In 2019, I took a DNA test from Ancestry.  I have been working on Family History off and on since I was a teenager.  This seemed like a logical step in my progression of Genealogy and to learn about my ethnicity.  I was an only child and never thought there was much of anything new to learn.  As a Junior High English and History teacher for many years, the ethnicity results were a draw to me. 

One-half of my family was LDS and much of my family lines were completed, but my father’s line had not been worked on for many years.  I had linked up, as a teenager, with a man named Ed who was so excited that someone young was interested in Family History.  He was a relative on my dad’s side and lived many miles away in Indiana.  As I’ve gotten older, I understand his excitement in finding ‘younger’ family members interested in Family History.  It’s just not something that my own family is interested in getting too involved.  

Well to get back to my test results.  I had a DNA match on Ancestry which did not fit into the usual ‘cousin match’.  2444 cMg out of 52 segments is not a ‘normal’ result.  My husband and I went to an annual seminar put on by our local Genealogy Society and the 2-day speaker was Blaine Bettinger, who is an expert in Genetic Genealogy. I finally got a chance to ask him about this particular result and showed him my laptop.  He looked, smiled, and made a comment about an unknown parent, sibling, grandparent, or aunt /uncle.  I said, I’m an only child and I know my immediate family, so I was confused, to say the least. 

Two weeks later, we took off for our first trip to Rootstech 2020 in Salt Lake City.  We took many classes, learned a ton of information, sometimes even too much to process.  I met another  genetic genealogist, “Robin Wirthlin from Family Locket.”  She agreed with Blaine’s observation of my results.