My DNA Adventure

Family Secrets

I started looking in to my family history some 20 years ago, my great aunt was very sick, or another great aunt had just past away, those early days are getting a bit hazy and i don't remember exactly. Either way one of the great aunts decided it was time to let out the great family secret.

Having already seen my Grand Fathers birth certificate having been born in 1927, with his father being listed as a gentleman,who we know, passed away during the battle of the Somme in WW1 in 1916. Even at a stretch there was no physical way he was the son of this man. So who was his father, who is my great grandfather?

Understanding your fathers, fathers father etc etc, is really important in Family History, this is where you get your Surname from in most cases. How can i know who i am i don't know who my ancestors were? I should have a different surname. I'm still proud of my family, and the name, but it's not really mine? Is it?

DNA Hunt

For the next 20 years I tried to break through this brickwall using all the family history techniques i could find and learn. We had a name, and an address, but nothing else. The man was a complete mystery.
About 5 years ago i heard of DNA testing, which could link you to other people who took the test. At the time it was really expensive and not available to all places in the world. Slowly the prices came down and the countries the testing was available in became broader untill about 2 years ago, i was able to submit my DNA.
The test took a few weeks to arrive, and then about 4 weeks to get back, with a two month wait for them to be processed. Finally the results came back!

Now you may find it disappointing to hear, but there were no direct matches, but there were a bunch of close matches for me to research. Through the next 6 months i was able to reach out to about 6 DNA cousins, on both my fathers side and my mothers side. These people really were "blood", how amazing! How great is technology!

I'm still searching for that link to my Great Grandfather, and now having had both my Mum, Dad and Wife tested am narrowing down the links to the people who i am related to, i'm sure as more people get tested, one day i'll log in to my account and I'll break down that brick wall.

Origins

One of the other cool things about DNA testing is that you can see your Ethnic makeup. I was super excited to see that I was from the UK, with parts form all the invaders over history. How cool! I'm proud of my UK heritage, and my DNA aligns to how i know the UK is home (even though i live in Australia)

Get your DNA Tested - Find your relatives!

If you are intrested in getting your DNA tested to find people who really are related to you, check out FTDNA