What about that Native Ancestry DNA proof????

I KNOW....
You have seen on your CSI television shows that they have been able to PROVE DNA.  If you see this in a family tree, PLEASE don't import those words.  You can't prove parentage or DNA unless you have the "LIVE" data and we have only been able to capture and hopefully keep live data since the 1980s (well....The first recombinant DNA molecule was created by Paul Berg in 1972 when he combined DNA from the monkey virus SV40 with that of the lambda virus).  http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/discovery-of-the-function-of-dna-resulted-6494318


I've actually seen an example of this in documentation and it makes me cringe: (not the real person)
Lady Jane Gray - DNA PROVEN
BORN 1900
DIED

Whatever....really?


Bringing it down to the simplest common denominator, even two chocolate chip cookies can be different - one might have 10 more chips than the other - - We as laymen can look at DNA testing a little like that.

Have you seen the Ancestry.com commercial about the guy who always thought he was German - even to the point of learning folk dances dressed in Leidahosen?  Then....he finds out that he is mostly Scottish.  Who knew?

That is the tricky part of your Ancestry DNA testing.  We are not all cut out of the same mold so to speak.  Our pedigree looks like a cookie cutter with our brother, but you might have one DNA marker more or less turned on than your brother or sister.  That might throw you a little closer to one nationality than the next.  

I love this article and hope you read it -

 http://dna-explained.com/2012/12/18/proving-native-american-ancestry-using-dna/

In this example the brother has 1/2 of his fathers traits and 1/2 of his mothers.  The sister has mostly mother's traits.


I'm a perfect example of this.  All my life, our family stories were - "We came from 100 % Galway, Ireland on Dad's side and Mom's side was 100% Cherokee."  So let's look at my pedigree JUST by the threads:


So I'm leaving out some info here - but when you drill back, the
By the information we found - I had no idea that I had German Ancestors, until I had done my Bavarian roots which extends to Scandanavia - on the Bower side....who knew!   Those were some stories that did NOT get passed down.   And what's this about my Grandparents on my Father's side living on the Choctaw reservation because of Grandpa Harris's ancestry???

What stories and data are missing on your side?

   Below is not an example of my ability to document my heredity - just a rough sketch of the big picture.  Here's a little video of how you can get in touch  with other relations after you have done your research and Ancestry DNA

http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2015/08/26/see-your-dna-matches-in-a-whole-new-way/

From what I was able to glean is that nothing really replaces good research and taking the Saliva Test DNA just corroborates the BIG picture - not tiny details.


                                                                       Grandpa C
                                             Grandpa C         Ireland>>>>>>>>>>>IRELAND
                Grandpa C            Ireland
                                           
                                           
                                              Grandma L           Grandpa L>>>>>>>IRELAND

Dad                                       England                    Ireland
Arizona
                 Grandma H          Grandpa H             Grandpa H - CHOCTAW?
                 Tennessee            Virginia
me
California                              Grandma E>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>ENGLAND
                                              Tennessee


                       Grandpa C            GrandpaC>>>OK, CHEROKEE
                       Texas                    Texas  - Walked the trail of tears
Mom
Oklahoma

                       Grandma S           Grandpa S>>>>>>>>>>> ENGLAND
                       Texas                    Texas

                                                 Grandma B...........................  GERMANY
                                                  Alabama

So just to see if my research was on target, I took the Ancestry saliva test for 79.00 (special!) and It was a little different than I had long imagined!

 Upon first glance it showed mostly what I had discovered but not what I was told by family lore.

 The pie chart didn't even mention Native American.....until I looked at the TRACE amounts.

You guessed it - All my life I thought I was 50% but my research proved that I was only 2% by my saliva.  Now if my brother, who looks just like my Cherokee grandfather took the same test, he could have completely different results.  His, I'll bet, would show a much higher Cherokee element.

Geneticists sound note of caution over DNA ancestry testing

The American Society of Human Genetics has issued an official statement on the …

by Ted and Karen Meyer - Nov 13, 2008 11:15am MST

Here is an excerpt from an article about Geneticists Sound off on Ancestry DNA.....

Then there's the issue of what ancestors a given test is looking at. "Every person has hundreds of ancestors going back even a few centuries and thousands of ancestors in just a millennium," the statement notes. Although, on average, we can figure out what each ancestor may have contributed to someone, just like the DNA markers, these numbers are only probabilities; there's no way of knowing if, by chance, a given ancestor is over- or underrepresented in their modern descendent.

Between these three aspects: choice of test, its probability of finding a spurious link to a geographic origin, and the probability that a given DNA marker isn't representative, then only one thing is inevitable: if you do enough tests, you're going to get a wrong answer now and again, even if the average test is more or less correct.

That wouldn't be such a problem if it weren't for two things. The first is that many people assign an enormous psychological weight to their ancestry, as it's intertwined with their sense of identity. The second is that many people are aware that certain genetic diseases and predispositions are prevalent in some ethnic groups, and the tests may trigger unnecessary worries—especially unnecessary, in that some of the same tests may be precisely the ones used to assign these risks in a more fine-grained manner.

The statement ends with a series of recommendations, the first of which is that the scientific community do its best to make these issues clear to the public. The public, in turn, has a duty to pay attention to scientists if they're going to take ancestry testing seriously.

Hope you enjoyed this!  What have you found out about your history?  Write to me at genealogymama1@gmail.com - I love hearing your success stories!