylvania, settled in Ohio for a while but then moved into Michigan. The later Knaggs did marry into many of the French families. I picked one French line to trace– I wanted to see when they all arrived in America.
Little did I know that my French ancestors have been in the Americas since the beginning. My first clue came through that very first French line I traced through my Knaggs family line (a Morin family daughter married Alexis Knaggs, my fourth great grandfather). They came to the Detroit area from Canada. I traced back further. All this in one night because I was so intrigued…I traced back to the first settlers in Canada– Quebec. To my tenth great grandma, Helen Desportes. She was apparently the first white baby born in Canada! I was blown away. Lots of research has been done on her and her family. There is a whole book written about her and her family. It is called Helene’s World.
So I ordered the book but I have not read it cover to cover yet. I am hooked on ancestry.com and researching my French, or French-Canadian ancestors. Lots more of my discoveries to write about but I’ll stop here and just share my DNA results.
Results
DNA results from ancestry.com came quickly– I think it actually took less than a month. More surprises. Lots of what I expected: I am 42% Eastern European (those are my German/Polish/Prussian ancestors on both sides of my family); I am only 6% Western European; my next biggest ethnic group is Irish–28%– I wasn’t expecting so much Irish but that includes the Scottish and Welsh ethnic groups; I only tested 1% Great Britain or English (surprise); Scandinavian 12% (surprise), Iberian Peninsula 6% (so perhaps I do have Spanish ancestors), Italy/Greece 3%, Finland/North Russia <1% (so much for being Russian), and…AND <% Native American. What? That was the biggest surprise for me because nobody in either of my families had ever talked about Native American ancestors. At less than 1% it had to be fairly far back. I didn’t know but it was (is) very interesting. And I got a few pages of tree hints, and lots of pages of cousins– 119 at first but I am up 132 pages now. Yikes.
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