DNA Testing - any cool finds?

[Deleted]

I just found out today that Duke University is named after my 4th Great-Grandfather, so that is pretty cool.

[icedcoffee]

My H is a direct descendant of Eli Whitney (the cotton gin inventor), apparently.

[gardengal]

All of my husband’s great grandparents immigrated from various places in Scandinavia except one. And that one’s family turned out to be a founding family in a now large-ish New England town. It was just surprising given that he thought he was 100% Scandinavian (this ancestor was English & thanks to Vikings, he’s still at like 95% Scandinavian)

I have a minorly important Dutch artist in mine. My family is also a more recent-ish immigrants

[lilstarling123]

I found a cousin that was given up for adoption by one of my uncles. Also found out I am Portuguese not German even though my moms family speaks German, has a super German last name and follows lots of German traditions/cultural things. Kinda funny.

[fivechickens]

I have not done a dna/23 and me test but an old friend from HS did and found that the man she thought was her father wasn’t.

[yaga]

Uh I found out I'm genetically predisposed to not like cilantro and process caffeine faster than normal (so I need more caffeine than normal people to get the same effect).

Basically proving my hatred of cilantro and all day tea habits to be based in genetics and therefore never likely to change. 

Heritage wise - I'm not Greek despite having a very Greek last name. I'm not even a tiny bit Native American, despite the family oral history AND photos of said ancestor. Neither were surprising or disappointing, just things I learned. The name is confusing, though, to be honest. 

[smock]

Turns out my BIL has a high percentage of neanderthal DNA, so that's given me some new teasing material.

[stinkyfeet]

My husband found a sister no one ever knew about. One night stand on his dad's part (prior to being married to my MIL)

[icedcoffee]

Feb 19, 2020 13:47:42 GMT -5 stinkyfeet said:

My husband found a sister no one ever knew about. One night stand on his dad's part (prior to being married to my MIL)

Oh man!  Did his dad know?

[amberlyrose]

My H found out how German he is (very!) though he has a ton of English ties that were never talked about even though it was a more recent migration compared to the other ancestors.

There was nothing surprising in mine. Even the 23andme health predictors were spot on.

[marie]

My Mom got matched with a nephew she did not know about. She has a bunch of siblings and has no clue who he is tied to.

[TR]

I had a trace (0.2%) amount of Senegambian & Guinean, but neither of my parents did. I'm assuming it's just because it's such a tiny amount.

[stinkyfeet]

Feb 19, 2020 13:58:10 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

Feb 19, 2020 13:47:42 GMT -5 stinkyfeet said:

My husband found a sister no one ever knew about. One night stand on his dad's part (prior to being married to my MIL)

Oh man!  Did his dad know?

No clue! He can't event think of who the mom might be (it was the 60's) and the baby was left at an orphanage shortly after birth and she has no info about her birth mother

[meganew]

Feb 19, 2020 17:06:25 GMT -5 stinkyfeet said:

Feb 19, 2020 13:58:10 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

Oh man!  Did his dad know?

No clue! He can't event think of who the mom might be (it was the 60's) and the baby was left at an orphanage shortly after birth and she has no info about her birth mother

Have they contacted each other? This is fascinating.

My H is terrified of data collection and us all being in a system, but I kind of want to do this because I assume I have other siblings from my father and I’d like to know.

[docholly]

A friend found her birth father and found out she had a brother. The birth father and brother have been open to having a relationship with her and welcoming her into the family. She always thought she was Italian (because of who she thought was her bio dad) , but she actually had no Italian DNA.

[melmo1122]

My mom connected with a second cousin on her dad’s side. She knew very little about her dad, he wasn’t a part of her life and my grandmother never spoke about him. The cousin sent my mom a lot of interesting family info he has researched along with a family tree going back to the 1600s. On it was a half brother my mom didn’t know about. Unfortunately he passed in 2014 but I contacted his daughter my first cousin and we will meet in the spring when she’s visiting DC for spring break. So I’m pretty excited about that. Also in his obit it stated he was in the army with Elvis Presley.

Interesting in the research he uncovered that a distant relative left Germany and came to Philly during the revolution and brought his bakery business so the family likes to believe he introduced the pretzel to Philly. The bakery is still in business in Germany and the store sign is a pretzel so it could be true!

[fryjack2]

I found out my twins are identical

[TheSeaward]

3 1st. Cousins

[lahoagie]

Turns out I’m 100% that bitch

[katfco]

I found out I'm really, really, really white.
My dad had some information about an ancestor who married a Native American a few generations back, but it didn't show up on the DNA.

[simpsongal]

I have a muscle gene common in elite athletes. Mom is related to Ben franklin, dh is a significant part Quechua.

[mags]

My husband found out that he is 49.3 % Ashkenazi Jew. He knew his grandfather escaped Poland during the war (very interesting story)but they never spoke about it and attended church once they got to safety.

[dancingnancy]

Between hearing so many stories about people finding out crazy family secrets or finding out they were way off on their ancestry I was so curious. Ends up I’m 100% Irish and don’t have any surprise relatives, which is what I’ve always been told. Whomp whomp.

[killercupcake]

Feb 19, 2020 13:47:42 GMT -5 stinkyfeet said:

My husband found a sister no one ever knew about. One night stand on his dad's part (prior to being married to my MIL)

We keep waiting for this sort of thing to show up on H’s 23 and me notifications.

[FastHands]

Feb 19, 2020 15:25:35 GMT -5 TR said:

I had a trace (0.2%) amount of Senegambian & Guinean, but neither of my parents did. I'm assuming it's just because it's such a tiny amount.

This would likely indicate that you had a random mutation that also aligns with that population, rather than actual lineage.

[VillainV]

No real surprises. H is Swedish and Polish, and I’m mostly English/Irish with some French Canadian thrown in. Family lore is that we’re related to John Muir (the naturalist) on my dad’s side but nothing turned up. Maybe I didn’t go back far enough.

I have heard several stories of people who found half-siblings they weren’t aware of.

[sandandsea]

I also have a super high Neanderthal percentage compared to most people. Like more than 99% of participants. I also have super healthy genes and am 99.4 European (UK and Germany) despite similar to PP oral family history of Native American ancestry and my family having most recently immigrated to the US more than 150 years ago but also as far back as the early settlers.

[HRH Queen Dick I, Orphan]

Feb 19, 2020 20:35:04 GMT -5 mofongo said:

None involving me.

Didn't you find out that you are genetically predisposed to wavy course dark pubes?

[starburst604]

We learned last year that my MIL has a half sister she never knew about. Her parents had separated for a time after my MIL was born, then got back together and had another daughter. Sometime in between that he had a child with someone else that turned out to be a family in the town that MIL grew up in, and she remembers the family.

The half sister was raised by a man she thought was her biological father and didn’t learn the truth until she did the testing and the sister she’d grown up with came up as a half sibling on her mother’s side. Her mother was still alive and revealed the truth when confronted. The half sister located some of my H’s cousins through one of the DNA test sites and the dots connected from there. MIL and her only living sibling have declined to meet her or communicate with her though.

They were all shocked when they saw this woman’s photo, because she looks exactly like H’s great aunt. It’s unknown if H’s grandfather knew this was his child or not, and he’s deceased.

[rupertpenny]

I’ve never done these tests. I learned about my secret half siblings the good old fashioned way.