DNA - An Amazing Story

I bought a DNA Test for my wife for Christmas in 2018. She was very interested to find out about the make up of her DNA. She was hoping to uncover that she had some Swedish Model DNA. To be honest I was hoping that she did too. We waited patiently for the results to come back and sure enough there was a little Swedish DNA.

For those who haven't had a DNA test, you get a list of people whose DNA matches yours, with a measure to give an idea how close a match they are. Helen's Aunty up the road was second on the list of close matches. The top person on the list was a lady in Florida. An unknown lady, a total stranger. Of course, Helen appeared on the lady's list too (she's called Nikki). Now we come to the amazing part. Nikki had been researching her family tree and had completed multiple generations and was therefore very confused to find a close relation she didn't know about. Helen's father was born in 1945 and his mother was unmarried. Helen's paternal grandmother died in 2004 and took the identity of Helen's paternal grandfather to her grave.

To cut a very long story short, Nikki's father was an American GI, training for the D Day landings in West Wales in May 1944. Helen's father was born in February 1945, 9 months later. In the last 2 years the new family in Florida and Georgia have become firm friends. Helen has 3 new Aunties and lots of new cousins. Her parents have been to America to visit and we were planning a whole family trip later in 2020. Obviously that's all on hold now. There's a little video below which explains a bit about how DNA works.

On the left Helen's grandfather, on the right Helen's father at the same age.

Beginning with the ever-prevalent question, “Where do we come from?”, this video seeks to dissect and explain the true nature of human DNA and ancestry. With such a heavy rise in interest in DNA testing, it’s important to know what are the factors that could affect not only the make-up of your DNA but also those that can affect the process of testing as well. So instead of asking, “Where do we come from?”, the real question becomes, “How much can we discover about where we come from?”