National DNA Day was April 25th and with all the ongoing sales, Dave and I decided to finally take an autosomal DNA test. We were leaving for a month on May 4th, so I wasn’t expecting to take the test until we returned in June. However, the kits arrived in less than a week, we swabbed our cheeks and the kits were mailed back two days before we left.

I further expected a wait of 4-6 weeks for the test results so was again surprised when I received an email on June 3 saying the results were in. I actually accessed the site while sitting in Heathrow Airport waiting for our flight to Los Angeles.

Science was never my favorite subject in school, but I do understand the basics of DNA so I eagerly logged in to see results for both Dave and me.

I’ll start with Dave. His family lines are much more difficult to trace because his ancestors seemed to love living on the frontier. Those that didn’t had a real knack for settling in burned counties. However, the Stufflebean side is basically German with some British and Swedish thrown in the mixture. His mother’s Sturgill family also has British roots with a bit of German in it. That pretty much covers everyone I’ve been able to document.

Dave’s myOrigins looks like this:

Dave’s myOrigins Table

Very few of his lines have been traced back into Europe, but with the exception of 21% Iberia, his other results pretty much fit with my research findings. I know that trace percentages are just that and I’m not factoring those into the overall picture.

Next, I checked my own page. I have many lines traced back into Europe. My dad’s side is all Slovak back to around 1800 when the church records begin. My mother’s family is heavily British (colonial New England) with her mother’s mother’s family from Denmark and Sweden.

I expected to see percentages hovering around 50% Eastern European and then perhaps 40% British and 10% Scandinavian.

Yes, I do fully realize that ethnic percentages vary wildly from company to company and many are bewildered when they see their own results.

So, here are my results:

Linda’s myOrigins Table

British Isles – 4% and Eastern European – 96%!!!! That swab must have only caught the Eastern European DNA (Ha!) and, no, there wasn’t a “non-maternal” event because most of my DNA matches are all with distant cousins with whom I quickly find surnames found in my mother’s tree. In fact, there are even matches with those in the Scandinavian branch of her tree.

I certainly wasn’t expecting 96% Eastern European! We haven’t tested with any other companies, but I would expect both of our ethnicity results to likely vary quite a bit from these findings.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve taken one or more DNA tests and how much the results varied from one test to another.