DNA... everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask

[dickiesam]

Peter Calver has written an excellent series of articles about DNA testing in the recent special edition of his Lost Cousins ezine.
http://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters/ ... 12news.htm

[Blue70]

I'd like to get DNA information at some point to support my paternal line. The price and the fact I need to get a person involved that I don't know and who is the uncle of a female contact/distant relation makes me put it off for now. There's an adulterous birth (or three to be honest LOL) in the family and it would support what we already know to be true about the parentage.

Blue

[dickiesam]

Hi Blue,
Some years ago a small group of same surname friends, all of whom had roots in Ireland, paid for a DNA test to see if we were in fact related and could be cousins. Turned out that only two of us could have a common 'father' between 1000 and 1,500 years ago.

Out of the four I was the only one with exact matches with other test results... one was in Wales and didn't want any contact, the other had been born in New Zealand but his g.g.father had left Kent in 1865 and settled in NZ. His family were in Kent back as far as the early 1700s. Neither had my surname of course.

As was mentioned in the article, it only needs one 'hidden' birth with a different father in a 'family' to throw the whole set of results into the waste-bin. And what if the surname I have was after all a surname adopted by a serf working on his master's lands?

Shan't be paying for any more DNA...

[Blue70]

Thanks DS. It would probably be a waste of money so I'll give it a miss. I know the paternal line is right anyway because the father later married the mother, the son is the spitting image of the father, the son was told by an uncle who his father was and he asked his mother and she was embarrassed to discuss it because the father had died while the son was led to believe he was his step father.


Blue

[dickiesam]

The favourite explanation my three same name friends have adopted is that because we know it is a Norman surname and can trace it back to two of the knights in the Norman invasion of 1066, King Harold and all that, we reckon that 4 mercenary foot soldiers were sitting around a fire on a Normandy beach the night before the invasion with only a 'first' name and decided to take the name of their Norman knight as their 'family' name. That explains why our DNA showed such wide variations in 'place of origin', Northern Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, South-eastern Europe and the Basque country of northern Spain.

[Blue70]

Hi DS

I hope no one with the surnames Walsh, English or French give it a go they've got no chance LOL.

Blue

[MaryA]

Very interesting theories chaps, I've enjoyed your chat.

My own family line is quite small dating back to the mid 1700's and I've always wanted to know if there was a connection to the large group of the same name in Liverpool. I'm obviously tempted to have the DNA test done by my brother who is the last known male of this line and as he has no children it would be difficult to be sure of any other males to ever have tested.

DS your story now makes me very much doubt the worth of having it done, especially since the only two males I know, descendants of the larger family, aren't interested in having it done.