My Grandmother Was Italian. Why Aren't My Genes Italian?

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My Grandmother Was Italian. Why Aren't My Genes Italian?
By Gisele Grayson/ Heard on Morning Edition/ Health, Inc./ Shots: Health News from NPR/ National Public Radio/ npr.org

"Maybe you got one of those find-your-ancestry kits over the holidays. You've sent off your awkwardly-collected saliva sample, and you're awaiting your results. If your experience is anything like that of me and my mom, you may find surprises — not the dramatic "switched at birth" kind, but results that are really different from what you expected.

My mom, Carmen Grayson, taught history for 45 years, high school and college, retiring from Hampton University in the late 1990s. But retired history professors never really retire, so she has been researching her family's migrations, through both paper records and now a DNA test. Her father was French Canadian, and her mother (my namesake, Gisella D'Appollonia) was born of Italian parents. They moved to Canada about a decade before my grandmother was born in 1909.

Last fall, we sent away to get our DNA tested by Helix, the company that works with National Geographic. Mom's results: 31 percent from Italy and Southern Europe. That made sense because of her Italian mother. But my Helix results didn't even have an "Italy and Southern European" category. How could I have 50 percent of Mom's DNA and not have any Italian? We do look alike, and she says there is little chance we were switched at birth.

We decided to get a second opinion and sent away to another company, 23andMe. We opened our results together and were just as surprised. This time, I at least had a category for southern Europe. But Mom came back as 25 percent southern European, me only 6 percent. And the Italian? Mom had 11.3 percent to my 1.6. So maybe the first test wasn't wrong. But how could I have an Italian grandmother and almost no Italian genes?

To answer this question, Mom and I drove up to Baltimore to visit Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health and who has spent his career studying genetics and human health.

"That's surprising," he told us when we showed him the results. "But it may still be in the limits of error that these methods have."...."

As mother and daughter, Carmen and Gisele Grayson thought their DNA ancestry tests would be very similar. Boy were they surprised.

Meredith Rizzo/NPR


Richard

 

[DaveNV]

I did my DNA test through Ancestry a couple of years ago. My father's family is English and Irish, my mother's family is Scottish and Irish. I was hoping for a skeleton or two in the closet - you know, something African or from the Far East. Even Native American would have been interesting. I wanted to rock my family's world. I'm such a renegade, you understand...

And what did I get? 96% British Isles - as in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The other 4% was from the countries right across the English Channel - France, Belgium, and a teensy bit of Scandinavian mixed in there. They didn't even mention anyplace else. I wasn't all that surprised, and I'm proud to have such strong heritage, but I was still disappointed. Oh well. Maybe in my next life.

Dave

 

[SmithOp]

I did my DNA test through Ancestry a couple of years ago. My father's family is English and Irish, my mother's family is Scottish and Irish. I was hoping for a skeleton or two in the closet - you know, something African or from the Far East. Even Native American would have been interesting. I wanted to rock my family's world. I'm such a renegade, you understand...

And what did I get? 96% British Isles - as in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The other 4% was from the countries right across the English Channel - France, Belgium, and a teensy bit of Scandinavian mixed in there. They didn't even mention anyplace else. I wasn't all that surprised, and I'm proud to have such strong heritage, but I was still disappointed. Oh well. Maybe in my next life.

Dave

Scandinavian, hey thats a little Viking right there.

I can trace my family back 500 years in the same village in England so mine would come back the same as yours.


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[DaveNV]

Scandinavian, hey thats a little Viking right there.

I can trace my family back 500 years in the same village in England so mine would come back the same as yours.

I'll take the Viking, for sure. 500 years is very cool. And don't get me wrong, I'm not upset or anything - my roots here run fairly deep (my Dad's family were California gold rush pioneers.) I just wish I had something dramatic to claim. I'm not sure why.

Dave

 

[buzglyd]

I’d like to give it a try someday. I’m a Heinz 57 Euro mutt. My grandfather was 100% Italian and everything else is a mix.

What do these tests cost and which is considered most accurate?

 

[Passepartout]

I haven't bothered with the DNA tests, as my family has covered the genealogy waaaaay back, and well, I'm about as white, British Isles a person as there could possibly be. It might be interesting to find a skeleton rattling in the ol' closet, but seriously doubtful.

I have a friend- actually he was a classmate of my DW's kids. He knew he was adopted, so on a whim, he sent in his cheek swab to (IDK which) lab. The results came back that they had a person in their database that had a high probability of being his first cousin. He pursued this and found out this person knew his birth mother who had born him when she was a 16 y.o. kid and still lived in the same house. He has spoken with his birth mother, and found a half brother as well. Interestingly, he was able to get some family health information which helped him identify the source of some health challenges he has that are hereditary in nature.

All in all, a good result, and far more valuable than just finding out someone was sneaking off behind the barn several centuries in your past.

Jim

 

[Passepartout]

What do these tests cost and which is considered most accurate?

They are about $100. The two major ones are Ancestry.com which is more concerned with national/ethnic origins, and 23 And Me, which includes more health related information.

 

[DaveNV]

What do these tests cost and which is considered most accurate?

They are about $100. The two major ones are Ancestry.com which is more concerned with national/ethnic origins, and 23 And Me, which includes more health related information.

They do go on sale regularly, too. Over the holidays I saw where one of them was about $60.

In the case of Ancestry, they have a way on their website where you can compare your results with others who have done the test, and who have markers that indicate probable relationships to you in varying degrees - siblings, first cousins, and beyond. My daughter has been deep into this for awhile now, trying to find those woodpile relatives on her mother's side - deep North Carolina roots waaaay back, and she's found a whole lot of relations, and connected with a few cousins who have been able to fill in the blanks on names and dates for those folks. She's really pleased how well it works, and all from spitting in a test tube.

Dave

 

[Patri]

My sister did one and it came back with one nationality we had no knowledge of. It would be fun if the rest of us did the test and got the same results. Somehow, I think we wouldn't.

 

[vacationhopeful]

I have a decent idea of my linage .. because I am a 10 generation US born on my father's family side. The hostorical society did the research. And the family house was built around 1701 with the new addition put on in 1859. As for my mother, she is 1st generation Dutch with one parent from the Southern Netherlands and the other from the Northern part of that small country. And I look like my paternal grandmother... including the mostly brown hair with a few grey hairs thrown in.

Just hope I have better genes ... she died young from a stroke.

 

[Miss Marty]

Ancestry DNA Results

Your DNA Results Summary


Tells your DNA Story and DNA Matches
List possible Relationships, Close Family,
1st to 6th Cousins, some included their
Family Trees and Hints. They is a list of
Matches that range from Confidence:
Extremely High to High & DNA Circles.
For the best chance of being included
in a DNA Circle, create a free, public family
tree & add as many generations as you can.
You can then contact others on your list
to see how you are related and to obtain
family history that you may not have.

 

[rapmarks]

My husband brother has been interested in genealogy since age 18. His vacations were visits to Salk lake city or church basements and cemeteries. My husband has some interesting relatives, both john Adams, and Richard Nixon. He also has a real skeleton. Some ancestor in Indiana was a test case for the role of intent in murder trials. It happened over an ice cream cone.

 

[DaveNV]

My husband brother has been interested in genealogy since age 18. His vacations were visits to Salk lake city or church basements and cemeteries. My husband has some interesting relatives, both john Adams, and Richard Nixon. He also has a real skeleton. Some ancestor in Indiana was a test case for the role of intent in murder trials. It happened over an ice cream cone.

Luckily, those dusty church basements and trips to SLC for research aren't required any longer. Websites like Ancestry have most all of those kind of records available digitally, and more are added all the time. I like being able to view the actual census forms and such, rather than relying on someone's family tree or a translation of the forms. Misspellings are common in cases like that, and I can't tell you how many ways I've seen my Mother's maiden name misspelled. Census records aren't perfect, either, because a lot of times a nickname or shortened first name was used (like Ella instead of Eleanor, as in the case of my great-grandmother.) So you still need to use your common sense with things, or refer to voter or draft registrations to get the right spelling on some names, especially if the name is complex, or very ethnic.

Dave

 

[rapmarks]

W have never understood why my husband's grandparents eloped in the 1870's to leave pecatonica Illinois to get married in a small Lutheran church in baraboo, wi, and then return to pecatonica. Had to be over a full days journey. No record of any relatives and all the records are in German. I don't know if all this is available online, but my brother in law has stories about all the ancestors. He has had this as a hobby for over fifty years, now is house ridden from MS, but still researches.
Me, I can only go back so far, the whole lot is from Italy, and I have reconnected with many cousins on Facebook.

 

[Carta]

Met my girlfriend /wife in 1966 and she told me for years she was Syrian..Well after taking Ancestry DNA test 2 years ago; She's mostly Italian...SHOCKED
Now I tease her...That's why u love pasta and sauce so much..LOL

 

[DaveNV]

W have never understood why my husband's grandparents eloped in the 1870's to leave pecatonica Illinois to get married in a small Lutheran church in baraboo, wi, and then return to pecatonica. Had to be over a full days journey. No record of any relatives and all the records are in German. I don't know if all this is available online, but my brother in law has stories about all the ancestors. He has had this as a hobby for over fifty years, now is house ridden from MS, but still researches.
Me, I can only go back so far, the whole lot is from Italy, and I have reconnected with many cousins on Facebook.

Maybe it was a case of age of maturity to be married? They may have been too young in Illinois, but were old enough in Wisconsin? Or maybe they were related somehow, like cousins? Some states won't let cousins marry, but other states may not care. The map shows those towns are only about 100 miles apart, so maybe it was just a train ride away, or something? Hard to say what was going on.

Dave

 

[Karen G]

Our son, who is adopted, had very interesting results from his 23andme testing. He discovered he had a half brother and once he had his name & location, he found him on Facebook. There is a strong resemblance between them. Also interesting was the fact they had a mutual Facebook friend--a boy my son knew from high school knew the half brother in college.

My son contacted the young man and he responded that he, too, was adopted and he also had a half brother 10 months older than he who was adopted into his family from the same birth mother! Amazing! The birth mother had three boys in a period of about four years and gave them all up for adoption. They don't know if there are any other half siblings somewhere out there as the birth mother did not choose to have any further contact with the boys or the families who adopted them.

But, we are so thankful that we have our son, who is a fine young man whom we love so much.

 

[Jan M.]

W have never understood why my husband's grandparents eloped in the 1870's to leave pecatonica Illinois to get married in a small Lutheran church in baraboo, wi, and then return to pecatonica. Had to be over a full days journey. No record of any relatives and all the records are in German. I don't know if all this is available online, but my brother in law has stories about all the ancestors. He has had this as a hobby for over fifty years, now is house ridden from MS, but still researches.
Me, I can only go back so far, the whole lot is from Italy, and I have reconnected with many cousins on Facebook.

Back then and even well into the 1900's it wasn't unusual for couples to take a wedding trip on a train to get married in another town. Think wedding and honeymoon trip rolled into one. Taking a trip on a train, maybe eating in the dining car, staying the night or even two in a hotel and eating your meals there would have been a big deal and quite an adventure for many couples.

Also back then many young couples lived with one of their families after they got married. A few days of privacy and a break from the farm chores or the work of a family business were a luxury. If they farmed cows still needed milked, all the animals needed fed, etc. That you just got married makes no difference because those chores HAVE to be done so arranging for someone else to take over your chores is a big deal for farmers.

 

[rapmarks]

Maybe it was a case of age of maturity to be married? They may have been too young in Illinois, but were old enough in Wisconsin? Or maybe they were related somehow, like cousins? Some states won't let cousins marry, but other states may not care. The map shows those towns are only about 100 miles apart, so maybe it was just a train ride away, or something? Hard to say what was going on.

Dave

No they weren't too young, and they weren't related. I think jan may have it that it was a special trip. I don't think train ran through there, but it may have. I remember my brother in law visiting us in Wisconsin dells and finding all the church records. So no family names at all in the area.
But interesting enough, a wedding certificate from another ancestor , mid 1850 in Iowa shows a picture and then fancy script, and listing as witnesses some cousins. My husband in the nineteen fifties, went to grade school, high school, cub scouts, den pack, with one of that family of cousins from Iowa, in mt prospect Illinois. That friend went on to be a Washington DC lawyer, who served under many presidents of both parties. He was still working at the fiftieth reunion at which time we had a new president. Hope he and my husband will be around for the sixtieth. He was surprised when I told him about the wedding certificate with his family name.

 

[Glynda]

They do go on sale regularly, too. Over the holidays I saw where one of them was about $60.

In the case of Ancestry, they have a way on their website where you can compare your results with others who have done the test, and who have markers that indicate probable relationships to you in varying degrees - siblings, first cousins, and beyond. My daughter has been deep into this for awhile now, trying to find those woodpile relatives on her mother's side - deep North Carolina roots waaaay back, and she's found a whole lot of relations, and connected with a few cousins who have been able to fill in the blanks on names and dates for those folks. She's really pleased how well it works, and all from spitting in a test tube.

Dave

You can also compare your results with others who are related on 23andme. As one who was adopted, I've been tested by both. I got very similar results on ancestry composition. However, I like the health results on 23andme and tree-building capabilities on Ancestry. I believe one can now allow Promethease.com to access one's DNA test raw data from Ancestry for an inexpensive health report but the Promethease reports are not easy to understand for a person without genetic training of some sort. I just look at the pie chart for each condition and if it's mostly green, I feel pretty good.

 

[Glynda]

...And what did I get? 96% British Isles - as in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The other 4% was from the countries right across the English Channel - France, Belgium, and a teensy bit of Scandinavian mixed in there. They didn't even mention anyplace else. I wasn't all that surprised, and I'm proud to have such strong heritage, but I was still disappointed. Oh well. Maybe in my next life.

Dave

Though I am adopted, I went into the DNA testing knowing that my birth family was heavily Irish and Icelandic with a bit of French and German. However, I did get "skeleton in the closet" AND "Heinz 57" results in that I also have smaller percentages of Finnish, Iberian, Sardinian, Eastern European (people of Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Hungary) Ashkenazi Jewish and Northern African! Whew!

 

[DaveNV]

Though I am adopted, I went into the DNA testing knowing that my birth family was heavily Irish and Icelandic with a bit of French and German. However, I did get "skeleton in the closet" AND "Heinz 57" results in that I also have smaller percentages of Finnish, Iberian, Sardinian, Eastern European (people of Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Hungary) Ashkenazi Jewish and Northern African! Whew!

See, that’s what I was hoping to get. No such luck. My daughter was luckier - her Mother is half Jewish, and has all sorts of stuff in there. Her genetics are all over the place.

Dave

 

[Glynda]

...

I have a friend- actually he was a classmate of my DW's kids. He knew he was adopted, so on a whim, he sent in his cheek swab to (IDK which) lab. The results came back that they had a person in their database that had a high probability of being his first cousin. He pursued this and found out this person knew his birth mother who had born him when she was a 16 y.o. kid and still lived in the same house. He has spoken with his birth mother, and found a half brother as well. Interestingly, he was able to get some family health information which helped him identify the source of some health challenges he has that are hereditary in nature.

All in all, a good result, and far more valuable than just finding out someone was sneaking off behind the barn several centuries in your past.

Jim

I knew a bit about my birth mother's side and have traced the maternal side of her family back to the 700's in Iceland. Her paternal side back to Ireland and Germany. I also have the letter she wrote my adopted mother & father that named my birth father and stated that he was of French-Irish heritage which seems to be true. However, I have been unable to trace his side back more than a couple of generations via Ancestry.com. Ancestry did one very important thing for me though. In 1976, a very nervous young me called my birth father's only remaining sibling and was told he, my birth father, had died one month before across the country. He told me that my birth father was married but "childless" (I was a surprise). The brother was not welcoming. So that was all the information I had until a couple years ago when Ancestry.com led me to my birth father on Find a Grave and I saw his wife's name on the photo of the headstone and put her name into my Ancestry.com tree. I very quickly found that she had two sons from a former marriage and found one of her sons publicly on Ancestry.com! My birth father had raised his two step-sons from the ages of two and four! All those years I had nothing further to go on because his brother considered him "childless"! Grrrr. Within days of my discovery, the step-son had provided me with many photos of my birth father, some health information, and shared stories of growing up with him over the phone! For that alone, I will continue to subscribe to help Ancestry.com!

 

[Conan]

...her Mother is half Jewish, and has all sorts of stuff in there. Her genetics are all over the place.

Dave

My Jewish background via 23andme is boringly homogeneous: 99.6% European and 97.2% Ashkenazi Jewish

 

[Glynda]

... Amazing! The birth mother had three boys in a period of about four years and gave them all up for adoption. They don't know if there are any other half siblings somewhere out there as the birth mother did not choose to have any further contact with the boys or the families who adopted them.

I can beat that. My birth mother had nine children. She ended up keeping only the last three though they were four, six and eight years of age when she died at age thirty-nine. All but her last two children are half-siblings. I am sixth in line. Your son is so fortunate to have you and I suspect finding out more about his birth family will only confirm that to him! I know I was blessed to have been adopted at birth! I just wish I had known at a younger age so I could have appreciated my parents more growing up!