Tracing My Heritage with AncestryDNA

One thing that my Dad was always passionate about was our family history. Since he had the genealogy pretty well in hand I never took a huge interest in it until he passed away unfortunately but since then I've been working to pick up where he left off. A few years ago in his searches on his mother's side of the family he discovered the possibility that we might not actually be German after all!

For a family with the name Schmidt that prides ourselves on being very German it threw us into a bit of a tizzy and has been the subject of debate ever since. When Ancestry started their AncestryDNA a while ago I knew I needed to do that! So I added it to my current 101 List and asked for it for Christmas this year.

Overall the process was SUPER easy. I'm assuming that the kit was sent to my mom's house, since they got it for me for Christmas! The kit was really easy to follow. You spit into the little tube until you hit the line, that was probably the hardest part sitting there trying to muster up all that spit ha. Then seal, shake the chemicals into the spit. Put it in the bag then the self addressed box. MAIL!

 

Then we waited ... and waited a little more ...

 

Since you make an account to register yourself before you send in the DNA you're able to check back and see what part of the process it's in. Plus Ancestry will send you email updates when it hits the next part of the process. I was checking back on it ALL the time. What can I say I'm impatient. 

Now for the best part!! My results!

Overall my results were what was to be expected. The Italian part was as large as expected. My Mom and I were a little surprised about the Irish but she had been told that her mother was a little Irish, French, Scottish and English ... so maybe a little more Irish than expected! I think I might get Mom a kit in the future just to see what her break down would be with that.

Then you can see the 25% Europe East. This percentage was the one I was most interested in, as I mentioned earlier! I ended up calling up Ancestry to confirm how I was interpreting the results. The short story was that at this time they can't be too positive whether or not we're ethnically German or not but the results make sense with what we know about the area we're from being part of the moving border area. I guess I'll have to wait and see when Ancestry gets more detailed with how they are able to interpret the results over the next few years.

We were all stunned at the trace amounts I had ... 2% Middle East and 2% Scandinavian. Everyone keeps saying oh 2% that's nothing but it's enough to be 2%! I'll have to keep digging in our family history to find those connections.

Overall I am super happy that I went ahead and finally did the AncestryDNA. It was really easy and has now spurred me on to look into our family history even more. If you're interested in getting your own done you should it's definitely worth it.  If you use this link you can get 10% the kit. Plus who knows what you might discover about yourself in the process!