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My Grandfather’s Story, Part VI

Posted in Adriaan Zuijdweg/Adrian Zuidweg Sr., Adrian Zuidweg, Cora DeKorn Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Photography early 20th century, Richard DeKorn, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 27, 2013| 17 Comments »

Part VI

Today’s passage is about a sad and difficult time in Grandpa’s life.  Connie wrote, Adrian was

Grandpa, an only child, grew up living with his parents and his widowed grandfather. Yet, by the time he was 23 years old, he was alone in the world, except for his new wife, my grandmother.

He had lost both parents and his grandfather. Yet, at the interview, he told Connie that it “didn’t bother” him that much. He said his father prepared him ahead of time for his death and for taking care of the household affairs.

Grandpa’s mother Cora DeKorn Zuidweg’s obituary

Since Grandpa’s father died in 1929, of kidney failure, and his mother died three years later in 1932, of leukemia, I suspect that his father prepared him to take over the family affairs so that his ailing mother didn’t have to do so. It was probably taken to be a man’s work, and since Grandpa was an adult, he would be expected to take care of his mother. He did take care of her, and towards the end had the help of Grandma. Grandpa and Grandma were married in May of 1932, and Grandpa’s mother died in December of that year. So for seven months, newlywed Grandma helped Grandpa to take care for her ailing mother-in-law.

Grandma and Grandpa formed a strong bond, which lasted their entire lives. It’s no surprise that Grandma interrupted the interview to explain why Grandpa would say he wasn’t “bothered” by losing his family at such a young age. She knew that he was raised not to show emotion and that he was very good at showing a “stiff upper lip.” But being married to him all those years, she knew that it was very difficult for him to experience such loss.

Grandpa saying “I guess that’s why there’s Valium” sounds just like his sense of humor, another way of deflecting from deep emotion.

Grandma and Grandpa in later years

Grandma and Grandpa in later years

I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part VII of Grandpa’s story . . . .

Here are the first parts of the story:

Click this link for Part I

Click this link for Part II

Click this link for Part III

Click this link for Part IV

Click this link for Part V

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My Grandfather’s Story, Part V

Posted in Adriaan Zuijdweg/Adrian Zuidweg Sr., Adrian Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Photography early 20th century, Richard DeKorn, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 20, 2013| 12 Comments »

Click this link for Part I

Click this link for Part II

Click this link for Part III

Click this link for Part IV

Part V

I remember my grandmother telling me about Grandpa’s father, my great-grandfather, Adriaan Zuijdweg. She said he worked all day at the store without a day off, and during the day he wouldn’t eat. He would go hungry for hours and then come home and eat a steak the size of a dinner plate. Not much else. But a giant steak.I can’t remember for sure if he put horseradish or hot mustard on it, but I’ll bet he did. Grandpa always liked to add the hot stuff to his meats, and I think he probably learned it from his dad.

Adriaan Zuijdweg with son Adrian Zuidweg

Adriaan Zuijdweg with son Adrian Zuidweg

Grandpa brings up his father at this point in his story:

The story continues that, in 1929, Grandpa’s father died, at age 58, of kidney failure. Grandma thought maybe that eating pattern contributed to or caused his death.  I do wonder how they knew it was his kidneys or if they would have done an autopsy.

The rest of the information in this passage was new to me. I didn’t realize when Adriaan became ill, the family had to sell their store.  Nor did I know that he went back to school to become an accountant.  This kind of blew my mind for a couple of reasons. First, I didn’t realize that the idea of re-educating oneself at midlife was considered an option in those days!  My goodness, that is something to consider . . . .  I’m proud of him for taking that step. I wonder where he went to school.

Second, I love that he went to become an accountant because it shows that Grandpa also got his love of accounting and finance from his father (or was it the other way around?!).  My Uncle Don then followed in their footsteps by going into the field.

I was sorry to see that Grandpa had to quit school because of his father’s poor health. Although I knew he left school early, I thought it was because his blind eye made studying difficult. But from reading this story it’s become clear that his eyesight didn’t affect his school work in that way.  Knowing he quit for financial reasons made me more sad for him.

I’m glad he was still able to have a good time as a teen.  The mention of playing pool was astounding as my grandfather was not a party type at all, and I think of The Music Man:

Oh, we got trouble
Right here in River City
    Right here in River City
With a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P'
And that stands for 'pool'
    That stands for pool

Imagining Grandpa at the poolhall . . . . 😉

It’s much easier to imagine him fishing with his grandfather.  I’ve already posted two photos of Grandpa with a fishing pole and one of his grandfather, Richard DeKorn, fishing. Here they are in a slide show.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part VI of Grandpa’s story . . . .

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My Grandfather’s Story, Part IV

Posted in Adriaan Zuijdweg/Adrian Zuidweg Sr., Adrian Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Photography early 20th century, Richard DeKorn, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2013| 7 Comments »

Click this link for Part I

Click this link for Part II

Click this link for Part III

Part IV

Grandpa always enjoyed watching and following sports.  Reading his story I now understand that his love of sports began when he was young.  We used to eat Thanksgiving dinner before the game, and I first learned about sports scores in the newspaper when he showed them to me.

It’s not surprising to me that Grandpa “was a good student and athlete.”  What I enjoy reading are the details.  That he played something called “soccer (rugby)” and was on the track team.  I was never an athlete, but I did enjoy track and tennis–especially track.  Maybe when I was in high school he told me he used to be on the track team, but I don’t remember .  I wonder what his events were.  I favored low hurdles and 100 yard dash.  Other than square dancing, it was the only PE activity I had talent at, but I didn’t have the guts to pursue it outside of class.  Other than that, I was always the 2nd to the last girl chosen for the team. However, other grandchildren were talented athletes, and at least three of his great-grandchildren are very accomplished athletes.

Curious about how rugby is parenthetical to soccer, I had to look it up.  Here is an interesting history of soccer in the United States which explains the rugby connection, as well as how soccer had come to very popular at the time Grandpa would have entered high school, in the early 1920s.

From 1875-1894

After the demise of college soccer in 1876, working class communities in the US adopted the game, taking on the rugby/gridiron form of soccer. It is interesting to note that this trend took place at the same time in Europe and the US. The development could be seen in New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York City, also spreading rapidly to Fall River and New Redford (MA) by 1870s. The game also clashed with the popular sport of baseball in the US, considered as American past time.

Beginning in early 1890s, soccer witnessed an average growth in Denver, Cincinnati, Cleveland and even San Francisco and Los Angeles by the end of the century. Owing to corporate sponsorships, some leagues attained semi-pro statistics. The American League of Professional Football collapsed owing to heavy financial losses during its first season.

In 1904, FIFA was established and was seen as lack of any national organizing association in the US. After FIFA refused an American application for membership during their 1912 congress, the speedily growing AAFA members formed the United States Football Association, which was accepted by FIFA. The main aim of the association was to end the struggle between amateur and professional soccer organizations.

Three of the early dynasties of American Soccer were,

  •  The Fall River Rovers- winners of the American Cup in 1888 and 1889,
•  Bethlehem Steel, who won the American Cup in 1914, 1916, 1917, 1918, and 1919
•  And winners of the National Challenge Cup in 1915, 1916, 1918, and 1919

The 1920s are popularly known as the golden era in the history of American soccer. The establishment of American Soccer League in 1921 was a mark as there was now a league that could compete with European players.

Grandpa must have had quite a walk to get to the track meets. I wonder where on campus they were held in those years.  Read Fieldhouse didn’t exist until 1957. Waldo Football Stadium wasn’t constructed until 1939, across from the baseball stadium. However, football had been on that particular property since 1914.   Since the school began as Western Normal School in 1903, only five years before Grandpa was born, I believe that at the time he was walking there, everything was located in that area off Oakland Drive (Known as Asylum Road).  It’s still quite a hike from his home on Burdick Street.

I had no idea that Grandpa had another major injury while he was still a child. A spike lodging near his spine?! That would be so frightening–for him and for his parents.  He was an only child, so his parents doted on him very much. Then to think that he missed a year and a half of school because of the injury makes me wonder what he did for that time. Was he around his mother a lot or was she at the shop? Did his grandfather still live there?  I know that his grandfather remarried when he was two, so I need to piece together addresses to see where all the family members lived each year. It seems that Grandpa’s grandfather may have moved next door when he remarried, but I can’t yet be sure.

I’m not surprised he joined the baseball team after that as he would have been “rarin” to  go, and baseball was another very popular sport.

Finally, don’t think that his comment about his teacher, Mrs. Dilts, is just an “aside.”  Grandpa loved finance.  He loved everything about money and how it worked–finance, economics, accounting.  Therefore, I suspect that he first got bitten by the love bug of finance in Mrs. Dilts’ class.  Every night, after his Sunoco station closed, Grandpa closed himself in the bedroom that served as an office and counted the money.

I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part V of Grandpa’s story . . . .

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My Grandfather’s Story, Part III

Posted in Adriaan Zuijdweg/Adrian Zuidweg Sr., Adrian Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Michigan history, Photography early 20th century, Richard DeKorn, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2013| 12 Comments »

Click this link for Part I

Click this link for Part II

Part III

As I grew up there were two ways I knew my grandfather was blind in one eye. One way was that I was sometimes warned, “Be careful. You don’t want to lose your eye like Grandpa.” Mom and Dad will probably disagree that Grandpa was used as a warning to me, but I know the truth in this respect . . . .  The other way I knew was that he had one blue eye, just like mine, and he had one green eye.

Everybody else I knew had two eyes of the same color.

In this next part of Grandpa’s story he tells Connie what happened to his eye.

In 1911, Grandpa’s eye was treated at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor, about 100 miles away from his home.  I imagine the worried parents and the frightened boy travelling all that way on “streetcar, train and horse-drawn carriages.”  What would that trip be like today?  A visit in the car or ambulance to the nearest hospital, then perhaps a drive of an hour and a half to the medical center?  In an ambulance or a car, depending on the urgency.  The car would have the boy’s car seat in it.  What was it like for him? Was he carried as they moved from one mode of transportation to the next?

I believe it’s likely that he was seen at the old hospital in Ann Arbor on Catherine Street.  It is no longer there as it was replaced by the 700-bed University Hospital in 1925.

Photo by Wystan

Photo by Wystan

Today it’s hard to imagine letting your three-year-old play with a needle, but in those days children learned how to perform daily chores and trades at their parents’ sides.

The description of Grandpa bouncing off the table from being shocked by the X-ray machine is frightening. When I looked up the history of X-rays on Wikipedia, it was even more frightening. Although a lot of research led up to the moment, X-rays were not actually “discovered” until 1895. The site states, “The first use of X-rays under clinical conditions was by John Hall-Edwards in Birmingham, England on 11 January 1896, when he radiographed a needle stuck in the hand of an associate.” Since Grandpa’s injury was in 1911 and UM had only had the machine for twelve years, that means that they bought one of the first machines in 1899.

1899 X-ray machine

1899 X-ray machine

I understand that Grandpa’s medical records from 1911 are still stored at the University of Michigan. I hope I will be privileged to see a copy of them some day.

Here is a photo of the cute little boy who got a needle stuck in his eye:

Adrian Zuidweg, 1908-2000

Adrian Zuidweg, 1908-2000

Grandpa’s stoic attitude about his blind eye was typical of his personality. He didn’t show emotion very often, and he was quite practical. He loved his routines. His talent with routines and his prodigious memory proved invaluable when he became completely blind.

I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part IV of Grandpa’s story . . . .

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My Grandfather’s Story, Part II

Posted in Adriaan Zuijdweg/Adrian Zuidweg Sr., Adrian Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Photography early 20th century, Richard DeKorn, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 30, 2013| 9 Comments »

Click here for Part I.

In my post of July 16, I shared the beginning of the story pieced together by Connie Jo Bowman in 1994, when she interviewed my grandfather Adrian Zuidweg.  Here is the next part.  Today I am going to focus on just one paragraph–to try to unpack it.

Here is what Connie wrote:

His father owned a fish market and Adrian’s earliest memories were of going to his aunt’s house while his mother helped out at the market. He remembers playing with his cousins around the big woodburning stove and the “outside toilet.” This was before 1911 because that was the year gas and sewer lines were brought up the street to their house.

I’ve written before about Grandpa’s father’s fish market in the post “My Great-Grandfather Reinvented Himself as a Business Owner in the U.S.” I share photos in that post of the interior of the fish market and the interior of the ice cream parlor Adriaan Zuijdweg (Grandpa’s father) owned after the fish market.

Adriaan Zuijdweg, Proprietor, standing

Adriaan Zuijdweg, Proprietor, standing

So that’s where Grandpa’s mother Cora went to “help out” at the market.  But Grandpa himself stayed at his aunt’s. There are two possibilities. One is his Aunt Jen, Cora’s sister. The other is his Aunt Johanna, his father’s sister.  Before 1911, Grandpa was a toddler–maybe two years old. Some people don’t have memories from that age, but I also have memories from when I was two years old.

Let’s say the year was 1910.  In 1910, Johanna Zuijdweg Van Liere had been in the United States for six years. She married her husband Marinus Van Liere in Goes, the town in the Netherlands they were both from. Johanna had two baby boys when she immigrated here, and by 1910 may have had six, seven, or eight boys. I’m not sure if they all survived infancy, but she was evidently quite busy.

Grandpa’s mother’s sister Jen, on the other hand, had one 13-year-old daughter in 1910.

If Grandpa played with his cousins around the stove and the outhouse in the yard, it would be Johanna’s children.  This led to me to search out where Johanna and Marinus were living in 1910.

Shed or outhouse?

Shed or outhouse?

The 1910 U.S. Census shows Grandpa living with both his parents, Adriaan and Cora, his grandfather Richard DeKorn, and his uncle Joseph DeKorn in the Richard DeKorn house at the corner of Burdick and Balch: 1324 S. Burdick Street. Since the house still stands today, if it wasn’t moved, the address numbers have been changed on Burdick. The VanLieres, Johanna and Marinus, and their six boys lived at 1338 S. Burdick Street. It looks like another family lived between them. About four houses down from the VanLieres lived John and Mary DeSmit and their children. Mary DeSmit was Richard DeKorn’s sister.

I found it interesting that the census shows Johanna and Marinus speaking English, although they had only been in this country for six years. A few of the neighbors spoke Dutch, but most of them spoke English.

Johanna Zuijdweg VanLiere and Marinus VanLiere with son Jacob

Johanna Zuijdweg VanLiere and Marinus VanLiere with son Jacob

In this section of Grandpa’s story, he remembers that gas and sewer lines were brought up to their house in 1911. It must have made a monumental difference in the quality of their lives. Because his grandfather, Richard DeKorn, was a building contractor, would they have been quicker to get connected or was it something they had to wait their turn for, like everybody else?

On a personal note, I was surprised that Grandpa’s family was as close with his father’s sister and her family as this research shows.  I knew that the family was often with Aunt Jen, as many of the family photos are of Jen and her husband Lou.  But there aren’t as many photos of Johanna, nor do I know the history of that branch of the family as the children all grew up.

I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part III of Grandpa’s story . . . .

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My Grandfather’s Story, Part I

Posted in Adriaan Zuijdweg/Adrian Zuidweg Sr., Adrian Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Photography early 20th century, Richard DeKorn, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2013| 24 Comments »

In 1994, five and a half years before he passed away, my grandfather, Adrian Zuidweg, was interviewed by Connie Jo Bowman, the head of residents at Crossroads Village, a retirement community in Portage, Michigan. Connie was taking a course about the elderly at Western Michigan University and chose Grandpa as her subject.  I’ve written about Grandpa in a post about our left-handed connection.

The entire interview is eight typed pages, so I’ll divide it among a few blog posts.

Adrian Zuidweg 1908-2000

Adrian Zuidweg 1908-2000

Connie begins by introducing my grandfather, Adrian Zuidweg.  To read the excerpts of Connie’s report, you can click them for a better view (I hope):

Connie identifies my grandfather here as a “tall, gentle dutchman with a big friendly voice.” That would probably be how Grandpa thought of himself. He identified strongly with his Dutch heritage.  He had a lot of jokes, but one of his favorites was to say, “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much.” He didn’t really mean it, which you will see by the end of the interview, but he was very proud of being Dutch.

She also notes here how after talking with Grandpa for two years it wasn’t until she began interviewing him that she realized how much there was to know about Grandpa. Grandpa’s powers of observation were impressive to her, especially in light of his blindness. He only became completely blind in his old age, but he had been blind in one eye since he was a small child.

Connie was right–Grandpa had an amazing memory. He also loved to tell stories, especially stories about the past. As the oldest grandchild, I was privy to more of them than the other kids, but I still only know a few from his vast store.

Now that I realize that Grandpa knew the name of the midwife who delivered him, I wish Connie had put that information into her report, but perhaps it didn’t fit with the class assignment.

Here she mentions how Grandpa’s father came to the U.S. from the Netherlands when he was a child. This was Adriaan Zuijdweg, who I have written about in the past. He owned a fish market and then a candy and soda shop.  You can find a story about his retail businesses here.

When Grandpa was a baby his parents moved in with “his recently widowed grandfather,” Richard DeKorn, the brick mason and contractor. You can read more about Richard in the following posts:

Richard DeKorn: Brick Mason and General Contractor

More Mighty Kalamazoo Buildings from Richard DeKorn

Richard DeKorn and His Bride Tied the Knot in Kalamazoo

By the way, a big thank you to Linda at Living with My Ancestors for her help with watermarking my photograph.

I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part II of Grandpa’s story . . . .

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Old Photos of Tom Sawyer and Pollyanna (Not Really)

Posted in DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Peek, Photography early 20th century, Photography late 19th century, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2013| 10 Comments »

A couple of years ago we digitized the glass negatives of photos taken by Joseph DeKorn. In those photographs I found many children who remain unidentified. Because children change their looks rapidly–some kids more than others–they are harder to pin down than adults.

Here are a few:

This is just a sampling, but it’s important to concentrate on the details, so three is enough for now.  All of these would have been taken in or around Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am fairly certain they were taken on DeKorn property on Burdick Street.

I looked through my family tree, as it stands right now, and the kids who are closest in age would be the youngest DeSmit children (children of John and Mary DeKorn DeSmit).  Could it be Frances herself or a younger sister? Or are they unrelated neighbor children? Because the bottom two photos seem to be the same girl, at least, I suspect they are family.

Why would the boy in the top photo be wearing overalls and a straw hat? This seems more casual than the kids usual dress. Was he ready to go fishing?  If so, wouldn’t he have a pole in his hand?

The Van Lieres, another branch of the family, had a bus load of kids, starting in 1902, but from everything I can find they were all boys, and I think this photo is too early for them.

Any details which speak to you?

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The Mystery of Mrs. Jacob Flipse

Posted in DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Richard DeKorn, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2013| 19 Comments »

My senior year of college and first year of grad school, I studied history.  I had two specialties.  One was Reformation history. I have no idea why that period captured my interest, but I spent months working on a long paper about John Knox.  One reason it took so long was that in those days we typed papers with a typewriter.  We followed the Chicago Manual of Style, which I detested, and had to use footnotes at the bottom of most pages for our citations. I’d start out a page determined to remember when to stop typing paragraphs and when to start the footnotes, but by the time I got to that point I would always forget and just keep typing.  Over and over I repeated the same mistake.

Is it any wonder that I switched to my second specialty, local and family history?  I didn’t have a lot of textbooks to cite for that research. It was fun to check out the local cemeteries and talk to local people, when possible.

During that period, my grandparents took me to visit a woman relative named Mrs. Flipse. Her family owned a florist shop closer to downtown, but on the same street as my grandparents’ house. She lived behind the shop.

I already knew this family was somehow related to us, but it seemed like a myth or a fairy tale. When I was little Grandma would point out the store as we passed by.

A couple of years before, my sophomore year of college, I had planned my wedding. Mom suggested I get my flowers from the relatives, so I ordered traditional rose bouquets for myself and my bridesmaids. I wanted roses to match my rose point lace dress which had been designed and sewn for my mother by my paternal grandmother twenty-two years before. Grandma was Head Fitter of the very exclusive 28 Shop at Marshall Field’s flagship store on State Street in Chicago, so she knew how to handle a needle.

Grandma had passed away a year before I was married, so we had a tailor add fabric at the waist because I was two inches taller than my mother. She added long sleeves because I was married in January, not June as my mother had. 

In the photo you can see the beautiful dress and my bouquet, but you can’t see me.  I learned to scratch out my face in my junior high yearbooks, so you can see that I still have that skill.  The florist did a beautiful job on the flowers.

Mrs. Flipse seemed ancient to me.  Her house seemed ancient, too, much older than the house my grandparents built when they were a young couple. We entered the kitchen eating area from the back of the house and sat at the table with her. Grandma asked her some questions about family history, but I don’t remember her answering a lot of the questions. She had forgotten much and what she remembered was more specific to her own life.

Until I started working on my family tree on Ancestry, I didn’t really “get” how Mrs. Flipse was related to me.

Her name at birth was Frances DeSmit, and her mother, Mary DeKorn DeSmit, was Richard DeKorn’s sister. Richard is my 2nd great grandfather, so that makes Frances my first cousin 3x removed.

What is clear from looking at her Ancestry profile is that Frances was near the end of her life when I met her; she died at the age of 97.

She married her first husband, Charles Reeves, in 1902, and had a son, Edwin, with Charles.  The marriage license lists Charles as a cigar maker; he was 23 and Frances was 20. According to the newspaper archives, Frances secured a divorce from Charles in 1911 because he wouldn’t support his family. She said, “He would rather go fishing, and he spends most of his time at it,” indicating he was in debt from tobacco and liquor bills.

Jacob Flipse was her second husband, and she married him on September 17, 1914, at the age of 30. I notice that she is listed in documents from that period on as working as a florist.

I went back through newspaper articles, looking for an obituary, but what I found instead was that Mrs. Jacob Flipse had died February 18, 1914 (another article listed February 15, and I think that might be accurate). I thought, wow, she married him pretty quickly after that.  Then I noticed something strange. The deceased Mrs. Jacob Flipse was the daughter of John DeSmit of 1017 S. Burdick. Well, so was Frances. Did she marry her sister’s widower? No, she married the widower of her Aunt Christina.

Mrs. Jacob (Christina) Flipse died in 1914 at age 48 of a stroke which paralyzed her, according to one obituary.  She was born in 1864.

 

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Update to My DNA Test Post

Posted in DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Mulder, Noffke, Peek, Waldeck, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , on June 30, 2013| 1 Comment »

Update:

On the Ancestry Facebook page, somebody posted this information about using your raw data from Ancestry to compare outside their site:

On your DNA page top right is an option to download your raw data. You need to select and then they will email a link with the address on file. Once you have that, you can go to GEDmatch and follow the instructions to upload. Unfortunately, they are not accepting new data until on or about August 15th. FamilyTreeDNA also has the transfer function. Go to their page and scroll down to almost the bottom. FTDNA charges, GEDmatch is free.

Click this link to get to my DNA post.

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Read This Before You Order the DNA Test

Posted in DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Mulder, Noffke, Peek, Waldeck, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2013| 28 Comments »

Before I took a DNA test, I didn’t know anything about DNA. Now that I’ve taken two DNA tests, maybe I know even less than nothing.

First I took 23andme, as it had been recommended to me. When I got the results, I was tickled to get some health information, but I didn’t take it too seriously. After all, it was fairly general, and it wouldn’t catch any of the thousands of rare diseases lurking out there in some of our genes. It certainly didn’t predict that rare tumor discovered in my foot eight years ago. Nor did it foretell the hereditary lymphedema I have (thanks, Grandma). Then I also found out that even if you have a particular gene, it often takes a certain “something” to happen to trigger an illness.

So I turned the virtual page on the health information and looked at the information which shows what areas of the world my genes come from. A few genes were identified as coming from particular places, such as one gene that 23andme insists is a Polish gene. I also learned that a lot of my genes are “unidentified Northern European.”

They identified my Haplogroup, which is the mitochondrial DNA I inherited through the maternal line, meaning from my mother and her mother and my grandmother’s mother, all the way back. Interesting, but what do I do with that info? The exact classification they gave me I can’t even find online.  Am I the only person with this mitochondrial DNA–well, are my mother and I the only people with it?

Should I order this from 23andme?

Should I order this from 23andme?

Remember how we thought Neanderthal were a totally unrelated species that died out? Apparently they didn’t really die out. I was told that I am 2.6% Neanderthal. The average European is 2.7%. Kind of hard to put your mind around that. I don’t have a lot of Neanderthal traits, having a high, rather than low, forehead, a narrow frame, and am not particularly strong. I’m sure my husband has some joke in this somewhere. But he doesn’t have the guts to take the test himself.

After I got the results of this test, I realized that it wouldn’t “mesh” with the Ancestry.com test results other people have taken. I didn’t know why they couldn’t be meshed, but I accepted that as fact. It seems that it’s because different companies test for different things. I decided to take the Ancestry test as well because I wanted it as part of my family tree on Ancestry in case I had any DNA matches with people whose trees could provide me with leads.

When I got the results of the Ancestry test I was really disappointed. It doesn’t provide anything except general regions your ancestors came from. Not even any specific countries. No medical information.

And the areas my genes come from are quite different according these two different tests. Ancestry claims a large percentage of my genes are from eastern Europe and about a quarter from Britain. Um, no. Their explanation is that this analysis might represent the location of my ancestors thousands of years ago. So what good is that then?

The one good thing that came from my very overpriced Ancestry test was finding an actual Waldeck relative through our matching DNA. Pretty cool, yes? And the fact that we both have a big chunk of eastern European DNA coming up on the Ancestry test points us in the direction of Prussia, so that was helpful. Unless I spend too much time looking back at my 23andme test, which shows a tiny percentage from eastern Europe. Confusing?

Something interesting about both DNA tests: the results continue to change as the companies get more and more information. They collect knowledge from people. This seems pretty hit or miss to me. But it’s kind of cool to watch things change every so often.

Finally, both test results netted me hits from 4-6th cousins, and most of them have absolutely no surnames in common on their family trees. So how is it possible that they are 4th-6th cousins?

Hmm, this science is still in its infancy, methinks.

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Update:

On the Ancestry Facebook page, somebody posted this information about using your raw data from Ancestry to compare outside their site:

On your DNA page top right is an option to download your raw data. You need to select and then they will email a link with the address on file. Once you have that, you can go to GEDmatch and follow the instructions to upload. Unfortunately, they are not accepting new data until on or about August 15th. FamilyTreeDNA also has the transfer function. Go to their page and scroll down to almost the bottom. FTDNA charges, GEDmatch is free.

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