DNA testing, online ancestry services are among the newest tools for working out your way-back
Published 3:50 pm Friday, July 17, 2015
Who am I?
Where did my people come from?
Computer technology has made it easier to contemplate and investigate these age-old questions, a development especially important to many North Americans, who tend to be of mixed heritage.
Our interest in genealogy is nothing new, but the growing number of websites that help people find information about their ancestors has made the hobby infinitely more accessible and the formation of elaborate family trees even more popular.
The hunt to track down ancestors is part of the challenge and the fun, but perhaps it’s headed for an end game as more and more sources can be found online.
Every year, thousands of people visit the Latter-Day Saints Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Thousands more make trips to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., Ellis Island in New York City and old cemeteries around the country where they try to track down their relatives.
In many cases you can save the cost of the trip and apply the money instead to memberships with such websites as Ancestry.com. These sorts of companies have access to public records of all kinds, including birth and death certificates, naturalization records, military records, ship passenger lists (my Danish relatives entered the country in Boston, not New York), census reports and voter registration, as well as the family trees of other people who are searching. Hey, they might be your relatives.
Wanting to build a family tree for my children, I started my search by looking at the online options. All the branches of my family have had an interest in genealogy, so maybe it’s in my DNA. I couldn’t wait to get started.
To learn more about that DNA and my 23 sets of chromosomes, I ordered the help of 23andMe.com, a geno-tech company based Mountain View, California. For $99 (plus tax and shipping) you get a kit that contains a specimen tube in which you collect saliva. You can’t eat or chew gum or even drink water for 30 minutes before you spit. And it’s a lot of spit. It took me more time to fill the tube than the 2 to 5 minutes suggested.
When you reach the fill line, you seal the tube, box it back up, put it in the mail and within four to six weeks you get an email with the results. (The company no longer reveals medical issues related to your DNA, but you can opt to allow the company to use your anonymous information for medical research.)
Most of what I found out I already knew. I am 99.3 percent European stock, with most of my ancestors from the north — France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and the British Isles.
The genome chart also says I have about 2 percent ancestral background from Italy and Portugal or Spain. That was surprising, along with the fact that I have an estimated 2.3 percent Neanderthal DNA. Part of me is not fully human?
However, the big “wow” from the chart was information that makes real a story told by a cousin. He always maintained, from tales passed down in the family, that we were part “gypsy” or Roma. Evidently there is genetic evidence that the Roma were originally Hindi people who left northern India about 1,500 years ago headed for (or were taken to?) Europe.
Sure enough, there it was on the 23andMe genome chart: DNA tests showed that I am .7 percent south Asian — meaning from India.
To get a clearer picture of my dad’s side of the family, I plan to ask my brother to send in a 23andMe DNA test. The problem is that women, who do not have the Y chromosome, don’t carry the full paternal background.
With the north European ancestry confirmed by DNA, I plotted out a family tree with what I knew about my family and began looking for online help. One can search the U.S. censuses on the National Archives site, but after flipping through pages and pages, I began to look again.
Many similar websites are available to amateur genealogists (including 23andMe’s site www.myheritage.com), but Ancestry.com is great. (Also, check out the Ancestry Facebook page at www.facebook.com/AncestryUS/timeline and another offshoot website www.genealogy.com.)
People can use the website free for about two weeks and then you have to pay about $20 a month. If you are fast and careful to cancel your subscription when you’re done, those great Ancestry resources are available for pretty cheap.
The program automatically sets up a family tree for you and you just keep searching and adding to your tree as you go.
So far, on my maternal grandmother’s branch, I have located my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Capt. Daniel Van Voorhis, who fought in the Revolutionary War. Among the information available on Ancestry are photos of cemetery stones, and I don’t have to travel all the way to Brooklyn, New York to see the captain’s grave.
For those descended from Snohomish County settlers and local American Indian tribes, good places to begin a family tree search include the Stillaguamish Genealogical Society in Arlington, the Sno-Isle Genealogical Society in Lynnwood and www.snohomishhistory.com.
The Stillaguamish society’s library is located at 215 S. French Ave. It is open noon to 4 p.m. Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. The organization’s website is www.stillygen.org. Monthly meetings are at 1 p.m. on the second Tuesdays | at Arlington Free Methodist Church, 730 E. Highland Dr.
The Sno-Isle society’s library is in Heritage Park at 19827 Poplar Way. Hours are 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The society offers classes and focus groups. Its website is rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wasigs.
The Chronos Society’s Jeremiah Karpowicz, who spoke at the Everett Public Library earlier this year, has good information at chronossociety.com/digital-legacy-resources.
Genealogy is a time consuming, but satisfying hobby. Even when you find out you’re part Neanderthal.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
Other genealogy websites
Familytreemagazine.com has an article about apps you can get for your smart phone or iPad.
www.genealogybank.com, which has a special page for American Indian history.
www.archives.gov/research/genealogy, from the National Archives.
familysearch.org, which is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Look for the app gallery.
