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Who Are We Anyway: Tracing Our History


MercenaryChef

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15 minutes ago, Hereward said:

[tangent] If you're family is from south Wales, it's unlikely they are that celtic. According to Professor Stephen Oppenheimer, the group people from the Valleys most resemble genetically is not the North Welsh, Cornish or west cost Scots, but East Anglians, probably because a high percentage of agricultural workers that moved from populous Norfolk and Suffolk as agriculture industrialised, to the mines and steel factories that were opening. [/tangent]

My family are from South Wales, Ireland and Cornwall and possibly brittany as well; lol - so I feel somewhat justified in my MA in Celtic Studies. 

eta: my Dad's from South Wales; Mum is Cornish 

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Oh absolutely. Populations have always been fluid and adaptable. People are defined by culture, not region. If I up and moved to Japan, I'd still be American in my core, but my kids would be Japanese. Like I said, it's just a fun thing to think about.

Random Cornish tie in: I have a fondness for that part of the country for the simple reason that my name is Cornish in origin (Jenifer). Even the spelling seems to be more specifically Cornish than the double N.

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I'm almost curious enough to do the DNA, but the only thing that would be news to me would be if I had an african or native american ancestor hiding out in there from way back, pretty sure I'd get an '80% western Europe' result, depending on how they divide up Europe.  3 of my 4 grandparents are German ancestry and the other is Scottish.  

Grandma on my mom's side grew up in a Catholic German settlement where literally everyone who lived there was a 2nd or 3rd generation German immigrant, including the parish priests.   They got there in the 1850's or so, was Virginia at the time, but is now West Virginia.  Don't know a lot about my maternal grandfathers family, but he had a German name as well.

My dad's paternal side is pretty well documented too.  Part of the crop of Germans that arrived in Philadelphia in the early 1700's.  There were 8 brothers.  They made their way into the Shenandoah Valley and established a homestead in the 1750's.  After participating in the Revolutionary War a few of them stayed in the Shenandoah Valley at the original homestead, which ended up being the site of a good deal of activity during the Civil War including the Battle of Cedar Creek in 1864, but the rest pushed out across the Appalachian Mtns. towards the Ohio River in what is now West Virginia.  In the region they were pretty well known as frontiersman and for engaging in some low-grade warfare with local native American tribes, during which a few of them were killed.  At least one of the brothers had a Shawnee wife, and we know that because he received some kind of punishment for 'throwing her in a river' (non-fatally I presume) but I don't think that one is my direct ancestor.  Once the frontier caught up with them, it seems the appetite for adventure wore off for my direct ancestors and probably 8 or 9 generations stayed in the local area until my dad moved us away in 1994.  

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@S John - the big reason to do it if you already know that ancestry is that you might find a cousin or other relative you had no idea existed if they've also taken the test - at least through Ancestry.com. That is pretty awesome, and can lead to a lot of fairly weird and cool discoveries.

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9 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

My family are from South Wales, Ireland and Cornwall and possibly brittany as well; lol - so I feel somewhat justified in my MA in Celtic Studies. 

eta: my Dad's from South Wales; Mum is Cornish 

My grandmother's ancestor came from Brittany. We could be distant cousins.

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Thanks for the heads up, I've got several branches of the family traced back to their arrival from England, Ireland, and Scotland which I could dive into.     Now if they just had a free German records weekend that would take care of the majority of my ancestry.

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I found this awesome book written in 1971 that someone did on one of my ancestors, and it claims to have all his descendants.... except my line :rofl:  112 pages long, but page 24, there's my great-great grandfather, his wife and even who married them and "No information on their children"    I guess she meant only the ones that stayed in Illinois, not the one son that moved to Texas. (I have the info, but thought this would be cool to have) 

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On 16/02/2017 at 8:53 AM, Kalbear said:

@S John - the big reason to do it if you already know that ancestry is that you might find a cousin or other relative you had no idea existed if they've also taken the test - at least through Ancestry.com. That is pretty awesome, and can lead to a lot of fairly weird and cool discoveries.

On the other hand, the big reason not to do it is that they will hoover up your genetic information, store it and sell it on to third parties. There's all kinds of interesting developments coming down the pipeline over the next decade or so around personal genetic profiles and fun things like insurance, and once your data is out there in the private marketplace you have no control whatsoever over what happens to it or who has access to it.

So, y'know, think carefully before you share this kind of personal data with corporations, not just about what it could be used for today but what else it could be used for five, ten, twenty years from now.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been trying to find information on Mideastern immigrants to the US prior to 1800, and it's not easy. There are very few mentions of them, and it seems that Syrian, Lebanese and Arab were all lumped together, and the names are used interchangeable..  It also seems they wanted to be listed as "white" so they would have rights of citizenship (as opposed to being listed as Asian). That really isn't that much of a stretch as the Caucasus area includes much of this area (Caucasian). 

Grouping my many 2nd-4th cousins into my mom's paternal and maternal lines, the maternal line doesn't have the Caucasus DNA, but the majority of her paternal line do have it. I have two possibilities, both born in the US in the early 1800's, but the records from then really suck, especially where women are concerned (even census reports only listed the head of household's name prior to 1850)

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8 hours ago, Hereward said:

As Caucasian a description of white people that comes from German race theory and has no basis in actual science, and therefore white people don't come from the Caucasus, I'd be careful about making too many assumptions.

I think I may have known that at one point (I forget a lot--too many things in my brain :P ).  Anyway, it's all kind of crazy

 

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  • 1 month later...

Ancestry has added a new feature "genetic community"  I'm not sure I fully understand it, but mine is "early settlers of NY" which came as no surprise. Also no surprise is that 80% of the matches were on my dad's side.

I'm surprised though that I don't have am early VA match too.  I'll be interested in seeing what my mom gets.

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So I just checked my Ancestry to see what that's all about and I'm not sure what it is either. I had two communities - colonial Pennsylvania and Germans in the Midwest. Both completely non-surprising. I tend to think of that side of the family as Scots-Irish, but there's a marriage to a German woman early on.

I am surprised at what's not there too. I'd have expected colonial VA and NC - that's the part we have documented the best

The little overview they give you as a window into the timeline gave me a great new fact, though. During WW I, sauerkraut was re-branded as Liberty Cabbage. Suck on that, Freedom Fries!

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Husband's DNA showed that he is Scandinavian. He had no clue about this, but his looks make sense now. He's Scotch-Irish and German, plus now Scandinavian. Also, he has a little bit of Gengis Khan in him. My favorite trace for me was Polynesian. 

One thing I wish I knew was what specific type of Native American I am. 

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On 4/2/2017 at 5:17 AM, Gertrude said:

I figure anyone who has British or German roots also has Scandanavian mixed in there from way back.

He was shocked that it was 19%, his third highest percentage after Scotland/England  and France/Germany. BTW, I've always thought your avatar was beautiful. :)

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5 hours ago, Baitac said:

He was shocked that it was 19%, his third highest percentage after Scotland/England  and France/Germany. BTW, I've always thought your avatar was beautiful. :)

Thank you :) I chose it when I was still dancing, but I haven't changed it. (no, it's not me, just inspiration)

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