I can easily go back to the early 900's on my father's side but it gets murky right about then. There are some likely ancestors before that but nothing that can be declared with certainty.

I wonder how many people find out bad things....like...you're a bastard and your mother let a stranger slip one past the goalie...

Check here: https://www.arkivdigital.net/

There is also a reality show for Americans with Swedish heritage to be able to go there and experience life back in the "home land". https://www.thelocal.se/20151211/cha...-swedish-roots

Yeah, I worked on it again last night and discovered that the "1st Earl of Stirling" is NOT my Cousin - he is my 14th GG....go figure..

Now, however, things are becoming hazy. The record keeping wasn't that great back then, in the Highlands of Scotland, so it appears that, at least for the foreseeable future that an impasse has been reached.

My dad's side of the family is pretty well researched back quite a few generations but my mom was adopted so I did 23 and Me a bunch of years back to see what her background is and if I have any genetic ticking time bombs. Turned out that she was mostly from a very specific minority in Finland/Russia. So that was interesting, I guess.

The funny thing I found related to a great-great-grandmother that the family usually refers to as "Cherokee Mary". I was expecting to have at least a little Native American because of her but actually had 0%. I do have about 4% Sub-Saharan African DNA so now I expect that Cherokee Mary was actually Mulatto Mary.

Thanks! :toast:

You can find out if your ancestors came from what used to be known as Sweden, where Swedes used to live

I was able to trace back to the progenitor of my clan in Scotland, and his father was from Norway. So it started over again there and went back a few hundred more years. I have the trifecta going for me. A very old family here going back to one of the shires of Virginia who hobnobbed with historical figures. A clan in Scotland with a well documented history. A royal family in Norway that had many records kept.

It's a parlor game basically on the where do I come from part, though I think it's fairly accurate on who you are related to based on who has come up as relatives.

The highest I've ever matched was my dad's first cousin (so my second cousin, I think) at 4.62% shared DNA. I was surprised it was such a low percentage. There are a few other that are in the 1 - 3.5% range but I've never established how we were related. Since my mom was adopted, I imagine some of it is from that side of the family since we don't know the family names.

If everywhere was just as homogeneous as Japan. If only.

My sister did the Ancestory DNA thing. We know our family history back to the 1400s. All my grandparents emigrated from Norway/Sweden in the early 1900s. It confirmed our history, but there was some Irish DNA. We figured one of our Viking relatives brought back a hot chick from Ireland after a raid. :)

so it was your family that kidnapoed my 16th great grandma?:D

On my wife's side she had one of those handwritten accounting of the family tree. It was actually accurate except for one thing that made no sense. It appeared to skip a generation in the 1920's. Turns out they were just trying to cover up a bad piece of history.
Turns out that her 4th grandfather, the son of a well respected pastor in town, killed a man in a bar fight. Found a newspaper article that confirmed what happened. He was drunk, started a fight and killed the guy. Left a young wife and kids and was living in an hotel. Multiple arrests for public drunkenness.

Oddly enough, its possible in my case... Paternal GF adopted (family name is Thayer), but my DNA profile is a close match to a Benson, and there are marriages between the Thayer and Benson families back about 200+ years.

That's one explanation anyway.........:shrug: