DNA analysis helps add branches to family tree – Altoona Mirror

Deoxryrobonucleic Acid (commonly known as DNA) is one of the latest and most revealing tools that wannabe genealogists like me have to trace our ancestors.

I have done family tree explorations using the usual means of research: documents, books and family lore. By those means, I traced my ancestors from western Europe to America and then to Bedford and Blair counties. DNA analysis has allowed me to look back many centuries before.

Each of us has a unique DNA makeup that can be traced back to the beginning of mankind. The DNA of my Y chromosome has been passed down almost unchanged from fathers to sons. Document research on my family dates to one Daniel Augustus Wentz, born in 1809 in Bedford County. Everyone before him is unknown to me. DNA analysis offered the possibility of learning about family members before 1809.

About 10 years ago, the National Geographic Society announced a project called Genographic, in which it compared DNA saliva samples from people like me to places in the world that had matching samples. In that way, they could provide a world map showing the route my ancestors took to reach America.

In the National Geographic undertaking, my saliva DNA was coded and then plugged into a chart that showed where similar DNA was distributed throughout the world. For example, if my DNA was coded as 9X, then a computer looked for where other 9Xs are located. I knew my forefather immigrated from western Europe, but where did his forefather come from?

The source of my 9X DNA originated in what is present-day Tanzania, in east Africa. Then my ancestors migrated north to what is Egypt, through Israel and Turkey and westward across Europe. In other words, as my ancestors moved from Africa millennia ago, probably trying to escape famine or some form of predator, they left behind along the route family members whose DNA exist today in those areas of Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

A more recent DNA project was sponsored by Ancestry.com and used DNA saliva samples to pinpoint ethnicity (the nationalities of my ancestors and the geographic areas they are most connected with).

This Ancestry DNA analysis established my familys primary habitats thousands of years ago as 68 percent Western Europe (Germany), with 15 percent Irish and 7 percent Italy/Greece. The Irish and Italy/Greece migrations were news to me.

As for the place in America that claims the most Wentz DNA, the Ancestry map shows it to be western Pennsylvania. That finding confirmed my confidence in the National Geographic and Ancestry analyses because all they knew about me personally was my primary residence in Virginia. Knowing that my family lived in the Blair/Bedford area for more than two centuries, an analysis claiming a significant concentration anywhere else in America would have raised huge suspicions in my mind.

The most interesting finding of the Ancestry analysis is that it is likely my first German ancestor arrived in America during the colonial period from 1607 to 1776. That is much earlier than I imagined, and is worth knowing and passing along to my children and grandchildren.

James Wentz writes a monthly column for the Mirror.

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DNA analysis helps add branches to family tree - Altoona Mirror