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   Did you know that...

In a historical context, all people in the United States, except for Native Americans, can be considered immigrants or descendants of immigrants. The United States is often referred to as a "nation of immigrants" because its population is made up of individuals and families who have come from various countries throughout its history.

   DNA

   A short name for deoxyribonucleic acid

 It's in All of Us.... so What is It?

DNA is the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for the development and functioning of an organism. It's like a blueprint or recipe book for making all the proteins in your body. DNA is found in every cell and is passed down from parents to offspring.

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Structure: DNA is a double helix, resembling a twisted ladder.

Building Blocks: The rungs of the ladder are made of paired chemical bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).

Genetic Code: The specific order of these bases along a DNA strand encodes biological information, like the instructions for making proteins.

Genes: DNA is organized into segments called genes, which contain the instructions for specific traits.

Heredity: DNA is passed down from parents to children, determining their traits.

Location: DNA is found in the nucleus of most cells.

 Sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo?

Let's Take a Close Look at my DNA Results from the testing that was recently done by Ancestry. Please remember: DNA tests can show an incomplete picture of your family history and may not accurately reflect the full story of your ancestry.

47% Scotland

      Scottish With its center in the northern third of the island of Great Britain but stretching down to Brittany in France, our Scotland ethnicity region is known for its geographical beauty, medieval architecture, and folklore. Gaelic and Scots have influenced regional English dialects and are both still spoken in some areas. National symbols, including the Lion Rampant, clan tartans, and bagpipes, are often recognized internationally alongside symbols of traditional cuisine, like whisky and haggis.

      Scottish Highlands & Central Lowlands  NEW!

28% France

      French Our France region is known for both the splendor of Paris and its picturesque countryside of plains and rolling hills checkered with fields and hedgerows. Evidence of human life in France, including the stunning galleries of Stone Age paintings in Lascaux Cave, stretches back long before recorded history. Today’s French are mostly urban dwellers and can trace their roots to several key groups who made their way into l’Hexagone starting about 2,500 years ago.

12% Germanic Europe

      Germanic Europe The dramatic landscape of our Germanic Europe region rises from Dutch and German lowlands along the North Sea through forested uplands to Austria’s Alps in the south. The German people were united by language and culture before Germany became a united country in 1871. Known as Das Land der Dichter und Denker (“the land of poets and thinkers”), Germany is home to some of the oldest universities in the world, and this region has a long tradition of producing world-class scientists, inventors, theologians, artists, and composers.

10% England & Northwestern Europe

      England & Northwestern Europe The history of Britain, the heart of our England & Northwestern Europe region, is often presented as one group of invaders after another displacing the native population. The Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans all left their mark on Britain both politically and culturally. However, the story of Britain is far more complex. In fact, modern studies suggest the earliest populations weren’t wiped out, but adapted and absorbed the new arrivals.

2% Central & Eastern Europe

      Central & Eastern Europe Our Central & Eastern Europe region stretches from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Adriatic in the south. The landscape is a mix of mountains, rivers, and plains and stands at the crossroads of Europe and Central Asia. By the 5th century A.D. Slavic peoples were moving west into modern-day central Europe, followed by Magyars, who settled Hungary. The Slavic peoples are now the largest linguistic and ethnic group in Europe, and the region’s legacy of beauty and civilization lives on in famed world cities such as Prague, Kyiv, and Budapest.

1% Baltics

      Baltics Thousands of years ago, the early ancestors of the peoples in our Baltics region came from the east and south. They entered a landscape of low-lying plains, thousands of lakes, and millions of acres of forest, a beautiful boundary zone straddling eastern and western Europe. Inhabitants have seen Vikings, crusading Teutonic Knights, empires, and Communism come and go, but they have maintained an attachment to land, culture, and freedom.

100%

OK - I have a few questions....

Native American ancestry? All my life I was told that my Mother's side of the family had Cherokee ancestors. But I see no reference to this in my DNA results?

Answer....Several factors can explain why your ancestry DNA results might not show Native American ancestry, even if you have Native American heritage. These include the limitations of DNA testing, the random inheritance of genetic material, and the potential for a lack of sufficient Native American DNA in the database used by the test. Additionally, some Native American communities have faced historical challenges in research and may not be as well-represented in the genetic databases.

Jewish ancestry? Several times during my life I heard veiled comments regarding ancestors on my Father's side being Jewish. No one wanted to talk about it and there was no information ever available. But a few years ago, while doing some research on our family on Ancestry, I found a family record for a distant relative who was Jewish. He was a Professor and lived in Berlin. The information was from the 1850s in Germany.

Answer.... No "Jewish Gene": There isn't a single gene that defines someone as Jewish. DNA testing focuses on identifying broad regional or ethnic groupings based on shared genetic markers.

Jewish identity is traditionally passed down through the maternal line. If a person's mother is Jewish, they are considered Jewish, regardless of their DNA results.

Some ancestry tests can identify Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry (originating in Eastern Europe) with a reasonable degree of accuracy.