When Ancestry.com Backfires

[BoatCop]

So I've done pretty intensive research on our (the wife's side and my side) family trees. I've been able to trace our lines back several hundred years, and in the case of my wife, back to the 500s AD. That was through Cherokee & Indian trader lines through Scottish Royalty and back to Robert the Bruce. Aside from her Cherokee line, her other side is early American settlers who ended up in the Eastern Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina area. That family line (Caudill) is widespread in Kentucky and the rest of the South. There is even a Caudill Store shown in the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter" in the scene where Sissy Spacek tells Tommy Lee Jones that she's pregnant.

Well, my son-in-law (daughter's husband) goes looking up his family tree. Keep in mind,that he was born and raised in Oregon and my daughter was born in CA and raised all over the place due to my military service. They met here in Parker when he came down from Oregon to stay with his dad who worked out at the old Copperstone Gold mine.

He calls me and tells me he found one of his ancestors was a "Caudill". He gives me the info, and I started digging through my sources and, lo and behold, find out that they (my daughter and her husband) share a great x 6 grandfather from the late 1700s - early 1800s. (That means they are 6th cousins). Now there are several instances in that family where 2nd cousins married, including my wife's line, back in those days. I attribute that to the fact that families then were pretty much constrained in family groups in the same "hollers" where their grandparents settled. The reason that there was a lot of inter-family marriages was that there was nothing BUT relatives for many miles around.

Anyway, we're having a lot of fun with it. Their kids are pointing to each other and saying "So THAT'S what wrong with you." I told my granddaughter that she's lucky she doesn't have a tail. Although I know there's no danger after 7 or 8 generations, it's still kind of funny. So my grand-kids are my wife's cousins. :eek

Moral of the story is: Be careful in your searches. You may not be ready for what you find.

 

[Old Texan]

That's pretty funny......Small world back in the day.

 

[Rajobigguy]

Incest, a game for the whole family.

 

[RiverDave]

Keeping it in the family eh BoatCop?

RD

 

[BoatCop]

Incest, a game for the whole family.

It's all relative....

 

[BoatCop]

Keeping it in the family eh BoatCop?

RD

Not me...... My daughter.

I'm just a spectator at this freak show. :skull

 

[RiverDave]

It's all relative....

LMAO!

 

[shintoooo]

It's all relative....

Quality :thumbsup

 

[TPC]

First thoughts were you discovered your ancestors are:

 

[FreeBird236]

It's all relative....

I know I'll catch crap for this, but scientifically there's actually very little problem for even first cousins, more of a taboo for america.

BTW I went to school with Caudills in Rialto in the 60's, I think the family owned a gas station and towing service.

 

[530RL]

I know I'll catch crap for this, but scientifically there's actually very little problem for even first cousins, more of a taboo for america.

eek

[video=youtube;aEhwIqmmEJY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhwIqmmEJY[/video]

 

[Advantage 1]

c

 

[BoatCop]

First thoughts were you discovered your ancestors are:

Possible, but not likely. My peeps came from Sweden. You can't throw a rock over there without hitting a Nelson.

 

[mesquito_creek]

There is a great PBS show called "Finding your roots" that ran a couple specials on famous people. Great show about tracing family lines back in time with professional genealogists able to do the work where ancestry.com etc can't. They do other DNA testing to help fill in the blanks.

 

[BUSTI]

Nothing better than kissing cousins. I think Aerosmith wrote a song about it.

 

[Rajobigguy]

Possible, but not likely. My peeps came from Sweden. You can't throw a rock over there without hitting a Nelson.

Same here, now quit throwing rocks my way.

 

[JB in so cal]

What "relative Humididty" in the Ozarks?









...that puddle of sweat on your sisters back when your humpin her:eek

 

[JB in so cal]

What do most girls say when they're losing their virginity in the south?








Get off me , daddy. You're smashin my marlboros:cool

 

[Classic Daycruiser]

Keeping it in the family eh BoatCop?

RD

This is how royalty does it.

 

[BUSTI]

What do most girls say when they're losing their virginity in the south?








Get off me , daddy. You're smashin my marlboros:cool

Hahahaha!

 

[Rotten deal]

How bout this one . My wife's uncle. Her mothers brother starts the same deal and some dna testing finds they do not have the same father. Turns out grandma was a dirty little slut with a big secret she took to the grave. He was the son of grandpa's best friend. 65 years nobody new .

 

[BoatCop]

This is how royalty does it.

True Dat.

It took Diana to begin the task of breeding homely out of British Royalty.

But since we're talking about Ancestry, My wife IS a direct descendant of Mary Queen of Scots, The House of Tudor, The House of Stuart and The House of Bruce. Primarily since those "houses" were all interbred with each other. However, her specific line through Stuart and the John/Ludovic Grant family of Scotland was through a concubine of Robert Stewart, the son of King James V of Scotland.

 

[jetboatperformance]

My Wife has a brother married to his second cousin (Missouri), their three sons are all genuius's , one premed, one already Doctor and one West point med student

 

[coolchange]

I've thought about doing the DNA thing, but.like you said, I may not want to know. I know pretty far back that I come from people named, Cedric, Donovan, Bruce, Maynard Byron and such. My wife on the other hand, lol, comes from one side of an old.irish family and the other half is Mexican, who knows where they came from?�� But its okay, she's hot. Lol!

 

[minijeep]

I think the DNA thing is cool, but also scare's the shit out of me that a company could have a huge data base with names and DNA forever. I guess I'm a little bit of a conspiracy theory guy. Lol

 

[Kailuaboy89]

Im afraid to even inquire.....my family is full of nuts as it is...

 

[Activated]

Family tree, no branches. Noted.

 

[BoatCop]

Regarding DNA.

DNA is not the catch all to your ancestry and ancestors. I did a lot of research on it. People think that DNA is the final word on where you came from. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You get 1/2 of your DNA from your mother and 1/2 from your father. Think about this in terms of basic math. In order to avoid DNA overload and having hundreds if not thousands of DNA "markers", you only get SOME of your mother's and SOME of your father's. That means some markers will be left out. The marker for the curly hair your mom has, may have been left out. But your sister or brother may have gotten it.

There's a misguided push right now to have Indian Tribes use DNA to determine if people have Cherokee (or whatever tribe) DNA and can be eligible for membership. Senator Elizabeth Warren is the current poster child for this, as she claimed Cherokee to be accepted for tenure at Harvard, as a minority. BUT..... if the specific Cherokee gene didn't get passed down by one of the ancestors, then the DNA test would show NO Indian DNA. In other words, the Indian DNA would have been pushed aside for other DNA traits, so the presence or absence of a specific genetic trait doesn't prove anything.

Here's one source to read up on the subject.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/405384/tracing-your-ancestry/

 

[Mandelon]

My father's side was tracked back to before 1000 AD, to Eric the Red.

By tracking my last name, my wife found some living German cousins that were related to our relatives that came over in the early 1800s. She sent a letter. A couple years later they visited us, and then we went to Munich and visited them. (Bavaria is beautiful, by the way)

Pretty amazing.

In recent history, we found that my wife's grandfather, a minister, performed the wedding of the parents of my sister's husband.

 

[spectra3279]

The only thing I know about my ancestry really is my great great grandfather married an Indian from one of the Cherokee reservations. So my great great grandmother on my dad's side was a true Cherokee .

 

[530RL]

The only thing I know about my ancestry really is my great great grandfather married an Indian from one of the Cherokee reservations. So my great great grandmother on my dad's side was a true Cherokee .

So you are related to Elizabeth Warren.

 

[spectra3279]

So you are related to Elizabeth Warren.

We don't claim her. She was from the 3rd string concubine of chief walking eagle.


That's chief walking eagle is Cherokee for you to full of shit to fly

 

[WTMFA]

All my ex's have a lil Swedish in em.........:cool

 

[spectra3279]

All my ex's have a lil Swedish in em.........:cool

Are you a midget from sweden? [emoji1]

 

[WTMFA]

Are you a midget from sweden? [emoji1]

Inte hella tiden.......endast nar vi knullande........

 

[78Dimarco]

It's all relative....

Oh so funny!

Could be more widespread than you think.... Great story!

 

[BoatCop]

The only thing I know about my ancestry really is my great great grandfather married an Indian from one of the Cherokee reservations. So my great great grandmother on my dad's side was a true Cherokee .

If by "true Cherokee" you mean 100%, That is also kind of a myth. The Cherokees were considered one of the "5 Civilized Tribes". This is because they mixed very well with the whites, and there were a LOT of intermarriage between whites and Indians. There are actually very few Cherokees left that can claim 100% Cherokee blood. Every single person in my wife's Cherokee ancestry, going back to Nanyehi (her great x 8 grandmother) in the mid 1700s had some intermixed white blood. Nanyehi herself was only 50% Cherokee, her father being Delaware. My wife is through her first husband, the one killed in the Creek war.

If you know your GG Grandmother's name, and/or the names of those direct descendants between you and her, you can check the Dawes Rolls from Oklahoma and see if one of them is on it. If so, and you can prove they are your direct ancestor(s) you would be eligible for citizenship in the Western Cherokee Nation. No "blood quantum" is required, just a direct descendancy from an Indian on the rolls. If you need help, I've got a lot of Cherokee genealogy sources.

 

[BigHeart]

There's also the Ancestry surprise when you send in your 94 year old grandmother's cheek swab to lock down her genetic ancestry and you get an e-mail saying, "we found a parent-child match." Turns out the son she gave up for adoption at 21 was also curious about his genetics!