As a genealogist I find it interesting how we are a snippet of this and a snippet of that from so many of our past relatives. Having taken my DNA and put it on a database (let’s not go there about possible medical consequences…its a blind base) I am constantly finding new people who are in some way related to me. Today another distant cousin narrowed our shared ancestor down to a shared 7th G Grandfather who served in the Revolutionary War. And we each have a small part of him on chromosome 20.

My ancient DNA also surprises me…Siberia for example. And several other well-known ancients.

Recently, I put my children’s DNA into the data base. Because they are adopted they wanted to see if they could locate family and we have. While we will never know how they are related to the matches in the database we do now know of 4th cousins and such even though we will not know what side they come from. For those people who are adopted DNA genealogy is finally a way for them to connect with those who up to know would have been lost to them.

One of my adopted children who was born in Korea found out that he is also 2% Native American and 1% Polynesian. Where does this come from we wonder?  We can only assume it is ancient DNA carried by ancient people as they crossed over now extinct land bridges.

This holiday weekend was spent with my cousin. She brought another big box of family treasures with  her and I am once again scanning all these pictures unto Ancestry.com. A huge find was a tin-type picture of my GG Alexander McMullen. For me it is an amazing find as I had never seen a picture of him before and at this point our tree ends with him.That is him pictured above. He is said to be Scotch-Irish but where the Scotch comes in it seems like I will never know.

That is the beauty of genealogy. It’s a puzzle. And with the addition of one piece it can change the way the entire puzzle is viewed. It mirrors our lives both in looks and in how we perceive things and it is changing every day. That is why I love looking to the past because it influences the future of not only myself but my family as well.