I got the results yesterday. Pretty boring, for the most part, as I’m the expected 99.9% European heritage. It was the 0.1% that was interesting, as it says that this minuscule part of me is Native American, with a full-blooded male 4th-great (or further back), most likely born between 1680 and 1770. I have a large ancestry database, but it’s impossible to even speculate on the circumstance. I can only guess that it happened on the east coast, possibly in Rhode Island.
What are the error bars?
The fact that the results specify “male” suggests that they’re seeing a Native American Y chromosome. There’s not much room for error on that, but it’s difficult to say how far back the native ancestor would be.
My results came back 99.7% Northern European, which boggles my mind, as do your results. In America, in the 21st century, how can people with ancestors who have been over here since the first white people came over here (as some of mine have been) still be so WHITE? Even .2% of my other .3% is still white.
Before you place too much reliance on these tests, take a look at these articles:
How Reliable Are Home DNA Ancestry Tests? Investigation Uses Triplets to Find Out
23andMe test run for identical triplets:
On one hand, I’d like to have a DNA test, but on the other hand, I expect it’ll just confirm what I’ve been told my whole life - everybody came from Poland as far back as anyone knows. So it would be a waste of money to be told that.
Still, it’d be interesting to find out where else my ancestors might have lived. But not interesting enough to shell out the price of the test. Yeah, frugal - that’s me.
Why does European ancestry have to equal boring? There’s much diversity there, I just don’t get when I hear people say that, and I hear it often. Would somebody who is 90-99% Asian or African also call themselves boring? I don’t think anyone else’s DNA is any more exotic than anybody else.
I have considered doing 23 & Me just to see if the paper trail our family researchers have uncovered matches the genetic one. It would be interesting, but it wouldn’t change my self-image of who I feel I am.
I am pretty sure I am over 90% Western European. I consider it neither a badge of honor nor shame, it just is what it is. And I ain’t boring, doggone it!
Mine came back as 100% European, and I’ve had ancestors in the U.S. for a very, very long time as well. They just didn’t move around much.
My FIL’s came back as 100% Bohunk. And that is DESPITE he and his parents having been born in the US. (Don’t know about earlier generations.)
My SIL’s came back 100% European, so I assume my wife’s would be similar. And I assume mine would as well. As far as I ever knew, I’d been told German/Polish/English/Irish, tho I think the last immigrants came over around 1860.
I think folk of European ethnicity living in the Northeast/Midwest didn’t “mingle” overly much outside their ethnic/religious groups. So such results don’t really surprise me.
I’ve been doing genealogy research for about 20 years now, so am always cautious about taking things unchallenged. I just found it interesting, is all. The largest grouping was French & German, which is not at all surprising, since my father’s family emigrated from Germany in the 1840s, and my mother’s side is pretty much entirely British Isles, and going back in America to the Mayflower.
It’s not so much that “100% European” is boring, as that “100% what you’d always thought it was anyway” is boring.