Week Thirteen: “Who is She? A DNA Test Only Opens New Mysteries.”

The article entitled “Who is She? A DNA Test Only Opens New Mysteries.” tells the story of Alice Collins Plebuch’s genealogy and family storyline. Alice, did the DNA testing for fun, as she knew that there would be no surprises to her. Her family was Irish Catholic, but when she received the result. It shocked her, of who she really was.

At sixty-nine years, Alice sent her saliva away for testing on a DNA Ancestry kit. She sent away the kit hoping to get a better understand of who exactly were her parents. After a few weeks, she received an email link to her results. The results received from Ancestry. com test reveals that she comes from Jewish ancestry. Upon looking at the results, Alice assumed that there had been a mistake with the results. Which resulted in Alice writing a nasty letter to the company. In all honesty, I would be a little shocked if I were Alice, and maybe write a letter to the company, asking if there had been a mistake in my DNA results.

When I was little, I remember seeing ads on TV mentioning the company and how so many people with just one click had been able to uncover their family tree. Some people know little knowledge of their ethics, but after doing the test, were shock in discovering who they actually were. At first, I really did not what to make out of the commercial and just thought how does a company knows so much about people’s ancestry and ethics. A few years later, I started getting into genealogy and wanted to learn more about my family history, but along the way of wanting to know where my family came from.

After Alice and her sister had looked at the results, both of them decided to do the test again. However, instead of doing through the same company, they instead sent their DNA through 23andMe. After waiting for their resulting the same results as the Ancestry link stated were both the same. European Jewish, Middle Eastern, and Easter European. From that point on the sisters were determined to figure out their lineage.

In order to fully understand the results and get to the bottom of their linage, their located out, and nephews and other relatives, in order to understand the side of the family. The article displays a great example of how the X and Y chromosomes are passed on to children. It also shows that with one relative Alice’s brother Y chromosomes were lit in blue, while his x chromosomes are in white.

The results from the study were unraveling the secret of their Jewish ethic. While doing the research, Alice’s sister and her son were not related to the family through the genome data. This led to the understanding that her grandparents were indeed Irish-Catholics, but her father was the only Jewish link in the family, and not even related to the family.

The sister roamed through birth certificates to begin the search of their family ethics. They even verified precautious members from the orphanage, who is where Alice’s supposed father was sent to at a young age. Using the precautions members from the orphanage helped to verity who their father was, hoping that he was not mistaken for the other children in the orphanage while he was there. They even looked at the fact of their father being swept out with the other baby, by looking at similar last names in alphabetical order. However, no match was made, and no descendants came up. Both of them even tracked down male Jewish or ethnically names, but nothing came up in the result.

After having no luck in tracking down any descendants, luck gave them a break. Jim Collins, the brother of one of the sister, had created an app called DNAMatch. With this app the sister were able to located and organize their journey now with more results in DNA testing’s. All of sudden, out of thin a link to appeared on the app. A relative of Nolan, had agreed to test for DNA. After this the sister were shocked to learn of the different heritage both of them grew up with. For instance, Jessica Benson, a close match to Nolan, discovered through the app, that she was Irish, while all her life, she had assumed that she was Jewish.

At first, Alice did not assume that Benson’s was a match because her name was misprinted on a birth certificated. In reality, Phillip Benson, born to a Jewish family was accidentally switched out with Jim Collins, a baby born to an Irish family in Fordham Hospital in New York City, on September 23, 1913. The article emphasizes that the documents available display a cluster of disorganization in how the hospital switched the babies, without any identification indicating who the child was.

From the results that the sister discover, both of them question the fact about their father, and whether or not he would have been different if he had been raised by a Jewish family rather than of an Irish family. Yet, the sister was grateful for their fathers’ linage and both began embracing their ethics.

The article also talks about Laurie Pratt. Pratt a fifty-two-year-old airline ground operations decided to take a DNA testing, through a mail-in DNA test. She discovered through her DNA testing that her father was not her real father. Her real father was a man, with whom her mother had a short relationship, and taken a break when she was born. Pratt sought out her real father and was able to locate him through newly revealed cousins. After discovering who her father really, was she located him, and both agreed to meet up with one another after he discussed the new information with his wife and child. However, a few days later, his account disappeared. After discovering the account was gone, she reached out to him and discuss with him that she did not want to be a bother to him or his family.

In all honesty, I found this article really interesting. Especially, learning more about genealogy, and how it can open new doors to a world of possibilities. I really shocked to read of the discoveries of what the sisters found relating to their father. Along the lines of Laurie Pratt, and she was able to seek out her father.

A few years ago, for Christmas, I received an Ancestry.com kit from my father. He knew that I was interested in genealogy and wanted to learn more about my family history. At first, I was a little hesitant in doing the test, because, my family does not know, a lot about our family ethics or history. So, a few months later, I decided and did the test. First I ingest a liquid the kit came with and spit the content with my DNA, into a tube. Then I placed the tube with my DNA in it, in a small shipping bag with the address on it, and shipped the resulted to a lab, where they would analyze my DNA and find matches linking to my family ethics. It took about eight weeks to get the results back, due to the record number of other people who were also in the same boat, as for me. I knew that I would not be surprised by the results, as I knew I was Scottish, and assume my whole life that I was mainly Scottish. When my results were ready, I logged into an app, linking towards the kit with a code to scan, and looked at my results. After looking at my results I was surprised to find out that I was seventy-six percent composed of British ethics and only eight percent of Scottish and seven percent Irish. I was also surprised to see that I had German ethics, but only composed of two percent.

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