DNA results brings unexpected experience for our family

by Monte Walker

Over the weekend, our family experienced something overwhelmingly emotional We were introduced to a cousin of ours that we never knew of Not a distant cousin, but my dad’s first cousin Without DNA testing, we would have never known that we have a Vietnamese-born cousin from a relationship that took place between an Air Force Sergeant and a Vietnamese med student This is the story of my grandfather’s brother Eugene Kenneth Walker

Many years ago, before everything was online including this newspaper and before DNA kits became widely available for purchase, I researched the history of our family and connected some dots But a certain dot could have never have been connected without the readily available DNA testing that exists today.

As someone who has taken the Ancestrycom DNA test, the first thing it tells you is your "Ethnicity Estimate" which for me is 43 percent Ireland/Scotland/Whales along with 30 percent Scandinavia There are six other "trace" regions which are Europe West at 15 percent, Europe South (5 percent), Finland/North Russia (4 percent), and Africa North (1 percent)

Another thing the test does is match you with other test-takers and identify them as people that share a certain ancestor and formulate the closeness of the relationship through the DNA strand The test itself is easy to take - just spitting in a tube Creating an ethnicity estimate based on your DNA sample is a complex process, however, based on probability, statistics shared DNA, and ongoing research and science Ancestrycom DNA calculates your ethnicity estimate by comparing your DNA page 8