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Two of my great-grandparents were orphans, so it would be interesting to see what the quarter of me that we know nothing of is.

I was given up for adoption at birth and have no info at all about my birth mother and father. I'm most likely mostly Caucasian but other than that ???.

Just ordered the kit, it'll be interesting to see what kind of genetic soup led up to my popping out into the world.

Thanks for posting Bristoe. Those are neat pictures. If last names mean anything, most all of my ancestors came from England or Ireland....except my great grandma who was half Native American. There are some family that say Dutch and others say it was a religion called Pennsylvania Dutch [I hope I got that right].

You can find out for sure for $90,...and it's not always as cut and dried as it may seem.

Even though one side of my family can be traced to Cornwall, my DNA analysis indicates that only 7% of my DNA shows a connection to Great Britian.

So,..even though that ancestor was living in Cornwall, his family had immigrated there at some point,...most likely from non Great Britian Western Europe,..like Germany or France.

Apparently, English DNA has markers that can distinguish it from the rest of Western Europe,..same with Ireland. But the French and Germans and that area are essentially one people.

Other DNA markers can be found in the people from the Ibernian Peninsula,..and Eastern Europeans/Russians can be distinguished from Western Europeans.

Its interesting stuff,...but it gets very interesting when they stick your DNA in the database and start showing you your living relatives and how they're related to you,...many times with contact information. (through the ancestry.com webpage)

Of course, you remain anonymous unless you choose not to.

There are some family that say Dutch and others say it was a religion called Pennsylvania Dutch [I hope I got that right].

Apparently, English DNA has markers that can distinguish it from the rest of Western Europe,..same with Ireland. But the French and Germans and that area are essentially one people.

Other DNA markers can be found in the people from the Iberian Peninsula of western europe,..and Eastern Europeans/Russians can be distinguished from Western Europeans.

The Pennsylvania Dutch aren't actually Dutch, they're German. It's not a religion, it's people from the southwest part of Germany that settled in Pennsylvania. The word "Dutch" actually doesn't have anything to do with what we think of as the Dutch (people from the Netherlands) but comes from Deutsch which means "the people" in German and also refers to the German language. Today people think of the Pennsylvania Dutch as the Amish and Mennonites, but originally you had a bunch of other groups that immigrated and settled in middle Pennsylvania also. Over the centuries they have integrated into the american melting pot while the Amish and Mennonites have kept themselves separate which means they're the only distinct Pennsylvania Dutch groups left. My father's people were originally Pennsylvania Dutch, Lutheran in religion, then migrated to North Carolina and fanned out across the south. Most germans anglicized their names when they hit the colonies to better fit in with the english. Weiss would become White, Schwartz would become Black, Braun would become Brown, Schmidt would become Smith, etc. Just because a person's last name sounds English doesn't mean it isn't German, the spelling was likely changed when they hit the shore.

I didn't know anything about it, but my wife found out about it and ordered a kit for both of us. She sent hers off and there was no surprises. She's Russian/Polish and the results yielded that she was a 99% Slavik purebred. My kit laid around here and I never got around to doing it up, but my brother indicated that he was interested so I gave it to him to do.

The outcome was interesting. Both of us are fair skinned with light, fine textured reddish hair and there was quite a bit known about our maternal side of the family. Dad's side however was a mystery. Dad was darkish complected with black hair and he tanned up in the sun. Word was that it was from a hit of native american somewhere back in there somewhere.

Well,..the results came back and there was no native american indicated. It seems that the dark complexion stuff in my family comes from the Iberian peninsula of Europe,....Spain/Portugal,..that stuff. 25% came from Ireland,..no surprise there. But only 7% of our DNA was associated with Great Britain. The majority (44%) could be traced to Germany, France,...alla the non Great Britain Western European people and a pretty good dollup was from Scandinavia.

All of this was interesting, but the biggest hit from the test was from the DNA database that ancestry.com is keeping which compares your DNA to others that have been sent in and lists people who are related to you.

I've yet to learn who the person is, but someone very closely related to me on my father's side had sent in family histories and some pictures.

I pulled up the page and found a picture of my grandmother and my uncle that I had never seen.

I've been sitting here at the computer for 2 days finding out my father's family history.

It's worth doing,...no chit.

I think it's going to explode once it catches on and enough people get involved to string out some in depth family trees.