Debbie Does DNA
In 2012, everyone told me that since my grandfather was still alive, I should “do his DNA.” I ordered a DNA test from FamilyTreeDNA, he spit in a tube, and we got pretty much the exact results expected:
- 55% West and Central Europe
- 25% British Isles
- 5% Finish
- 4% Asia Minor
Grandpa was hoping for some Native American DNA, but other than that, he was exactly as the math of his genealogy family group sheets predicted. It was less than spectacular. Through the years, I’ve upgraded to more advanced tests, as well. Still the same results.
Because his DNA is online, as others take tests and the tests find us related, FamilyTreeDNA notifies me that there is a new match. Throughout the years, I’ve received hundreds of notes about matches. I write to the people and it feels like playing Go Fish. “Hi! Our DNA says we match. Do you have any Williams?”
The responses have ranged from, “We are likely related way far back. Good luck with your research!” to requests for me to share all my information so they can put it on a CD with everyone else in the world. My favorite response was a woman who informed me that she did not find my grandfather in her genealogy database and therefore we are absolutely NOT related. I did not inform her that the entire nature of DNA defines that we are, in fact, related by the letter of science. The most common response, though, is to never, ever hear back from them.
With all that disappointment, I surprised even myself when I ordered a DNA test for my own spit when Ancestry began their DNA program. Because. I’ve researched my family history enough to have been able to draw my heritage chart myself, I thought that my Ancestry DNA results would be completely predictable, but the test came back with over 19% Italian.
In all my decades of genealogy, there are folks that fall in and out of my tree from just about everywhere. A something-great grandmother born in Norway. Another born in Finland. I have Bolivia, Sardinia, and just about everywhere. Except Italy. I’ve never had Italian or Greek ancestors. So why did my DNA say I was 19% Italian? I decided Ancestry DNA didn’t have a big database yet and I put it all aside.
Then one day my mom and I were talking and she mentioned wanting to do her test. We ordered the test and low and behold, Mom, who should be all English from 1600 America, is 43% Italian. 43% of her DNA is from Italy. Whereby zero percent of her paper-documented DNA is from Italy. Her mom and dad were both from families located for generations in the United States.
43% of one’s DNA makeup eludes to more of a parent that is from Italy, not a 19-th great grandparent somewhere back down the line. This was confusing to me. What to do next?
On AncestryDNA, we both had three close common Ancestry matches. One is her mom’s side that I’ve already explored and two are Italians from Sacramento. Only one had a public partial tree posted and looking through it were a lot of Sacramento residents.
My mom grew up in Sacramento, so I braced my mom for the idea that her mom, while married to her father, was with someone else for at least a period of time approximately 10 months before she was born. Mom thought it was hilarious and took it like a trouper, so I continued. I contacted the match and was given access to her tree. She told me how we were related to the other match. By taking that we were all related to one another and knowing how THEY were related, I was able to triangulate to the general line that would be match-worthy.
My plan was go to through all the men in that line that would have been about the proper age and nearby where my grandparents lived the year before my mom was born. I then planned to go through their life histories to see if I could find anything that clicked. It was a long-shot, as all are now long-gone and I imagined it would be a long guessing game with little fruition.
It took ten minutes.
I started with the two matches and charted their common tree on a pad of paper. Since their common relations were their great grandparents, I started there. Their grandchildren were of my grandmother’s age. I got to a brother named George. When I clicked on George, it showed not just the family surname, but also an alternate surname he used.
My Nana’s boyfriend in her much later years, long after her divorce in the 1950s from my grandfather and long after her second husband passed away, was this George. They were family friends throughout her life. They always stayed in touch and she talked about him all the time. When she was in her 70s and my mom moved to Sacramento to live with her, the three of them would have breakfast some Sunday mornings. I never got to meet him, but he was in the picture for many years.
George was my real grandfather. George’s family goes back to the early 1700s in Sicily, Italy.
We don’t think that any of them — Mom’s “dad”, George, or Nana — - knew about the biology that turned into my mom. We feel that my grandfather would have treated Mom differently and his temper would have dictated a major family fall out. We don’t think my grandmother knew, as she had nothing to lose with all of them gone in her later years, and surely would have said something. We can guess a lot of things now about what happened, but all of them are guesses. I suppose the important part is that Mom had two parents growing up and an extra side one that she didn’t know was family.
