I Love Genealogy

Some things about genealogy. We are all related if we go back far enough. Considering that the number of one's theoretical ancestors (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc) doubles with every earlier generation, and there is a new generation about every 25 years (in pre-modern times), going back as far as 1200 A.D. you get a number of ancestors theoretically alive at that time larger than what we estimate to have been the entire population of western and central Europe. The computer models demonstrate that all of us (including most Black people who have white ancestors) are descended from everyone who was alive in most of Europe at that time and who still has descendants. (Many people never have children or their descendant lines later die out.) So, Heart, it gives me great pleasure to declare that you and I are cousins--we just don't know how far back the connection is. And, I am a 6th cousin twice removed of the late Duchess of Windsor because on of my ancestral lines comes out of colonial Baltimore where Wallace Warfield Simpson grew up.
In the American South, it was common, especially in upper class families for first cousins to marry. This was also often true in the British royal family. (I think it was George II's parents who were first cousins.) There are no ill-effects except that certain kinds of rare diseases are more likely to manifest themselves if the father and mother are related.
Having a lot of DNA matches in Australia probably means you descend from north European peoples some of whose descendants went to America and some to Australia. If these things interest you, read any of the popular books written by Bryan Sykes.
As for my own background, it is British (English, Scottish, and Welsh) and German (mostly north German).

I too am very much involved in discovering my families roots. My dad never told me where we came from, and then I got on Ancestry.com. From my work and the work others had already done, it would appear my paternal heritage is from Scotland, and my ggggg(many times) grandfather participated directly in the Scottish uprisings with William Wallace, (Braveheart). In that movie, the guy who came to Wallace's aid (when his family was killed) would have been a direct descendant and Wallace married one of my kin. I'm thinking... REALLY!!?? Then I got on the websites with my families name, they have castles and regions named after them, (even a tartan)... And I'm getting requests from others in the group to get tested for DNA... This is why I thought to write... I'm thinking: I too am afraid of what I will find! I hope it's true!

Searching the past, past relationships is very interesting. Some walls are hit in searches. Connections need to be made over and over to make sense of them. Then, when you find a name, and google it, you find that people with that name have done interesting things. My GG grandfather may have been a composer, but no one in my family remembers him as ever being musical. I'm not sure how many Haydn Bakers were around in the late ninteenth century, living in NYC. There may have been two, one a composer and one my GG Grandfather.

It is amazing what you can find out on those sites or with just a little bit of DNA. I was on one of those sites tonight and I was surprised that some persons' social security numbers were listed there. They were deceased people but still. And as much as we used to talk I didn't know we had history in common. One of my degrees is in history as well. I think history is fascinating but when you can tie your own history into the history of others it us beyond amazing.

I think you get what you pay for and that sounds way too cheap to do a test that returns results that detailed. I f you are interested in genealogy try Ancestor.com and chances are there is already a lot of information already filled in for you. All it takes is one relative to get it started and the tree starts filling in. Let us know if you felt the test was accurate. Interesting either way.

That reminds me of the PBS show - I think it's called Finding Your Roots. They usually have 2 or 3 celebrities on and they trace their ancestry. They also do the DNA testing. The people always seemed to be shocked when the get the results. I don't know the significance (if any) of your parents sharing 3 loci, but it sounds interesting to investigate.

Holy hell. Are your parents still alive? Is it possible they were more closely related than you realized? I have done some ancestry research and looked at others' family trees, where there were many cousins marrying. The genetic disease your children have seems to point to the possibility this happened with your folks or perhaps their ancestors.

Genology is very interesting. I love all the little twists and turns that we all have in our family tree. I think we can all learn a little about ourselves...simply by looking at our pasts. I hope you continue the journey. :)

It's always fun to know where we came from. Most of background is from the "younger" siblings in the family who had to go out and make it on their own

Very interesting! what was the name of the company you did this through? and what was there website?

My goodness, dollbaby, quite the pedigree. A true lady of the world! No wonder you like travel and adventure.

Well your ancestors were beautiful,because you are very sweet and beautiful.:-) xoxo

That;s interesting