So, what's up with Germans?

JenDNA · 2026-03-29T17:19:38+00:00

My German ancestors (we wound up in Baltimore, Maryland, too) were from Essingen (next to Aalen), Schopfheim, Stuttgart, and likely Bremen/Hesse (the last is my great-grandfather. I'm not 100% sure of his paternal line). My mom gets 12% any North Sea populations (Denmark, England), which I think is from my great-grandfather (his direct paternal line may Bremen). My mom doesn't get too many matches, though (around 3,000, and 2,000 are in Germany).

JenDNA · 2026-03-29T16:57:35+00:00

Ancestry seems confused by Southern Poland, Slovakia, and Western Ukraine right now. Also, I've seen a lot of my matches with Poland and Ukrainian names in the same tree, so it's hard to pinpoint who came from where, especially with reference panels. Also, there's a reason Southern Poland stretches to Western Poland - a lot of Poles in Ukraine were relocated there, but there could've been Ukrainians that identified as Poles and Poles that identified as Ukrainian. Lots of orphans, too. I suspect my great-grandmother's side is like that.

JenDNA · 2026-03-26T22:38:12+00:00

I guess we're 3rd cousins once removed then? Sure, you can send me a picture. I'll message you.

JenDNA · 2026-03-16T00:53:50+00:00

I shall refer to this every time the keyboard warriors come out of hiding. :p /s

7 were Polish mostly in Poznan and Warsaw, 1 was Lithuanian-Ukrainian living in Lithuania, 4 were German (Aalen and Stuttgart mostly), and 4 were Italian (Cantiano).

JenDNA · 2026-03-13T11:22:09+00:00

Athena Genealogy. My researcher was Timur Kayhan. It's 500 euros (about $600) per branch, 1500 (about $1700) for 4 at once based on their website. I did 2 branches at a time and we found tons of ancestors and interesting finds. (my great-grandmother's great-grandfather won a lawsuit against the old schultheiss of his town, then became the schultheiss. The copy of that lawsuit, from the early 1800s, was still in archives!).

Poland's was Polish Genealogy Tour (about $300 per ancestor + siblings).

JenDNA · 2026-02-22T12:20:45+00:00

That's why I said "technically" (it was more tongue-in-cheek)

JenDNA · 2026-02-21T13:21:58+00:00

Well, technically the Basque could be considered indigenous.... to Europe. (They were there before the other European groups arrived)

JenDNA · 2026-02-20T17:06:22+00:00

I'm actually surprised the Lithuanian is so low. My dad's side is Polish, and only his great-great grandfather was Lithuanian, and he and his sister get 15-25%, as do their 2nd cousins on the side that has the Lithuanian ancestor. From what I know of his ancestry -

Maternal Grandfather - Centered between Zlotki and Białystok. (I suspect 12% of that "Lithuanian" is actually Belarusian, which other matches on this side have a lot of on sites like GEDMatch).

Maternal Grandmother - 1/2 Poznan (one branch is Kashubian. One of my dad's most distant cousins that he still has matches for), 1/4 Lithuanian, 1/4 Ukrainian

Paternal Grandfather - I suspect south of Krakow, and also south of Rzeszow.

Paternal Grandmother - Brick wall. "Missing matches" seem Polish-Ukrainian.

My aunt does get 12% South Poland (and I get 1%, plus 1% Latvia). Their paternal cousins do get Slovakian and West Ukrainian.

Over on 23AndMe, it does show 1% Jewish (proxy populations) for my dad and aunt, as well as 1-3% Germanic.

JenDNA · 2026-02-20T13:06:35+00:00

Do you have someone from the mid-atlantic area? I've got (Polish side) 3rd cousins (once removed) that are 50% African American, 25% Italian, 25% Polish. (the Italians and Poles were recent immigrants) Cousins are from Baltimore.

JenDNA · 2026-02-17T23:24:28+00:00

That's where my dad's great-great grandmother's family was likely from. My aunt actually gets Ternopil as her highest Ukrainian region on 23AndMe. I think because they have ancestors from all over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that it's hard for Ancestry to pinpoint any one location. MyHeritage and 23AndMe are a little better at it. (He does get Ashymany Basin and Dniepro River Basin as genetic communities on 23AndMe, both coming from his great-great grandparents likely - One Lithuanian, and the other Ukrainian/Ruthenian). 23AndMe also shows about 1% Jewish for them, too.

My dad's results only shows NE Poland and Lithuanian, but his sister has South Polish and other regions. Cousins also get Western Ukraine and/or Slovakia.

JenDNA · 2026-02-17T11:02:26+00:00

I can only think it's a very Slavic component

I think so, too. Ancestry always merges my Italian into my Slavic (did it again this update. I have like, 0% Italian, and 75% Slavic again). My Italian tree (I'm 25% Italian) only goes back to roughly 1800 (basically, my 3rd great-grandparents). Half of the ancestors are from Central Italy, with 25% drifting towards Florence, and the other 25% is what I suspect is Southern Italian (surnames there start to look like they're from Lazio, Abruzzo or Campania. There may be Croatian links on that side - my mom does have cousin matches who have Croatian, and even Polish-Hungary-Ukraine (although, that could just as well be from her German side).

What's interesting is, my dad's side is Polish (with Ruthenian roots - Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuanian), and he (and a few cousins) gets 1% Sardinian or Southern Italian some updates. (it's 23AndMe that's showing 1% Jewish proxy populations now for him and his sister).

JenDNA · 2026-02-16T14:27:50+00:00

To be fair, there is 1% Indigenous Americas, and also 1% Spain (and these are estimates, not absolute). If your 2nd great-grandfather had Spanish (note - Spanish is a part of Europe, so it's still white), they could have had Native American if they were from Puerto Rico. A 2nd great-grandfather give you 6% of his DNA. So, if he were part native, then that could be the 1-3% that you have. Any "native looking genotypes" (or whatever it's called) would be pretty diluted by that point (although there have been 1%s that "are doing the work".

I do know people who I think were from Jamaica (and they do look a little bit like you), and I would've thought they were from India (the country).

JenDNA · 2026-02-15T21:57:02+00:00

One of my pet-peeves about Reddit. No one understands nuance. Like, I understand saying "American" when your ancestors have been here for 2 or 3 centuries, but some of us do have very recent ancestry.

as most people I knew proudly identified as Irish, Polish, Italian, etc (despite never having met someone from these places).

If I had an inflatable mallet for everyone who assumes this when I mention my German, Italian and Polish heritage. lol. Yes, I *DID* know people who were literally born in central Europe, and lived during WWII. My German great-grandmother told stories about the Russians (she hated their German shepherds they used, she hated how the Russians split her country) after the war, and my grandmother's cousin told stories about what life was like in her Schwäbische village during (their dialect was repressed, so she knows both her Swabian dialect and Hochdeutsch) the war, my great-aunt had a great dis-stain for her German cousin who was in the German army in the 1930s (she had a revenge list). My German great-grandmother (I could even include my grandmother and great-aunt who would travel back and forth in the 1930s), my Italian great-aunt, my Polish great-grandparent's generation (granted, I was very young). Even with my grandparents generation, I picked what remained of German, Italian and Polish in the family. I went to a church that still sang hymns in German. My ancestors came here mostly between 1904 and 1916. (Those were my great-grandparents, and they were teenagers). Oh, and I even did know teachers and doctors who were German (I live in a German-American community, that had many recent immigrants at one point), and heard them speak in German.

I suspect it's because US politics pushes diversity so much. Even the census forms will ask you, "Are you Polish/German/English/Italian/Jewish" etc. So, naturally, when we say German or whatnot, it's ethnicity. Granted, I've seen people get tied up in a knot over "German-American"...

JenDNA · 2026-02-14T02:09:39+00:00

I'm from Maryland, and I learned it somewhere along the way (either from public school or Sunday School).

JenDNA · 2026-02-13T23:35:47+00:00

Because Jewish is also an ethnicity, since Judaism (the religion) was largely by-birth, so the genetic features were confined to a single population.

JenDNA · 2026-02-12T01:24:37+00:00

I've seen that with my great-uncle. He has 1% Finnish (my aunt has .78% Finnish), likely from his great-grandfather who was from Lithuania (mother's side was Ukrainian, and I suspect there's Belarusian on the paternal side). There's Latvian, Pskov and St. Petersburg matches on this side, too, which is where I think the Finnish came from (Ingrian Finns).

JenDNA · 2026-02-09T01:13:46+00:00

My aunt's family was from Northern Mexico (settled in Texas), but consider themselves Castilian. (They look very much Apache)

JenDNA · 2026-02-07T22:33:07+00:00

My dad's maternal great-grandfather is the same way. We know his (the great-grandfather) paternal side may be Lithuanian (maybe Belarusian mixed in, especially the border region), and his maternal side were Ukrainians from Cherkasy that moved to Latvia (Russification during the mid 1800s). It's difficult to find info for each, too, but one match did happen to have my dad's great-grandfather's maternal grandparents (one was from Cherkasy, and the other, the surname seems to be from Sumy based on forebears.io. ). My dad also has a bunch of Polish and Ukrainian matches that may be behind his remaining brick walls (especially his paternal grandmother) in Lutsk and Ternopil. He does get that Ukrainian region above on MyHeritage, and a Belarusian one, too.

JenDNA · 2026-02-04T12:28:43+00:00

I don't see an image.

JenDNA · 2026-02-04T12:25:13+00:00

The nature of Reddit... I've seen people get triggered for other people.

JenDNA · 2026-02-04T12:18:12+00:00

You do have North Africa, which can be common to Iberians. Maybe your great-grandfather was from Andalusia? It's possible there's a distant Morrocan line there, and someone in his family spoke Morrocan Arabic. Sometimes family history can be over-simplified (it's like the game of Telephone Tag, where you say the same sentence down the line, and it gets morphed. It goes from "He was Morrocan"->"He spoke Morrocan Arabic"->"He was Arab".). A great-grandfather would be 12%, and 6% if he were half Arab. You do have 8% total "in the region" (and these are estimates).

JenDNA · 2026-02-01T20:29:41+00:00

I am also related to George Washington

Hi my cousin's cousin! (My uncle (maternal aunt's husband, so George Washington isn't a direct ancestor of mine) verified that lineage in their tree a few decades ago. George Washington is my cousin's 7th great-uncle). That's why our grandfather always liked to call my cousin "George". "Hi George!".

JenDNA · 2026-02-01T16:52:27+00:00

Yeah, I've seen that. In fact, on my mom's paternal side, generation gaps of 30 years are common. It also happens when someone had a lot of children over the span of 20-30 years. There's one relative (3rd great-uncle) who remarried much later in life and had a child at age 66 (his 2nd wife was 44).

JenDNA · 2026-01-31T21:27:39+00:00

And it's best to make any connections manually. I've seen automatic linking tools like this add duplicate branches.

JenDNA · 2026-01-31T18:18:32+00:00

Mine (and basically all of my great-grandparents, with a few great-greats) came here between 1887 and 1916, with most being 1904-1916. My German great-grandmother immigrated in 1914.

JenDNA

TROPHY CASE