Thirty years ago, if you’d told me to spit into a tube, I would have assumed I was being tested for pathogens and cooties. Not whiteness.
Whiteness was not something I thought I needed to establish. I’m white as hell. Maybe not that kind of redheaded-white that make you worry you’ll be incinerated by the sun one careless day, but pretty dang white. My father’s line is saturated with prim piety in a pasty package, and Mom’s sturdy Norwegian contribution did nothing to darken anything up.
And so when I sent in my vial of spit to 23andme, lo these many years ago, I wasn’t too surprised by the results. I appeared to be about 44% Scandinavian and most of the rest British Isles, with a nice healthy Neanderthal element and some random notes from northern Africa. Those I put down to ancient Viking conquests of a raping-and-pillaging nature although one should never, as a principle, rule out love.
The cool thing about spitting for strangers is that there is now so much saliva out there in the labs that people who study these things are figuring a lot of stuff out. It’s like putting retroactive GPS trackers on the human migration highway. There are probably ten times as many spit sisters out there than there were when I first did it. The scientists are now this close to finding my ancestral cave. Which means some day they might find a tiny cave painting of a salamander, my favorite animal, and I can die happy. One wants to know where one comes from, right?
The site sends lots of fun notifications so that if I really wanted to know how likely it is that I can smell asparagus pee, for instance, I can, even though I personally know the likelihood is 100%. I was relieved to discover that I am highly unlikely to have a photic reflex. Because ever since I heard people sneeze when they look into the sun, I’ve tried to make that work, and it never once did. I thought: so is this kind of like the low-libido thing? Just a roll of the genetic dice?
Apparently, yes.
So 23andme sent me an email notice that I had new DNA relatives. I usually don’t bother to check on them. They’re usually fourth cousins, removed every which way, which means they are complete strangers, our interconnecting strands long frayed, and our chromosomes wouldn’t recognize each other in an elevator. They might even be Republicans.
But I was bored so I went on the site. And discovered they’d narrowed down my heritage quite a bit. I am now officially 99.6% northwestern European, fully half of that Scandinavian. Them people, apparently, didn’t move at all. And Northern Africa has disappeared, replaced by that last point-four percent of Peninsular Arab. I’m just about as white as they get. Which means I have been completely liberated of the burden of imagining people are suspicious of me. In America, I’m the default template. Sure, in these last nanoseconds of my race’s time on earth, I could be Karened, but I’m not much of an asshole, so it doesn’t come up often.
And looky here! Apparently I’m highly likely to be a descendant of someone aboard the Mayflower. Well, no shit. I’ve known that since our family tree was unscrolled for me when I was in third grade. Not merely a direct Mayflower descendant but a descendant of one of the main dudes.
But it would be a lot cooler if they had me traced to some woman with fat blond braids and a broadaxe who cleaved her way through a herd of terrified menfolk and earned a moniker like Birgit the Bitchy or On The Ragnhild.
Keep spitting, people. That may be in the next email.
My grandmother (paternal) liked to brag that her side of the family were descendants of Governor Carver of Mayflower fame. They shared the last name after all.
Years before genetic testing came along I did my own research and discovered that the governor died without children, so there was no chance our particular branch were descendants.
It may have been an effort by my grandmother to embellish her family history. Both her father and mother were indentured as children because their families were so poor.
It’s remarkable how easy it is to manufacture the truth and tell it often enough it becomes real.
I was going to make an insightful observation about ancestry, but then I looked out the window and saw a brilliant Pileated woodpecker hanging on a vine at the edge of our woods in a ray of morning sun.
No FAIR!
…and at that moment she was elightened.
I hope for you that they can find the cave with the salamander painting. How cool would that be?
I’ll bet it would be a short cave too.
I’m the whitest white girl. I did the spit test, too. No surprises. And I took some genealogy classes to start on my Ancestry family tree. My maternal family started this town in the 1830’s. I knew this because my grandmother would point out every house that an ancestor had lived in every ride we took. And prior to 1830, they all lived in the same New York back to the 1600’s. I come from a long line of “stayers”. Dad’s family all came from Germany right after the civil war and settled in the little village next door. Everyone has stayed in touch and there is an extended family that travels back and forth to Germany every other year (except 2020 and 2021) to keep the family history burning. Most boring “roots” story ever.
C’mon. There’s got to be a Finn in the woodpile.
Boring is underrated. My maternal family (mom and her 4 brothers) lived in the area. Everyone got together on holidays. But then, people started to die off. I have no contact at all with my cousins. Let alone my paternal cousins or half-sister. I wish that we all were close, but the truth is, we all have nothing in common.
So, since I obviously have no interest in my actual living relatives — nor they in me — I have no interest in my deceased ancestors. I’d rather spend the time accruing friends that I have things in common with. They may not be biological family, but they feel familial nonetheless. We have each other over for dinner. We call each other. E-mail each other. It’s not the same as having a life partner, but it’s a little less lonely.
I actually have no idea why ancestry is fun to find out about. I’ve never figured it out. I’m close to everyone in my family but at this point most of them are dead; I’m down to one sister and one niece and the lovely family I married into. But I’m STILL interested in my ancestors.
The Mohn side of my family came to America from Germany in 1700. They lived in a small town in Pennsylvania for nearly three hundred years. It was a very small town.
I was talking about my various inherited diseases with a genetics professor who also did genetic counseling. She laughed and said I had all the hallmarks of a purebred (read inbred) small dog. When I told her the paternal family history she shut up.
Could be worse. A former friend married a girl from a REALLY small town in Pennsylvania. There were two families and most marriages were between those two families. He came from a family with some genetic abnormalities. His kids all have varying degrees of autism.
Abbie Normal for the win!
This technology of using your spit honestly amazes me. Last January, a woman in New Orleans contacted my younger brother and said she’d recently done a 23andme and was notified my brother was HER half brother. Steve (my brother) told me and our sister, our sister said “Oh it’s impossible”. At the same time, growing up we always joked how Steve was so much whiter than the rest of us. He also went bald by age 27 (and me and our older brother & Dad still have all our hair). THEN this girl from the South sent a picture of her recently deceased dad–who was a dead ringer for my brother Steve. I finally said enough, and did the spit thing. Several weeks later I was informed my brother Steve was only my half brother. We shared the same maternal roots, but not paternal. To say this opened a big ol’ can of worms would be an understatement!
Oh, Doug! This made me laugh so hard. Sorry. I know it may have been disturbing for you guys. 23andme sounds like a double-edged sword. It sounds intriguing, but to what end? My parents are dead, so it’s not like I can ask them any questions about what I find out. Plus there are the privacy issues. They have your DNA. Who knows what they will do with it. Or with any of the information that they gather. It sounds like a slippery slope to me.
It sounds that way to many intelligent people. I, on the other hand, do not care what they do with the information, and I think it’s cool as hell. I’m not a suspicious or careful person, but on the other hand I’m not that easily gulled.
My best guess is that they will sell it to the highest bidder, who will then sell it to you health insurance company, where they will, if they find markers for expensive-to-treat diseases, cancel your insurance, or at least raise your rates into the stratosphere. But I’ve said that before.
Y’all live in a very dark world! I’m not saying it’s wrong. But it dark.
Yeah… I’m a pessimist. However. I have read that pessimists actually have a more realistic view of the world than optimists. Which only makes me MORE pessimistic. D’oh!
Took me a minute to understand how you use spit honestly, but then I was riveted!
Haha my wording I meant honestly amazed! Mimi, it wasn’t funny! My sister just had to come to terms with the fact our parents were normal effed up people. She told me I was a despicable human being after I learned the truth about our brother. I told her to go after his newly found Southern sister, not me!
Oh boy. Your dad’s still alive. What did he say?
My brother is the only one of us with red hair. Or at least it was red before he mostly went bald. My mom (Haddow) had red hair when she was younger and my maternal grandfather also had red hair when he was younger. My grandfather had thinning hair in his late eighties, but still over most of his scalp.
My paternal grandfather had classic pattern baldness, as had all the men in the Mohn family as far back as we have photos.
My dad still has most of his hair at 90. His maternal grandfather had all of his hair into his mid nineties. I had most of my hair until I got Covid and then the front started thinning out. Apparently that isn’t an unusual Covid side effect.
I have no doubt that my brother is my full brother. It’s just odd that he should express a Mohn trait (pattern baldness) that bypassed my dad and wasn’t a maternal trait.
My older sister has olive skin and a Roman nose. Not Mohn or Haddow traits. But the Haddow side is Scottish and it’s possible she’s expressing traits from a Roman ancestor. The red hair, pale skin and freckles of my brother are Danish traits, also prevalent in Scottish genes.
As far as I know none of us has done a genetic assay, which is kind of interesting. My brother has a Ph D in genetics after all.
I’ve read that male pattern baldness can skip a generation. Don’t know if that’s true. I look like my mom’s side of the family. I’ve heard that most kids look like the paternal side. Makes me wonder sometimes. My dad married my mom when she was 4 months pregnant with me. That’s what people did back then. But he never acted like a father. My uncle Eddy did. He took us to the beach, looked at my report cards, looked after me after my “dad” left and my mom had to go to work. My dad used to say sometimes,” Eddy is your real dad!” Now, I suspect that Eddy was gay. But I sometimes wonder, as I resemble him in a lot of ways, and had always gotten along with him better than any of my other relatives.
Wow, Murr! This is probably better than psychotherapy! And certainly much cheaper!
It’s cheap all right! Genetics was my absolute favorite biology course. Fascinating. I still have the textbook for some reason but I’ll never look in it. And I don’t remember any of it (that applies to almost everything I ever learned). But I do know that most kids *don’t* look like their fathers. And baldness does not skip a generation, unless it does.
See. It’s bad enough when you have family that you know about. All families are dysfunctional. But with THIS, you find family and family issues that you never knew about! How does this make your life better?! It’s bad enough that my half-sister from Utah sends me Christmas letters every year about her family. I DO NOT KNOW ANY OF THEM. And she keeps addressing the mail to me with my husband’s last name. I kept my own name, and she knows this. I think it’s borderline passive-aggressive.
I think the male pattern baldness skipping a generation is largely a myth, what do I know! Bruce if you’re reading this and asked if my Dad was still alive, no he died 25 years ago. FYI, my parents separated in 1965 for 4-5 months, my brother came along in 1966. But Mom took this secret to her grave… until Ancestry.com came along 🙁
Doug, this recently happened to my husband’s buddy Dave. Dave always thought he was Greek. Then his adult son did a 23&me and discovered 0% Greek. A flurry of panic, followed by Dave taking the test, and it turned out Dave has a biological father different from his brothers and sisters. And Dave is a middle child.
Dave has since connected with his new relatives. His parents are all gone, so there’s no source of information there (if anyone could trust what they were told, at this point).
I’m imagining how bewildering it must be to discover a truth about yourself like this, at this age. And to wonder about the decisions the grown-ups in my life had made, and when, and why.
I have no doubt about my parents being my parents, but I still have trouble believing they ever *did it.*
Hey DougM:
Sure I read it! The comments are half the reason I read Murr’s blog.
I’ve heard about people who learned about half siblings through 23andme, but never heard about someone finding out that a sibling they grew up with was a half sibling!
I used to wonder if I was adopted since I’ve never behaved like the rest of the family, but my mom and dad put me straight on that. Of course there’s also the familial resemblance. I’ve looked a lot like my dad for most of my life. As I’ve reached the age that my maternal grandfather was when I first knew him, I’ve also seen his face looking back from the mirror. Apparently my mom picked a man who looked like her father.
My brother picked a woman who looks a lot like my mom for whatever that’s worth. My sisters picked men who don’t look anything like my dad!
Sometimes you don’t PICK so much as you SETTLE.
I’ve not done a ’23’ type search, my oldest daughter has, she is primarily Northern Europe and Britain, so I assume I am also.
I do have a relative who in her retirement did a seeming exhaustive search of our ancestry, producing a tome that did justice to her PhD.
She mostly confirmed what I knew, my ancestors came to Oregon in 1847 from Kentucky, having came over from Ireland in 1836.
Charnelton Mulligan was the co-founder of Eugene, with Eugene Skinner, both donating 40 acres to the new city for land to build city hall and some buildings.
I did get a mail from the DAR in ’67, inviting me to a dedication of a plaque somewhere in Eugene. I was in Viet Nam and quickly asked for leave to attend. The officer in charge laughed and tossed it in the trash.
Other than having a cool section of Laurel Hill Cemetery, a park and street named after them in Eugene, rewards have not materialized as of yet. lol
Nice, funny post Murr.
Now I want to name someone Charnelton Mulligan.
Here’s a link to what he looked like. https://www.findagrave.com/m
emorial/13016342/charnelton-mulligan
For some reason, your link above doesn’t automatically include the whole address when one clicks on it (at least on my ancient computer), so you need to copy the whole address (from https: . . . . to -mulligan) and paste it into the browser window. Distinguished, if somewhat cadaverous looking gentleman.
I did 23 and me hoping for some excitement. ancestry predictable. I found the medical aspect interesting. They really did hit on some key areas. Oh, and I do not have a photic reflex either, but my middle child does.
I’ve always been so disappointed. You know, when you have a sneeze coming, but it isn’t in a hurry? I looked at the sun for years before I gave up. 23andme would have saved me a lot ofo time.
Murr, love hearing you read on Substack but I always come here too as the comments are not to be missed.
Murr? What’s this about you reading on Substack? The previously uniformed want to know!
My younger brother did the 23 and Me thing, and I always assumed some half siblings would eventually appear because daddy dear was an inveterate philanderer.
Yes he was! I am now on substack but I put the same posts on there as I do here. First week in. I like it a lot and would probably prefer to be on that platform for various reasons (the audio clip among them, and better archiving) but unless I can get everyone to go over there and hit that comment section, I can’t leave this little coffee klatch. I may figure something out about that eventually. Here’s a link: https://substack.com/@murrbrewster?utm_source=user-menu
I LOVE the way you read your blogs! May have to subscribe to Substack, though I am very resistant to new apps.
Like Doug M’s situation, my younger brother learned through a DNA reading that he & I have different fathers, that his father was my dad’s medical practice partner, and that he has 6 half siblings, all of whom welcomed him into the clan when he contacted them. (All our parents are long dead.) We all grew up together, running into & out of the 2 homes, and back then rather felt like one big family. Little did we know!
That’s still freaky. I know my dad had a thing for Sophia Loren but he lacked the social skills to make it happen.
My mother’s maiden name was Mendelson. One of her relatives claimed to have researched their ancestry and found they were descended from Felix Mendelssohn, but I don’t know if there’s an atom of truth in that. He may have just wanted to feel famous.
I have not done 23andMe for reasons already mentioned above, foreshadowed by this event (copied from WikiSomethingOrOther): “In October 2023, 23andMe experienced a significant data breach that exposed the personal information of approximately 6.9 million users, primarily affecting those who opted into the DNA Relatives feature. The breach raised serious privacy concerns, leading to a class action lawsuit and increased scrutiny over the company’s data protection practices.”
I read that too, and promptly ignored it, because I am a careless person who enjoys the warmth of my own little world.
I did the spit test and 23 and me found out I was not me!
But you do look just like you.
Great post Murr!
My daughter did 23andme and it confirmed what we knew from our fathers’ genealogy research–we are northern European mutts. I’m German, Swedish, English and Swiss, and my wife is English and Icelandic. What she didn’t know was that she has a high percentage of Neanderthal. My wife and I blame each other, but neither of us has unusually long arms or a hairy back.
A good friend found out he has a half sister and they got in touch. The family jumped to the conclusion that it was their dad who had an affair but it turned out it was his mom who had a child and gave her up for adoption before she me their dad. And she never told anybody–not her husband or her kids!
I too have a larger than average Neanderthal component, but I’m losing my eyebrows anyway.
But you still have the back hair and the long dragging arms, right? I must confess that I wonder about how much Neanderthal is in me, but it’s just not worth it to me to satisfy my curiosity at the risk of having my data breached.
And who knows? Maybe Neanderthals had the eyebrow RIDGES, but no hairs? I know I’m losing mine. The hairs. Not the ridges.
FYI, when I was in genetic counseling school, we learned that about 10% of everyone across all economic and social groups does not know that their real father is not the person they think he is. Just sayin…
I’ve heard this statistic and doubt it. The number comes from people who have chosen to be tested, not a random sample.
Beth, I still have my Strickberger Genetics textbook! I always thought it was super cool that you went into genetics. And Susan makes a good point.
I am 98.6% Scandinavian and 1.2% Finnish.
I also have the “photic reflex” gene and often do sneeze when I step out into bright sunlight.
Whereas I have the photic reflex, and can often imagine a bright sun, if I feel a sneeze needs a little encouragement, AND I can roll the sides my tongue under, which is apparently genetic, very rare, and completely useless. They used to say that about 3 in 5 people could roll the sides of their tongues up, which makes perfect sense, as it helps create a seal around a teat for a suckling babe, or around a straw for anyone. I am too lazy to look up the current statistics of tongue rollability.
Yeah, that’s remarkable. In that I have remarked upon it. When most of us try to do that, we just make tongue cucumbers.
I am also partly Scandinavian being 40% Swedish and 1% Norwegian, but there is nothing white, blond or blue eyed about me. Not tall either. So it’s probably a good thing I don’t live in your country, being tanned and brown-eyed.
There are better reasons not to live in our country, although I understand things aren’t always super-duper in Australia either.
I’m half Norwegian and half Ashkenazi Jew, so I never know if I should say Uff Da or Oy Vey! Way back in the middle of the last century I worked for William Brewster McKenna and his wife, Patricia Alden McKenna. All Mayflower, all the time. Cousins of yours, but extremely distant I am sure. I have the photic reflex, smell asparagus pee, and curl my tongue. The rest you don’t wanna know.