Genealogy for non-geniuses
I stumbled upon an alt-right subreddit the other night (presumably because the universe wants me to get a stupidity-induced nosebleed before the year is up) and one of the posts on there caught my eye. Clicking on it sent me to an article the notorious red pill culture website Return Continue Reading
So I’ve been keeping this under wraps for a while and feel like I should say it now: I’ve been invited to give a presentation on my journey to find my grandfather at the University of Iowa! I was invited by evolutionary biologist and undergraduate director Prof. Bryant McAllister to Continue Reading
A few months ago, I stumbled upon an article in the University of Iowa Alumni Magazine featuring a class called, “Who Are You: Revelations from the Personal Genome.” It was the perfect combination of everything I wanted from a seminar while I was at UI — free genetic genealogy research Continue Reading
Fun fact: It’s incredibly difficult to find my ancestor’s Vietnam War veteran military records. Wait. Did I say fun? I mean INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING. So as it turns out, finding the military records for my grandfather is going to be a lot harder than I thought. Like WAYYYYY harder than I thought. Continue Reading
A quick recap on what we learned, what we questioned, and what’s still keeping me up at night from the ancestry research extravaganza. So a few weeks ago, I resolved to head out into the suburbs to devote myself to a Saturday of pure ancestry research — and we got Continue Reading
This weekend, I’m headed to La Fox, Illinois get some quality ancestry research done. What a week. First, my mom’s AncestryDNA test comes in. Then I find out we have a second cousin. And THEN I find out that second cousin has a family tree. On top of all that, a Continue Reading
The AncestryDNA results are in . . . and they’re CRAZY (not really). After Mẹ took her AncestryDNA test at the beginning of January, the results finally came back from the lab — and it actually didn’t take long! The email came in from Ancestry.com yesterday, which I appreciated because Continue Reading
Everyone has two family trees. Yes, even those of you who aren’t living a double-life and have another set of wife and kids. I’m not trained in this. I went to college for English and spent most of high school biology class talking with my friend Ivan about video games instead of Continue Reading
An unboxing and review of Ancestry.com’s DNA kit and what my brother’s Malort face looks like. Whenever I bring up my mission to find my grandfather to my fellow genealogists, they always end up singing the praises of AncestryDNA. Their reason: the site lets you to link your Ancestry.com family tree Continue Reading
Get it? Because “mẹ” means mom in Vietnamese. Oh, c’mon. It’s a solid pun. After getting my results back from 23andMe, I knew that I had to get my mom’s results in as well. Not only would her results confirm my suspicions that my African heritage came from her Continue Reading