Have you been attracted to those glossy ads to find out who you are by doing a genealogy DNA test? Roberta Estes wrote this interesting article where she figured out her estimated ethnicity percentages from her traditional genealogy research and then compared them to results from several genetic genealogy vendors: Concepts – Calculating Ethnicity Percentages. […]
Discoveries
Marie Marguerie and mtDNA
This discovery is a great example of how genetic genealogy can help with our research. I had done traditional paper research on my maternal line back to Marie Louise Desmarais, born in 1716, using birth certificates, parish registers and the Loiselle and Drouin marriage indexes. The maternal line is your mother’s mother’s mother’s line and […]
Mayflower Ancestors
Funny story . . . I discovered I have a Mayflower ancestor last Thanksgiving. Yes, on the holiday where we think about the Pilgrims and the Indians, I discovered I have a Pilgrim ancestor. I sure wish I had known when I visited the Plymouth area years ago! I have to admit I am kind […]
William Laitala’s Ancestors
As you may have seen from our earlier Laitala post, we had a mystery about William Laitala. Who were his parents? We had a few bits of information, but nothing that tied everything together: Alina, who we thought might be William’s sister, named her parents in a Social Security record: Johan Laitala and Anna M Wiitanen. […]
Fjerestad versus Fjeseth
My clever and persistent mother recently decided to tackle the death of Lars Fjerstad. There was a family story about how he was working at a neighbor’s house and they hadn’t seen smoke over there in a couple days and so they went over and he was dead. We think maybe he died in Minnesota, […]
Finnish Ancestors On My Mind
My clever and persistent mother is working on the Laitala part of the family. It sounds like she is finding some cool stuff that we will be able to share soon. And I have just read Finns in Minnesota by Arnold R. Alanen. It is a quick read at 112 pages & it has lots […]