Have you ever thought of having your DNA tested?

[htmb]

Besides the parched earth in southern Italy, I’m heir to several crumbling Scottish castles, plus one or two in France.

I do find genealogy interesting, but it can also be a total time killer, too. I was actually just looking up some of my ancestors and found a few had come from North Berwick, east of Edinburgh. I wish I’d known it when I visited a few months ago.

[bjd]

I wanted to post a picture of North Berwick beach but there is a problem with my pic. Sorry, htmb. It was quite pleasant when we went there.

[kerouac2]

Well, my ancestors do not have claims as grand as some of you, but family lore tells me that the church of Sainte Marie-aux-Mines in the Vosges was built using money stolen from the family.



Some ancestor or other was collecting the proof of this when he mysteriously died, just like those people in Russia.

[bixaorellana]

I imagine you duck in there to worship whenever you're in the neighborhood.

The only marginally fancy, or at least historically interesting claim in my family that I know to be true is one my dad related to me as hearsay a long time ago, to wit, that some of our forebears came over on "the ship right after the Mayflower". That turned out to be documented fact.

On my mother's side there is a vague belief that part of the family is related to aristocracy, a belief that is laughed off. However, I did once come across an online photo of a woman with a title whose last name was that of my mother's maternal grandmother. The kicker was that the woman in the photo strongly resembled that part of the family. My mother claims that is proof enough.

[fumobici]

I've got a prince and princess in my tree but they're on another branch so I'm not descended from them. I've no doubt told this before.

[bjd]

No aristocracy in my family, which is probably all to the good. At least we are not inbred. One interesting thing I found when I started exploring genealogy in my family is that a great grandfather who I thought was Jewish because of the name turned out to be Lutheran. How and why he left his family and moved east towards Warsaw and married Catholics is a story I shall never know.

[whatagain]

Actually Mom used to say she was related to Nobel prize winner Jules Bordet.
Someone in the distant family is making our genealogy tree but I had no real intention to bother answering and my father asked to not answer.
Apparently the guy is persona non grata - Dad offered an explanation but I was not listening.

[Kimby]

I am cousins with Amelia Earhart on my Dad’s mother’s Otis side.
Something like 9th cousins thrice removed.

[onlyMark]

I heard she was a bit flighty.

[cheerypeabrain]

I think that we were all peasants

Not remotely interested in having my DNA tested. At university I tested my own ABO and Rh blood group (not allowed these days) and performed my own tissue type when on a course at the National Blood Transfusion Centre in Sheffield....

I did visit a lab with lots of PCR analysers (polymerase chain reaction) used to amplify samples of DNA for testing, but that was in the early 90s. Things have moved on since then.

[bixaorellana]

Nov 22, 2023 21:13:26 GMT onlyMark said:

a bit flighty.

Nov 22, 2023 21:22:58 GMT cheerypeabrain said:

I think that we were all peasants

Sounds like something my brother said about our family heritage: "I feel we come from good yeoman stock. ........ Of course I don't know what a yeoman is."

[kerouac2]

It's interesting about the different reactions to DNA testing. Some people think that it is going to dig up unwanted relatives. Others can justifiably worry about possibly inherited genetic disorders. I was only interesting in finding out about the genetic pool that spawned me. If anything, I was slightly disappointed not to have anything from the Mediterranian basin and perhaps more than I wanted from Scandinavia and the British Isles. Not that I have anything against them.