I've been around the world!!!

I’m excited to tell you that I've been around the world! Well, my DNA has anyway :-D

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to take another step in my genealogy research – I had my DNA tested to determine my ethnic origins. What I found out was quite interesting. There were numerous factors that led me to get this done:  

People often ask me “Where are you from?”  When I reply with my state of birth they look a little puzzled and ask “Really? But what country are you from originally?” I reply “The United States” and you should see some of the shocked looks I receive. They began to tell me that I look like I’m from some place of Caribbean decent. I don’t think I look Caribbean at all and I’m not quite sure what features those people saw in me to make that assessment.

Then there was the time I was on vacation, visiting a quaint little island. I was in line to pay for a horse carriage tour of the island. When I approached the window the clerk asked for my ID (even though she had not previously asked anyone else for their ID). All in all, it turned out to be some kind of checks and balances process to confirm that I wasn't a worker trying to leave the island. Someone told me the island contracts migrant workers to work on the island for a specified period of time – somewhere from the Caribbean, they didn't know exactly where. If the workers are caught leaving prior to the end of their contract, they face some severe penalties.

This really got my wheels turning. My mother (who is now deceased) never knew her father – only his name. Of course that left me without knowing anything about him or his side of the family. I began to wonder “Could I have descended from the Caribbean through him?”

Let’s not forget the countless family stories about having Native American ancestry through my paternal bloodline. Stories are exactly what there were to me unless someone could actually provide me with proof. I always asked questions about this: What was the name of the tribe? What was the name of the reservation? What happened to those people? No could ever answer those questions for me. It was always this person or that person told them about it, but there was never any supporting evidence.

With all this uncertainty and speculation, I decided to take the plunge and have my DNA tested through AncestryDNA to find out what I'm made up of. The test studies your DNA for your paternal and maternal lines – the only thing is that the results do not tell you which ethnicities you inherited from each parent.

I discovered that I have zero Native American in my bloodline. That means that neither my mother nor father has it in their genetic makeup…so I can finally put those tales to rest. My ethnic origin is predominately African, then there's some Irish and Great Britain ancestry, and also ancestry from some other regions that left me scratching my head (I'm still trying to figure out how to account for those regions...lol).  

I urge you to also take this test and discover your true ethnic origins! Ancestry offers a test that is very simple (www.dna.ancestry.com) and costs only $99. Consider it an investment in your legacy (and no I was not paid or coerced to say that…lol)! You will need to create a free account with Ancestry to begin the process. It takes about 6-8 weeks for the results to come back through your online account but I received my results within 4 weeks.  You can probably find a coupon code somewhere online to get free shipping for the kit.

Happy searching! :-)