My wife and I decided to send our DNA samples into AncestryDNA and last week I finally received my results. There were really no surprises on my side. Mostly it confirmed what I already knew—my ancestry is 100% northwest European. My mom was actually mostly Irish with a little French or, perhaps, northwest German in the mix. I didn’t get an answer to one of my enduring questions: were the Schneiders French or German? Yes, I know Schneider is a German name but lots of Alsatian French people have German surnames. I’ll need to keep searching for that answer.
And my dad was entirely northwest European. No real signs of the Swabian ancestry he joked about.
The most important leads I received were in the form of connections with other people with related DNA. One of them is a descendant of my great-grandmother Emma Bader’s sister, Rosa. I have reached out to her and, if luck is with me, she knows more about the Baders than I do. The Baders are another of my lines about which I have questions. If she doesn’t, I’ll gladly share what I know with her.
If you’re wondering about that 2% Norway finding, that’s easy enough to explain. My maternal haplotype is also the most common maternal haplotype in Norway. Those Norsemen got around, leaving evidence of their passing in Ireland.
They nailed by ancestry just about perfectly. They got my mother’s French Canadian roots and my father’s north central England roots. They even picked up a little Celtic which makes sense.
But they completely whiffed on my sisters’ French Canadian roots. No hint of French ancestry at all.