Spitting for History

It’s been almost a year that my brother received the gift that started a bit of an obsession for me. My parents and I drove over to see my younger brother for his birthday and my mom ordered him a DNA test. 6 horribly long drawn out weeks later……after his saliva went through the mail and was processed by Ancestry.com the results were in!!! Who would have thought spitting in a tube could be so interesting? He was……..well I can’t remember (there was a lot of percentages!!!) but it was definitely interesting. My mom knew he would have a lot of English. My dad scratched his head that my bro had so little Native American in him and I just wondered when my results came back if we would really be related. (LOL!!! Totally kidding!)

So where is the obsession part? Well, when you sign up to receive the notification email for your DNA results this whole world of new information comes to your finger tips. (It’s magical!!!) You have access to a database full of millions of people who used to live. Some of the information isn’t complete and you need to do ALOT of digging to piece together when and where these people were born and died. Sometimes just trying to make sure you got the CORRECT James, Mary or John (insert last name here) in your family tree. So as you can see this is the obsessive part. Once I started digging I didn’t want to stop. I paid for the top of the line (Yikes I know!!!!) information services Ancestry.com lets you have. I even added in subscriptions to Newspapers.com and Fold3 just to aid in my searches. (My husband sighs when he see’s the Ancestry site come up on the screen, LOL).

It’s a family history rabbit hole and I just can’t help myself. I’ve been on such a mission to trace my history that I’ve managed to get at least one side of the tree back to the 10th great-grandparents. Which has led me across the pond to England and really unknown territory. So for the moment I’ve had to put a hold on that side and start back on the others. Which is another time consuming rabbit hole (yay!!!!). Did I mention I’m halfway through school for my Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing? I apparently love to add challenges to everything I do. (I can hear my mother laughing from 160 miles away)

Needless to say you all don’t have to dig so obsessively deep as me but looking into family history and where you come from is fascinating. Where did we start? Why did our family move? What did these people do for a living? How many times can one man get married??? I swear one of my ancestors had four wives (at different times) and at least 4 kids from each. Now that’s a lot of kids!!

So come on you know you want too. Just spit in that little tube and see what your DNA has to say. ( I did not mean to rhyme.) Hasta Pasta!!!!