Countries/Continents of Your Ancestors!

[MayMay1123]

9 minutes ago, melon said:

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One side of the family came with William Penn.

My 8x great grandfather came on Penn's ship the "Friendship", his name was Peter Taylor, he came from England with his brother and his sister in law. They pretty much owned what is now Chester, Pa, but lost it by the third generation. There are still my Taylor's here

[PennySycamore]

I just got my Ancestry DNA "results" back and all I can say is "What a load of crap!"  It gives me 61% Great Britain, 24% Irish, and 5% Italian/Greek. Minor results with less confidence are <1% African and 2% West Asia.  I've done a bit of work on my family tree and there is Basque (Navarra/Nafaroa), French, and Germans in my family tree.  I've also been told there was a Native American woman ancestor as well.  My aunt has a photo of her along with some of her jewelry.  None of that shows up.  What we don't have in the family tree as far as I know is Italians or Greeks.  I do think that would be kinda cool, though.  I think if I'm going to be partly from Asia Minor, I'll be Cappadocian.

My dad had heard that some of his ancestors were Irish, but we've never been able to find any Irish ancestors.  He did hear from a lawyer in Maryland that had climbed the family tree, found their ancestral home in East Anglia, found out when they immigrated to Baltimore and how the family dispersed to central PA, down the East Coast, and out to Kentucky.  I wish we still had his letter.  

The damn results do at least give me high confidence that I have early settlers of western NC in my family tree (I could have told them that) and less confidence for early settlers of east Tennessee and Missouri Ozarks, which I could have told them that as well.  Hell, my 6th great grandfather was one of the first settlers of East Tennessee, was a leader of the Over-the-Mountain Men at King's Mountain, and served as the first governor of Tennessee.

ETA: I joked to my husband that the African was probably subSaharan and not Morocco or someplace like that but no, it's North Africa.  

[Scribber]

I am third generation in the U.S. on both sides. My family is entirely "Germans from Russia" - not much exciting. (Just poor people who jump from one country to the next, looking to escape poverty. Settled in the Dakotas and moved South to Nebraska.

But I still adore Ancestry.com! Mostly tracing my husbands family.

[PennySycamore]

I checked out the Show All Regions thingy on my Ancestry DNA results.  It showed the African was North African and I was only 1% Western European while I'm supposedly 5% Eastern European and about 1% European Jew.  I know of two different lines of German ancestry (down to the hometown in southwestern Germany in one case) and one line of French ancestry, one line of Basque (which may be either western European or Iberian, according to Ancestry) and no lines of Eastern European ancestry. Or Turkish. Or Jewish. Or Moroccan.

The North African thing does bring up something I mentioned to my husband last night.  I told him that the Melungeons of the southern Applachians sometimes were said to have some Moroccan or Turkish ancestry although the current throught is that the Melungeons are tri-racial isolates, IOW, people with a mixture of white, black African and Native American ancestry.   The Melungeons have several surnames that are closely associated with being Melungeon and one of those names is Collins.  In my extensive list of possible "cousins is one guy with the last name of Collins.  

In Ancestry DNA's description of the various ethnic communities, Irish is really what might be better termed as Celtic. No Scotsman is going to want to be called Irish.   I can believe that I have some Welsh ancestry, but I have never seen any evidence of actual Irish ancestry.  Wouldn't mind some as I glory in being a mutt.

There's a of articles on the web criticizing the DNA approach to finding your roots.  I may post some later, but now I have to get in the shower.

[ColeJo]

All my ancestors are from Europe, namely Germany, Great Britain, France, Ireland... let's just say western Europe. In North America, I obviously have some in New England, the Midwest and the South. In fact, I am related to the ones who founded the town of Hixson in Tennessee.

[Carm_88]

My DNA test showed 47% Irish, 43% English, and then 5% Western European. What I know is that my Dad's side is mostly from the South of Ireland (Cork, Waterford, and Kilkenny). My Mom's side is dominantly English, with a touch of Irish, and her great grandfather came from France. One of her many times great grandfathers was an Irish convict who was sentenced to transportation for theft. 

My Dad's side has been settled in the one community in Newfoundland since the 1830s. My Mom's side has been moving about but they're generally sticking to the one peninsula.  

[47of74]

My ancestry is from the German speaking regions of Europe.  Namely western Germany and Luxembourg.

Lots of Germans settled in eastern Iowa after coming over from  the various German countries, or Germany post 1871 unification.  Where I live in Iowa the Germans were one of two main ethnic groups and the Irish was the other group.

I know one thing that attracted some of my ancestors to this part of Iowa was how much it reminded them of home.

[FeministShrew]

My paternal grandfather's however-many-great- great-grandfather came from Prussia in the late 1700s, and was actually a member of the non-royal branch of the Hapsburg family (my maiden name is a corruption of Hapsburg &  uncommon. I'd totally dox myself if I told it).  
All my other ancestors were supposedly Irish or Scottish.
According to my DNA profile, I'm 100% Eueopean- 61% British & Irish, 6.4% Scandinavian, 4.3% French & German, 25% Broadly Western European, 1.3% Iberian, .4. % Broadly Southern European. 
I share DNA traits with Sephardic Jews, which means it's likely that at some point some Jewish ancestors fled Spain for England or Ireland and assimilated. 
I also have higher than average Neanderthal DNA, but I can't remember the percentage & for some reason I can only log in to 23&me at work.

[47of74]

17 hours ago, FeministShrew said:

My paternal grandfather's however-many-great- great-grandfather came from Prussia in the late 1700s, and was actually a member of the non-royal branch of the Hapsburg family (my maiden name is a corruption of Hapsburg &  uncommon. I'd totally dox myself if I told it). 

One branch of my family had members who were minor nobility from the mid 13th century up until the French Revolution.  Some members were very wealthy while others were at the opposite end of the spectrum.  My family came from the poorer side that had emigrated from Switzerland to Luxembourg and whose descendants eventually wound up in Iowa.

 

[dairyfreelife]

Interesting topic, researching my history as well. For sure...English, Welsh, German and Italian. Strong evidence of Native American on paternal side just a couple generations back, say Cherokee but unsure what tribe and possible suspected evidence of one relative being partial but mid-1700s so no images or records and leads to some hmm. May be more or other places speculated like Switzerland, Scotland and Ireland. 

[GoddessOfVictory]

My father and sister were hugely into genealogy a while back and traced my dad's side as far as they could. My sister claims one of our lines goes all the way back to the Plantagenet kings of England (namely the much maligned King John ) but she was never sure if she was following the correct line or not, due to some ancestors having a very common name.

Recently, both of my parents took the Ancestry DNA test. On my father's side, we already were sure about Swedish, Polish, German, and English and those showed up. We also got the surprise of small percentages of Iberian, Italian/Greek, Finnish/Northern Russia, and Irish.

On my mom's side, her test showed predominantly English, with a little Western European, Finnish/Northern Russia, Italian/Greek, and small bits of Irish, European Jew, and North African. Nowhere was the Norwegian/Scandinavian my mother grew up being told she had. However, she was adopted so it's very possible the information her adoptive parents received was wrong.

[Satan'sFortress]

Working on my mom's side now.  Her dad's family was Irish, County Cork.  There are a lot of records from after they arrived, but not so much before.  

But what is giving me all kinds of trouble is her mom's side--the Canadians.  One half from Nova Scotia and the other half from New Brunswick.  So many of them had very common names, and I can't prove which ones are "mine."  I need to make a trip up there at some point.

[tabitha2]

Mine is Mainly Polish and Baltic on mother’s side. Both sides, esp her mother’s, are well documented researched back over a hundred years. Dad was literally a mutt... everything from British to West African. He was adopted so that’s about it for knowing more. 23 and Me informed me of what I know of him.