Since I began the task several years ago I have added 2,164 people to my family tree. Outside of the United States, I have determined that the majority of my known ancestors have come from Germany, Ireland, and England. A recent DNA test shows something a little different.
A while back I was offered to have my DNA tested at Ancestry.com as part of their Beta program. The first sample was not discernible and I was asked to resubmit it last month. Today, I received the results and they were not entirely surprising but they did confirm a recent discovery that I can hardly wait to share with you all, particularly those of you on the Wright branch of the tree. It did tell me one undeniable fact... I cannot be any more Caucasian than I am.
As you can see in the above diagram two-thirds of my ancestors originated many hundreds, if not thousands of years ago in Britain and Ireland. No real surprise there. The surprise for some of you will come from the fact that I (or we) am 25% Scandinavian! None of my relatives have ever mentioned any knowledge of being Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, or Swedish, yet, my DNA shows that is where our roots are buried. And I didn't really believe it when I found recently matching family trees to ours but our Scandinavian background spans back thousands of years to before Christ and we are descended of royalty.
What did surprise me was the lack of evidence of our central European, specifically German, roots. With the recent discovery of the origin of the Kempen family (Fanning side) in Lower Saxony, the northwestern section of Germany, it stands to reason that these ancestors were closely related to the Dutch. The district where the Kempens originated is Leer and sits right at the border of the Netherlands. Our other German relatives (Hoffman, Dertinger, Schalk etc) that are documented from Baden & Wurtzberg may have descended from other Scandinavian people, as well.
I look forward to sharing these fascinating discoveries in the future.
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