Finding your ancestry roots through DNA testing

Posted on June 19, 2013 by

DNA testing for ancestry has been a high-tech new boon to those wanting to dig deep for their family roots. Whether just curious or have nothing else to go on to find ancestors, people are happy to spend $100 or so to discover their “genetic haplo groups,” (people groups) and perhaps link up with others whose DNA markers are close matches.

In my last post I wrote about adoption and finding your roots. In the old days, closed records were the norm, but nowadays many states will open the records if both parties have given approval. Kansas has wide open records and an online database for those searching. Open adoptions have thankfully become common, so both birth parents and their children aren’t left sad and wondering for years. My online friend, writing coach Cate Russell-Cole, was adopted and unable to find her birth parents. She turned to DNA testing and is happy with the results. Although she still does not know her birth parents, she found her lineage is strongly Irish, with Viking and Jewish heritage.

Cate used genebase.com in Canada which lets users create an online family tree, similar to Ancestry.com. Genebase offers a number of DNA testing options, starting at $119 plus shipping and handling:  from paternal or maternal only to testing both lines, and from standard to highest resolution. The site even says it will test for immediate family, however that works. The tests require cheek swabs. Results, which are technical and complicated to read I hear, are viewable online through a personal profile. Cate chose to test through her maternal line of X chromosomes, but took the most extensive test to find “Mitochondrial Eve,” so she has a map of the movements of her ancient ancestors across Europe and even East Asia. She is periodically sent information about possible matches with others, but says these have been ancient lineage possibilities.

Author friend Kim Wolterman, who is not adopted and enjoys researching her own genealogy as well as the histories of old houses, had her DNA test done with AncestryDNA via Ancestry.com. “When they began offering their DNA test for $99, I decided to spit or get off the pot.” Ha, ha, Kim. The online results of Kim’s spit test took close to six weeks to receive. Here’s her response:

“To say that I was surprised when I went online to review my test results is an understatement. The pie chart indicated that I am 95% British Isles (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and 5% unknown. My German and Swiss ancestors would be amazed to hear about this!”

Kim has documentation of numerous German ancestors and one Swiss. She is thinking of asking her brother to take the test to see if the same results come up. AncestryDNA also has a database of tested people who could connect with others who share DNA markers. Kim has found this “very disappointing,” with no close matches found.

Does DNA testing really work? From my own bit of research and from reading reviews, it seems to work if you just want a broad outlook and if the company has a huge database of results from all over the world (most don’t, especially not from Asia). For some people, results are in conflict with known heritage. And don’t expect to find lost parents or siblings. No1Reviews.com lists genealogy sites and some DNA test companies if you’d like to compare reviews by the site’s editor and by actual users of those companies. Before you spend the money, study up on the types of DNA tests and what kinds of results you can realistically expect. In the end, or rather in the beginning, we all came out of Africa. That’s your freebie result, no test needed.

Note: Women can have their mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) tested for maternal lineage. Men can have their mDNA tested for maternal lineage AND have their Y-chromosome male lineage tested. Autosomal chromosome tests will analyze not just the mDNA or Y sex chromosome but all 23 pairs of chromosomes in human cells. AncestryDNA, 23andme, and genebase.com’s combo packages test autosomal chromosomes. 23andme focuses on health and medical issues.

photo by Kim Wolterman

photo by Kim Wolterman

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Adoption and finding your roots

Posted on June 18, 2013 by

Finding your roots is a difficult topic for those who have been adopted. In an earlier post, “Is knowing your roots important,” I said it depends on the person. Some people don’t even care that much about their current families, much less their ancestors. Some focus on present relatives and the ones that influenced their lives when alive. For others, finding their ancestors and roots is a matter of simple curiosity, but can lead to addiction to the search because, as I’ve recently discovered, it is a lot of fun trying to solve this kind of mystery. For the adoptees I know, though, finding out their roots seems to be a most pressing issue, and not just for health history reasons.

Even if they dearly love their adoption parents, many of the adult adopted people I know of have an intrinsic need to find out who their birth mothers and fathers are (or were), and also to know the story behind why they chose not to raise their child. “Chose” is not particularly a good word to use as these stories tend to be sad tales of desperation and anguish or of people not endowed with good nurturing feelings or good parenting skills. Some searches result in great joy all around, some in interest and then indifference, some result in deep hurt. There’s risk involved, but the adoptees I know of think the knowing, even if it turns out bad, is better than not knowing.

I’m not sure those of us raised knowing our birth parents can fully understand this intense need adoptees have to know their biological parents. For those who are curious, I recommend reading memoirs about this as they are very illuminating. Read an interview I did with Jan Fishler who wrote Searching for Jane:  Finding Myself. In that blog post I mention being dumfounded by a young lady who wistfully told me she didn’t have any family stories because she was adopted. We all have family stories. The stories of parents, adoption or birth, have affected them and in turn affect their children, adopted or birth. But for adopted children, half their stories are missing. And that half can turn into a big hole.

A couple I know is searching for the husband’s parents. If you know anything about a baby found in a phone booth, June 1972, Kansas City, Kansas, Bill and Angie Atkinson want to talk to you. Read the comments left below the article to better understand an adoptee perspective and to find out more about DNA testing. I’ll have a blog post tomorrow specifically about DNA testing.

Searching for Jane

 

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Have you ever been embarrassed by your roots?

Posted on June 17, 2013 by

I have. In the old days of the 1960s I just wanted to blend in. I lived in a very white area and my sister and I were the only darker-skinned kids in school for many years. Finally in high school we had a handful of rotating migrant worker kids, a couple black boys, and a Vietnamese boy. The area was so white it was rumored there was a Klan group in the “dogpatch” part of town. If there was, I never heard of them causing trouble.

My sister and I were very shy and found it difficult to blend in as summer-tanned acorns going into the fall school semester. Reminds me how we used to sing that ditty, “I’m a little acorn brown.” Yes, I guess I’m a little cracked, you see. Fortunately, while there were bullies galore in those days, they left us two little brown girls alone, maybe because we were quiet as mice and tried to disappear into the woodwork. We did get called names a time or two, but our dad was good at boosting our self-esteem and psychoanalyzing problem people for us. “I’m OK, You’re OK” was a book I read as a teen.

Mom never taught us Japanese while we were young enough to soak that difficult language up. I’m sad about that now, but at the time I didn’t care. That would have really made us feel different. When Mom was invited to our middle school to present about Japan to a gymnasium full of kids, I was mortified! But, I lived.

As a college student running around on my own, I began to embrace my heritage because every darker-skinned kid on campus thought I was one of them. It was nice to attend the play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf” and fit in with the very dark audience. My first roommate was a ferocious, older black girl from East St. Louis who looked me up and down with ”evil eyes” and said, “I guess you’re okay, cuz you’re not a regular white person.” Whew.

Now I love my heritage. Now it’s cool to be multicultural. I don’t get asked, “What are you?” anymore, probably because I am “old” now and paler since I stay out of the sun. My heritage comes out, though, when I don a yukata and join the obon dancing at the Japanese Festival.

kimono

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Pulling out roots

Posted on June 14, 2013 by

I’ll be making up my own prompts about roots for the rest of the month since the remaining BlogHer June Roots prompts seem redundant or about offshoots from a family roots theme. And I’m skipping today! Have a good weekend. Me, I plan on digging for more roots – pulling out the remaining zoysia from our new fescue lawn.  

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Genealogy: Is knowing your roots important?

Posted on June 13, 2013 by

I don’t know, is it important to you? I think it’s interesting to know my roots, and I certainly had fun the other day snooping up my relatives on Ancestry.com. Many people share a sense of curiosity about who their ancestors were and where they came from, hence the huge popularity of genealogy and, lately, those DNA swab tests to determine old lineage. There are also plenty of people who don’t really care, happy to just be themselves without thinking much about past relatives.

Until this June BlogHer project of daily postings on the theme of roots, I was happy knowing only that I was Japanese and Dutch. I know of my Japanese aunts and a few cousins, but never have met them. I knew a handful of relatives on my dad’s side, but now know one uncle’s family that I’m not close to. Someday there will be just my sister’s family and mine trying to keep our bonds. My fun is more in participating in the cultures of my heritage and hearing stories of history mixed with culture from my parents. I love history and culture – anybody’s.

Why do we care where we came from, and why would that be important? My cultural heritage is very strong since my mother and my paternal grandparents were immigrants, so I feel a sense of belonging to those cultures, particularly to the Japanese side since I don’t look very Dutch. Someday I may visit the Netherlands and Japan to stand on the grounds of my ancestors and see if I feel at home, but I feel at home right here where I live. I love where I live, and I definitely have an American mindset, which doesn’t go over so well in Japan at least. I’d be “that gaijin.” If I had more mix in my heritage or my immigrant relatives were farther back in time, I probably wouldn’t feel a strong bond with any of my cultures. I’d be “just”  American.

Curiosity. Where does my puzzle piece fit in the world. I guess the importance of roots is more a matter of personality. Are you the curious type? If you’ve stood on the ground of your ancestors, did you feel a sense of home?

Gravestone

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Family history: Getting back to your roots

Posted on June 12, 2013 by

Today BlogHer’s Find Your Roots prompt asks, “What does getting back to your roots mean?” That makes me think about cultural heritage. “Where are you from?” was a  common question I got in the 1970s-80s when multicultural people were still an anomaly. If I answered “the Chicago area,” the response would be, “No, really.” Really, I was born in Chicago. Near the lakefront.

Usually, though, the question was worded, “What are you?”

“I’m a human being.”

“No, really.”

As an adult, I am deeply rooted in my Japanese tree even though I’ve never been to Japan (yet), don’t speak the language, and don’t know most of my relatives there. I was going through my mother’s old photo album full of her family pictures and discovered strangers who are probably my cousins. I only have two aunts, and I thought I knew who their children were. Except for those two.

I’m also interested in the Dutch side of me I know almost nothing about. But, thanks to these BlogHer prompts prompting my curiosity and to a genealogy-addicted co-worker, I learned the libraries in town give free access to Ancestry.com. So I renewed my library card and spent an hour discovering cool stuff online about my great-grandfather. Like he had a mystery wife… first she was there, then she wasn’t. My dad was told his grandmother died when he was a baby, but it doesn’t look like it … you never know what those old records will reveal.

Getting back to my roots would mean learning about my cultural heritage. I appreciate that St. Louis provides a lot of opportunities for me to not only learn about but participate in my Japanese heritage. Dutch culture in the States is harder to find, so other than eating Leiden cheese and pickled herring, I guess I’ll have to go to Holland, Michigan, again someday. My family went there when I was a child, and I got a pair of wooden shoes in my size. Those things were really painful to wear!

I just look like I'm smiling

I just look like I’m smiling

Posted in heritage, multicultural | Tagged | 4 Comments

Family history: Got culture? Does it show?

Posted on June 11, 2013 by

How much does your culture play in your day-to-day life? That’s BlogHer’s Find Your Roots prompt today. Well … I don’t eat sushi every day or sing enka at the karaoke bar, and I certainly don’t think like a traditional Japanese person. I am, however, surrounded by a lot of Japanese things. From kimono in the closet to cute kokeshi dolls in the dining room to decorations in the living room to loads of Japanese dishware in the cupboards, visitors would know I have a thing for Japan. I also write haiku, paint etegami, and watch Japanese movies with English subtitles. If visitors looked in my fridge, they’d see takuan (that yellow Japanese pickled radish), and the freezer holds containers of natto. Natto is for real Japanese people! Okay, well some of them hate natto. It’s good for you, though, filled with protein and vitamin K, and extra good with furikake (seaweed sprinkles).

I have embraced my “hafu-ness.” Hands down, I got culture. What about you?

Natto - just ignore the slime

Natto – just ignore the slime

kokeshi dolls - kawaii!

kokeshi dolls – kawaii!

Posted in heritage, multicultural | Tagged | 1 Comment