Why Your Spit Might Be the Key to Solving Family Mysteries

Beyond Viking ancestry: proving your family research

After reading

Jennifer Jones

post about her DNA test, I’ve put together a little about my DNA journey.

---

Like a lot of people, I was curious about my origins when I first heard about DNA testing. The marketing makes it sound like you'll discover you're secretly Viking royalty or something equally dramatic. But honestly? My results weren't that surprising. I'm basically a walking map of the British Isles – 45% England & a sneaky bit of France in North Western Europe, 23% Wales, 16% Ireland, 8% Scotland and what's with that 3% Iceland? I'm not that keen on the cold weather, so who knows where in my family line that comes from!

My Ancestral Regions

But testing our DNA has much more value than just finding your origins. It's also a great tool for proving our family history research is actually correct.

I've spent years building our family tree, following paper trails and piecing together stories passed down through generations. But there's always that nagging question: are we really descended from the people we think we are? Did great-great-grandfather actually come from Nova Scotia? Is that Irish connection on my mother's line real or just wishful thinking?

The DNA doesn't just tell you your ethnic makeup – it connects you to living relatives who share your ancestors. When I match with someone who has the same great-great-grandparents in their tree, and our DNA confirms we're third cousins, that's not just interesting. That's evidence that our research is on the right track.

Here's the thing though – DNA gets passed down randomly. We don't all inherit the same bits from our ancestors. So while my brother and I share the same parents, we might have different amounts of Irish or Welsh DNA, and we'll match with different sets of distant cousins. That's exactly why we need more family members to test.

My Ancestry DNA tells me I have 8,351 matches on my maternal line, ie my mother's relatives. While on my dad's side, I have 9,364. There are even a couple of surnames there that I've not seen before. Now that's a whole lot of cousins to get to know.

Surnames connected to my DNA family tree

Just think – I have 16 great-great-grandparents, and each of them potentially had siblings and cousins whose descendants are still around today. Go back 4-5 generations and you're looking at thousands of potential relatives, which explains why I've got over 16,000 DNA matches between both sides of my family.

I've already connected with several distant cousins who've helped fill in gaps in our family story. One match confirmed our Australian connection (those Western Coast British Settlers in my "ancestral journeys" weren't just random), and another validated a family story I wasn't sure about. My DNA has helped other distant cousins find out where they fitted into family when they found their ancestor was born on the other side of the sheets, so to speak.

To help gather more evidence though and there is one brick wall that I'm still trying to break down, I need more family to take the DNA test. Where was my 2x great-grandfather actually born? And is he who he says he is. There's been so many twists and turns in this side of the family, I can't go by the documents alone, I need more evidence and we might finally confirm whether Neil Campbell really was from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia or is that another story just waiting to be uncovered.

Yes, there are risks with taking a DNA test. You really have to know who you are. If you don't, then you might get an interesting surprise. But DNA backs up our paper trail. And who knows? Your spit might unlock connections and stories that none of us have found yet.