DNA extracted from bones at a burial site in a rocky valley on a remote island in the South Atlantic could hold important information for those with ancestral roots in Africa.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1974" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508-300x221.png" alt="oldafricamap1508" width="300" height="221" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508-300x221.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508.png 350w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
A fascinating article in <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/what-dna-reveals-about-st-helena-s-freed-slaves-1.21096?WT.mc_id=SFB_NNEWS_1508_RHBox">Nature</a>, describes work led by <a href="http://snm.ku.dk/english/staffsnm/staff/?pure=en/persons/368359">Hannes Schroeder</a> to make that connection. Schroeder, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, and his team have extracted genetic material from skeletal remains of some of the thousands of slaves who were freed by the British Navy between 1840 and 1865.
Taken from slave ships on their way to the New World as many as 20,000 people, many of them children, were saved from enslavement in the Americas, but were then unceremoniously deposited on the island of St. Helena. Sick and emaciated from their brutal ordeal many of them died there. The island’s Rupert Valley is the final resting place of more than 8,000 people.

This little known history would have been forgotten altogether if the graves were not found a few years ago during a construction project. The find, and the promise of sequencing the DNA of some of the bones there, offered Schroeder and his team a tantalizing opportunity – a chance to sequence individuals who’d been destined for slavery in the New World but never got there. Their DNA could reveal what written records have failed to track, the specific regions in Africa from where slaves came.
This is the part of Schroeder’s work that is most interesting for us here at 23andMe, where our own <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/the-african-genetics-project">African Genetics Project</a> is also trying to make that connection, albeit in a different way.
While much has been done to document the history of the enslavement of the more than 12 million Africans who survived the brutal Middle Passage to wind up in bondage in the New World, this effort, and 23andMe’s, offers a chance to look beyond the limitations of the written record. We know that the Africans enslaved in the Americas were not a monolithic group but individuals from different cultures and with different languages who were forced together into slavery.
Schroeder and his team have already sequenced partial genomes of about 20 individuals, and found that they represent a diverse collection of African groups. As the article notes some of the samples indicate shared ancestry with West and Central African ethnic groups, such as the Bamoun and Kongo. But for the others, matches could not be found. This is likely because there are not diverse reference data sets to compare them too. Schroeder is hoping that two medically-related sequencing efforts in Africa will help change that.
In the meantime 23andMe’s African Ancestry Project has begun to recruit people in the United States, who emigrated, or whose parents emigrated, from several specific countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve its set of African reference data. This will not just improve the information we can report back to people of African descent, it could also help yield new insights into the TransAtlantic slave trade.
“23andMe researchers hope to identify direct connections between locations in Africa and the Americas, possibly adding important details to the historical record,” said Joanna Mountain, Ph.D., senior director of research at 23andMe.
Like 23andMe Schroeder and his team are looking to make direct connections from specific locations in Africa and the individuals who wound up in St. Helena. In turn this may also help people of African descent living in the Americas a bridge to their own ancestral past.
Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist at Howard University in Washington DC who is sequencing ancient DNA from other slave burial sites, is quoted in the Nature article as saying that his kind of research has the potential of changing people’s perception of the past.
“It&#8217;s a very personal thing for us,” Jackson said. “It&#8217;s not just ancient DNA. It&#8217;s ancient DNA of potential ancestors.”

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Tracing Back to Africa

With the holiday season upon us, 23andMe is sprucing up its paternal haplogroup assignments!
With 23andMe population geneticist and Y-chromosome expert <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/a-conversation-with-population-geneticist-david-poznik/">David Poznik</a> at the lead, we’ve updated our Haplogroups <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24528" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/paternal-haplo.001-e1478561295877-300x278.jpg" alt="paternal-haplo-001" width="300" height="278" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/paternal-haplo.001-e1478561295877-300x278.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/paternal-haplo.001-e1478561295877.jpg 591w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Report and paternal haplogroup assignemtns. The update reflects significant developments in the field over the past few years. We’re also excited to introduce yHaplo™, our new open-source software for researchers.

<h6>
Major Refinements to the Y-Chromosome Tree</h6>

Each generation, fathers pass down copies of their Y chromosomes to their sons. Small variations arise over time and accumulate in patterns that uniquely mark individual paternal lineages. To trace the evolutionary history of these lineages, scientists study DNA sequence differences between and among modern populations. Using this information they have built a &#8220;tree&#8221; that shows how global Y chromosomes relate to one another.


However, our understanding of the Y-chromosome tree had, for many years, been limited by our incomplete knowledge of Y-chromosome diversity. Because paternal haplogroup names reflected the structure of the tree, each new insight required renaming haplogroups. This in turn made it difficult to interpret paternal haplogroup assignments from one year to the next. 
Recent research, including a study published in Nature Genetics, has drastically refined the structure of the tree. For that work, David and an international team of 42 scientists used complete Y-chromosome sequences from around the world to carry out the largest-ever study of genetic variation within the human Y chromosome (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27111036">Poznik et al.</a>). This research identified more than 65,000 Y-chromosome genetic variants. The study vastly increases our understanding of the tree and sets a new standard for tracing male lineages through migrations that have occurred over the millennia of human history.
 
<h6>
What’s Changing </h6>

Male customers on the new 23andMe website experience can expect a couple of changes to their paternal haplogroup assignment with this update. Female customers may also see changes to the paternal haplogroup assignments of male relatives and friends in other parts of the website.
First, we have substantially updated our Y-chromosome tree to reflect the work of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (as of January 4, 2016).
In most cases, the updated haplogroup assignments are equivalent to previous assignments or differ only slightly. However, since much more is now known about the tree, we can provide more information about an individual haplogroup’s history and how it relates to others.
The second major update is a change to the naming system we use to report paternal haplogroups. Until recently, the convention was to use an often lengthy series of letters and numbers indicating the path of branches from the most recent common ancestor of all men to each haplogroup.
The problem is that these names changed from year-to-year as the tree was refined, making it difficult to know from the name alone which haplogroup male customers actually carry.
To reduce confusion, we have moved to a system of shorter and more stable names. Each name uses a letter to identify the major branch of the tree and the name of a genetic marker unique to a specific haplogroup. For example, if we previously reported your paternal haplogroup as “Q1a3a,” we now report it as “Q-M3,” indicating that your Y-chromosome lineage belongs to a subgroup of haplogroup Q that bears the M3 marker. Because this new representation focuses on a specific informative marker associated with your haplogroup, it will be much more stable over time.
<div id="attachment_24530" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-24530" class="wp-image-24530 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Small-Paternal-2.001-e1478563794644-300x122.jpg" alt="small-paternal-2-001" width="300" height="122" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Small-Paternal-2.001-e1478563794644-300x122.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Small-Paternal-2.001-e1478563794644.jpg 570w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />A small section of the updated Y-chromosome tree illustrating the marker-based haplogroup naming convention. The structure of the tree was aggregated from the literature by the International Society of Genetic Genealogy.</div>
For more information on the changes coming to the haplogroups report, visit 23andMe’s customer care page, here.
<h6>yHaplo™, a New Open-Source Research Tool </h6>

The paternal haplogroup update doesn’t end with the tree. As a member of the research team at 23andMe, Poznik has developed a new algorithm to rapidly and robustly identify Y-chromosome haplogroups in very large samples. In addition, he has implemented the algorithm as the yHaplo software package.
This software is very flexible; it runs on full Y-chromosome sequences and on smaller sets of genotyped markers. Furthermore, it is easy to incorporate updates as researchers around the world continue to gather data and learn more about the Y-chromosome tree.
At 23andMe, we’re using this software to provide paternal haplogroup assignments to our customers.
As we believe the yHaplo software package can be an extremely useful tool to help drive research, we have made it available under a custom open-source software license for non-commercial research use. To learn more about yHaplo, read our <a href="https://permalinks.23andme.com/pdf/23-13_paternal_haplogroups_yHaplo.pdf">white paper</a> or head to the <a href="https://github.com/23andMe/yhaplo">code repository</a>!

Updates to 23andMe Paternal Haplogroup Assignments

To enhance its research and enrich its customer experience, 23andMe is launching the African Genetics Project, <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24241" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Africa_icon-300x244.jpg" alt="Africa_icon" width="300" height="244" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Africa_icon-300x244.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Africa_icon-768x625.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Africa_icon-1024x834.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Africa_icon-880x717.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Africa_icon-1180x961.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Africa_icon.jpg 2014w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />recruiting people who emigrated from, or whose parents emigrated from several specific countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Africa is the birthplace of all humanity, and its people are the most genetically diverse in all the world, yet our knowledge of that diversity is limited. This newest project follows continuing efforts by 23andMe to enrich our understanding of the human story and increase diversity in genetic research, while also providing more detailed ancestry results for 23andMe customers with recent African ancestry.
23andMe’s African Genetics Project is offering kits at no cost to people with all four of their grandparents born in the same African country or from the same ethnic or tribal group within one of the following countries – Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Ivory coast, Liberia, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan and Togo.
The west African countries in that list are a priority for 23andMe because the majority of slaves brought from Africa to the Americas were brought from these African locations. We are also gathering data from individuals with all four grandparents from Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia to aid in identifying ancestry for more recent immigrants and to improve our reference populations for Africa.
This effort is unique in many respects, but primarily because it allows people of African ancestry who know where in Africa their family came from, to help others with African ancestry discover more about their own African roots. The effort may also yield insights into the TransAtlantic slave trade, and migrations within Africa over the last few hundred years.
While the goals of this project are focused primarily on improving ancestry insights, the African Genetics Project is part of a long list of efforts undertaken by 23andMe to improve diversity in research. Some estimates show that<a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7355/full/475163a.html"> more than 90 percent</a> of the research into the genetics underlying disease is on individuals of European descent alone, but for many conditions an individual’s ethnicity plays an important role and the insights from those studies fall short of helping people of other backgrounds.
There are a number of reasons for the lack of diversity  – historical, cultural, economic and social – but by reaching out and recruiting people from all backgrounds it will also ensure that everyone benefits from advances in genetic science.
Over the last five years, 23andMe has undertaken several initiatives on that front including its <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/roots-into-the-future/">Roots Into the Future</a> project to study the genetics of disease impacting African Americans, the first-ever <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/a-webinar-on-the-genetic-landscape-of-the-usa/">genetic portrait of the United States</a> that mapped the country’s Native American, African and European ancestry, and more recently a NIH-funded project to develop a new way to detect disease causing genetic variants among ethnically mixed populations.
Taken together, these initiatives have helped 23andMe improve diversity in its research. The African Genetics Project is part of that same effort and it will allow 23andMe to identify genetic similarities of people from specific locations in Africa. This in turn will not only improve what we can tell our customers with African ancestry, but will also aid our research into how people migrated within and from Africa over the last 5,000 years.
Learn more <a href="https://www.23andme.com/africa-project/">here</a> and enroll today.

The African Genetics Project

A recent article in Quartz with the headline “<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-6586" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-300x300.jpg" alt="23andMe_Logo_blog" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog.jpg 350w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />in genetics research, and biomedical research in general. 
It’s also an opportunity to address mischaracterizations of our science within the article, and motivations ascribed to our research that are just plain wrong.  We’ve raised these issues with Quartz and feel strongly enough to share our thoughts more publicly to hopefully steer the discussion in an informative and worthwhile direction, since it is a conversation that should be had by the broader scientific community. 


Genetics research has a diversity problem. This is widely recognized, but when you see the data it’s staggering. For example, a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708540/#R2">2011 article</a> cited data showing that only 4 percent (!) of all genome-wide association studies had been conducted using samples of non-European descent.
<h6>The Implications</h6>
There are very real repercussions when research is limited to just one group. The seriousness of this situation was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/science/genetic-tests-for-a-heart-disorder-mistakenly-find-blacks-at-risk.html?_r=0">demonstrated in a recent study</a> showing that due to biased research, African Americans are more likely than whites to mistakenly be told that they carry a mutation putting them at risk for the heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, when in fact they do not.
This type of mistake has serious emotional and medical implications.
The lack of diversity in genetics research is reflective of the general lack of diversity in all aspects of health research. There are lots of reasons – historical, cultural, political. For good overviews we suggest reading this piece from <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2015/10/30/racial-discrimination-modern-medicine-384961.html">Newsweek</a> and this article from <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001918">Oh, et al.</a> These authors eloquently and forcefully explain the situation.


What does this have to do with 23andMe?

<h6>23andMe&#8217;s Reference Data</h6>

Though we do conduct our own research and are increasingly able to provide reports based on our own published studies, for the most part 23andMe is dependent on peer-reviewed scientific research published by others to fuel the reports in our product. Lack of diversity in what is studied by the research community at large therefore impacts the results we are able to provide to customers. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24211" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ancestry-Comp-Home-300x190.png" alt="Ancestry Comp Home" width="300" height="190" /> 
When it comes to our Ancestry Composition feature (which tells people the proportion of their DNA that comes from each of 31 populations), the results we provide to customers are derived by comparing their DNA to what are known as “reference datasets”.
We use publicly available data from academic initiatives that have specifically sought to characterize large swaths of the human genetic diversity of our planet: the <a href="http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/readings/Li2008.pdf">Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP)</a>, <a href="http://www.sanger.ac.uk/resources/downloads/human/hapmap3.html">HapMap3</a> and the <a href="http://www.1000genomes.org/">1000 Genomes Project</a>.
We augment this public data with information provided by a small percentage of our customers whose data meet our rigorous standards for being included in a reference dataset.

<h6>Is Bigger Better?</h6>

The author of the Quartz article focused in on the numbers of people in our most granular population references. She specifically questioned how we can claim to provide accurate results about her ancestry (she identifies as Korean, but her 23andMe results indicated Japanese and Chinese ancestry, as well as Korean) when there are data for “only” 76 Koreans in our reference data set. It’s an understandable worry – so much of what we hear about these days in science is the power of “big data”.  
Bigger must be better, right? Not necessarily.
For Ancestry Composition, high accuracy can often be obtained with relatively modest sample sizes. Size matters more when it comes to granularity, not accuracy.
We’ve done a comprehensive evaluation of our algorithm and reference datasets, and are confident in the accuracy of the results we report for customers with Korean or any other ancestry.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty you can check out this <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry_composition_guide/">white paper</a> (in which we describe the multiple steps that go into producing accurate results and the metrics demonstrating how well our algorithm works), this <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/23andmes-newest-feature-explores-your-ancestry/">blog post</a> or this <a href="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20121027_ancestry_painting_methods_poster.pdf">scientific poster</a>.
<h6>Granularity</h6>
The gist is that we only go as granular as we can for a given confidence threshold. Customers can adjust their results from a 90 percent confidence level (“Conservative”) down to 50 percent (“Speculative”). If we say that a section of DNA is most likely Japanese or Chinese or Korean at one of our higher confidence thresholds, we stand behind it.  If we weren’t sure that we could make the distinction, we’d go up a level and say that that DNA reflected “East Asian” ancestry.
The information would not be incorrect, simply less specific.
While the impact of adding more Korean individuals (or individuals of any of the groups we currently have represented in our reference datasets) is likely to be small in terms of improving the accuracy of our Ancestry Composition results, it could help us add more granularity to our results – i.e., groups of people from more specifically defined geographical areas. That way, for example, we might be able to distinguish between Cameroonian and Ghanaian ancestry, instead of lumping ancestry from these different locations under the label “West African.”


The author of the Quartz article correctly points out that we do have a lot of data and granularity for Europe (providing, for example, separate French &amp; German and British &amp; Irish groupings), but not for the rest of the world. She implies that this is driven by a lack of effort or concern on our part. The truth is that we have a great deal of customer data to enhance the public data available for Europeans because the vast majority of our customers have European ancestry, and several thousand of them are eligible to contribute to our reference dataset. This is not because of a “commercially driven ethnic bias,” and we have for several years been making in-roads to improve the diversity in our research and reference data.
This is where we come back to where we began – this is not just a 23andMe issue but an issue with diversity in genetics research in general.

<h6>23andMe&#8217;s Diversity Efforts</h6>

There’s only so much we can do as a single company, but we are trying. We funded the genotyping of the HGDP samples, data which are publicly available. <a href="https://www.23andme.com/roots-study/">Our Roots into the Future</a> project enrolled 10,000 African Americans in our research program, and our <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andmes-african-ancestry-project/">African Ancestry Project </a>helped contribute to our West African reference dataset. We recently collaborated to obtain data from for over 400 representatives of populations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of our researchers was <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/news/announcements/23andme-scientists-improving-diversity-in-genetic-research/">awarded NIH funding</a> to develop new methods for uncovering genetic variants associated with disease, especially in those with non-European ancestry. There are additional programs in the works, and we look forward to sharing more as we can.


We’re also always looking for more publicly available data that we can use to improve our product and inform our research. But it’s not as simple as just pulling studies for a given group or purchasing reference data.  There are important scientific and ethical considerations that must be attended to when collecting population data and 23andMe is not willing to compromise our standards in the interest of appearing more diverse.


We can always do better. We want people – researchers, customers, journalists – to keep holding us accountable and pushing us to lead the way in consumer genetics and genetics research. But accusing us of racial bias and shoddy science is unfair. It reduces an important conversation to clickbait.


Please share your comments here but don&#8217;t limit it to our blog – discuss your ideas, raise awareness and spread the word that the lack of research diversity is a real problem. We want people to have informed opinions and conversations on this topic since the impact of genetics research will only continue to grow.

The Real Issue: Diversity in Genetics Research

As a wedding planner, Wendy Wojcik pays close attention to even the smallest of details, yet in her own life she always ignored one big one – the identity of her biological father.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24251" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Wendy W Quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Wendy-W-Quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />


That all changed recently. Upon reaching her 50th birthday and mourning the loss of her mother, Wendy realized she wanted to know who her father was, what he may have passed on to her, and what it might mean for her now.
“When I turned 50, I wanted to know those details,” she said. “Then I got 23andMe as a gift, and I’ve learned so much. It’s been the gift that keeps on giving. All of this stems out of doing 23andMe.” 

<h6>Different Dads</h6>

What she learned changed her, her two sisters and her brother. Wendy and her siblings grew up in the Pacific Northwest knowing that their dad wasn’t their biological father. Their mom was always pretty frank about it, letting them know that they each had different fathers, but never telling them who those men were.


“We all look different,” said Wendy.

Their mom, who’d been a nurse, shared a few details of her rough years when as a teenager she had her kids, but it wasn&#8217;t much. The details were a few names that meant very little, as well as some dates and cities, but it wasn’t enough to identify their fathers. And over time, Wendy and her siblings just stopped asking. They didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. And, according to Wendy, they were fine with not knowing, or at least they thought they were.
“When you don’t know, it’s always in the back of your head, but we’d tried to forget about it,” she said.

<h6>Turning 50</h6>

And in a way Wendy, her two sisters and her brother did forget about it. But then two things happened – Wendy turned 50; and her mother died. Suddenly Wendy felt she had permission to start her search.
In early 2016, a friend gave Wendy a 23andMe kit as a gift. Wendy sent her sample back to the lab and waited. Her results came in and that’s when things started happening, really fast. She connected right away with someone who was listed as a close cousin.
“I recognized the last name,” said Wendy. “It was one of the last names of the men my mom dated when I was young.”


She thought that   it was more than just a coincidence, and her cousin must be related to the man her mother once dated and that he, “must be my dad.”

<h6>A Big Surprise</h6>

Her other surprise was that her younger sister Elena was not her half sister, as she’d been lead to believe, but her full sister. They share the same biological father.
Through her cousin found on 23andMe, Wendy and her sister were able to find the man they believed was their biological father. He was still alive, so they reached out and he immediately wanted to meet. They eventually were able to confirm he was their father, their mother’s former high school boyfriend.
Wendy immediately realized how much this search and information could help the rest of her family.


“It was so fast and as soon as I found my father, I said, ‘we’re all going to get a kit, and we’re all going to find out who our fathers were,’” Wendy said.

<h6>Narrowing Down the Possibilities</h6>

One by one over a few months, Wendy’s other sister, Tamara, and her brother Paul, tested with 23andMe. They each found cousins who were able to help them in their search. One of their cousins, well-versed in using genetic genealogy, helped Wendy quickly sort through matches and identify the most likely candidates.
And they used the bits of information they had from their mother like dates, names, and cities to narrow the search.
And then they found who they had been looking for. Wendy’s oldest sister’s biological father turned out to be a former race car driver, and their brother’s father was their mom’s former square dancing teacher. They were all still alive and Wendy and her siblings, who range in age from 49 to 55, each got to meet their fathers. They all welcomed the news.  Wendy and her siblings got a chance to meet their extended families and other half siblings for the first time.


“The best part about this is that even though our mom is gone, we’re gaining a whole new family, some of whom were even looking for us and all seem happy to know us,” Wendy said. “It’s kind of cool that even though we lost a parent we gained a new one.”

Our Three Fathers

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Maria felt conflicted.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24234" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Maria quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Maria-quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />


Here she was celebrating her parents’ 63rd wedding anniversary, and the last thing she wanted to do was upset her elderly mother. But on the flipside she had to ask her.
Maria now knew her mother’s secret, a secret that brought up many questions, serious questions. Maria wanted to know why her mother hid her true origins. Maria wanted to ask those questions and so many more, and her mother was the only one who could answer them.


“So I said to myself: ‘If she mentions the necklace, I’m going to say something,’” said Maria, a mother of young twins who lives with her husband in New Jersey.

<h6>A Mother&#8217;s Secret</h6>

Her parents had come back to New Jersey for their anniversary celebration. The couple met in New York City at a high school dance. Maria’s mom was 18 when she married her father. The couple raised four kids together, part of a large extended Italian family. But that large family was all on Maria’s dad’s side of the family. She knew nothing about her mom’s family.


“My mom’s story was that she was adopted and her parents died and she had no siblings,” Maria said.
Her mother told her kids very little about her biological family except to say there was a rumor that they were Italians who’d immigrated through Argentina to the United States.
Yet after testing with 23andMe and seeing her results, Maria discovered that her mother’s story just didn’t add up. Maria was only half Italian, and almost 20 percent African.


“When I saw it at first I was like ‘wait a second!’” Maria said.
She thought it was wrong.
When she told her sisters and brother they were in denial.
“Mom can’t be black?” they said.


Or could she?
<h6>Hidden African Ancestry</h6>
Both Maria’s sister and brother tested and they too had close to the same percentage African ancestry. So after that initial shock, Maria started to dig a little deeper, connect with cousins found through 23andMe, and that’s how she pieced together her mother’s family story.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24235 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_4769-e1471282681353-300x213.jpg" alt="IMG_4769" width="300" height="213" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_4769-e1471282681353-300x213.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_4769-e1471282681353.jpg 723w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
The family’s story is surprising, but finding “hidden African ancestry” is much more common than many know. While most African Americans are aware that they have “white” ancestry – a vestige of the ugly history of slavery – fewer “white” Americans know that they may have “hidden African ancestry” in their families. This too is a legacy of slavery and segregation in America. For those families with hidden ancestry, it means that at some point in history someone in their family likely “passed” for white.
Each story is unique but commonly this was to escape the consequences of racism directed at African Americans that limited job and education opportunities.
For Maria learning this about her mother, didn’t so much change her identity as it changed how she looked at her family.
“It’s strange,” Maria said. “I grew up thinking I was one way and actually I’m not who I thought I was.”

<h6>Identity</h6>

Maria wanted to know why had her mother kept this secret for so long, but before she asked her questions she wanted to be sure, so she dug a little deeper. And then that day at church she said a prayer. She told herself that if her mother asked about the necklace she’d take it as a sign that it was OK to ask her mother.
As they left the church her mother noticed the necklace telling her daughter how much she liked it. Maria took it as a sign to start asking questions.
“It’s your sister’s necklace,” Maria told her mom.”


Her mother, who had always told her children that she’d been an only child, was stunned.


“’My sister? What do you mean my sister?’” Maria’s mother said.

<h6>The Great Migration</h6>

Maria told her mom whom it had come from and that she had not just found her mother’s sister but connected with a brother and a few more aunts.
Maria had learned that her mother wasn’t of Italian origin, nor was her biological family originally from Argentina, as she’d once told her kids. Her mother was born in Illinois. Her parents were African Americans from Mississippi, and her mother had had at least 19 siblings. Her mother’s family had moved from the Mississippi to Chicago for job opportunities, part of the wave of African Americans to move north in what is called the “<a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129827444">Great Migration</a>.”


Maria had learned that at some point her mother and three of her siblings, who could pass for white, moved to New York City. Maria’s mom was 15 at the time. The four siblings used a Latino sounding last name. Over the years they either lost ties or cut off contact with the rest of the family back in Illinois and Chicago. Maria’s mom soon met the man, who would be her husband at a school dance. When they got married it caused another rift in the family. After the marriage, Maria’s mother lost contact with her three siblings in New York.
Maria learned about this from relatives she found through 23andMe. One of the connections she made was with cousins in California who were the children of her mother’s brother.
<h6>Siblings Connect After Decades Apart</h6>
After making the connection Maria told her mom and together they traveled together to visit her mother’s 96 year-old brother. The two hadn’t seen each other in 64 years. Maria was also able to find two of her mother’s sisters who were still alive. She talks to them weekly and recently traveled to Chicago to meet one of them and her newly found cousins in person. These connections have given Maria a chance to see family photos of her grandparents, her mother as a young woman, as well as aunts and uncles she never knew she had.


“It’s fascinating and crazy,” Maria said. “I never knew these people existed and now it&#8217;s like I&#8217;ve known them my whole life.&#8221;


As for learning about her and her family’s African American ancestry, Maria said it didn’t really change how she thought about herself. It did change how she thought of her family, and the power of being connected to all these family members she never knew before.


“To me it’s an amazing story of a family’s racial divide, but with a very happy ending,” she said.

Bridging A Family’s Racial Divide

For his big birthday Adam Keim wrote out a to-do list titled – “40 for 40.”<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24145" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Adam quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />


It included little things like walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, volunteering for a day, and getting a massage.
“These are mostly things I have never done, things I have needed to do, and a few that I haven’t done in a long time,” Adam wrote across the top.


These were modest endeavors for a man facing his 40s, who wanted to spend a little time savoring what’s around him, take better care of himself, and maybe have some fun. But if you saw the list, you’d wonder why it took Adam until number 27 to include the one thing that he was always curious about – start researching who his biological family was.
“I always knew I was adopted but I never did anything about finding my natural parents,” he said.


Adam knew that he was born in San Diego, he was adopted when he was 4-months old, and that the foster parents called him Mike.
“I really knew nothing more,” Adam said.


Then Adam’s partner, Steve, gave him a 23andMe kit for Christmas. Little did Adam know, it would open up an entirely new personal history.

<h6>Starting from Scratch</h6>

From his 23andMe results, Adam found many DNA relatives including a few second and third cousins who sent him messages. They exchanged messages, but quickly realized it would be hard to determine the source of their DNA connection because of Adam being adopted.


&#8220;I had nothing to offer them,” he said. “No surnames. No history. Nothing at all.&#8221;


When Adam had just about given up on 23andMe and his search for his birth family, a bizarre string of messages changed his life.

<div style="float: right; text-align: justified; width: 350px; background-color: #eee; padding: 15px; margin-left: 10px;">Finding Lisa
Authorities believe Lisa was kidnapped as a toddler and held by a man until she was five. The man who took her was convicted of murder for killing a woman and sentenced to prison. He later died in prison without revealing where Lisa came from.

Now 30 years later, detectives from the Crimes Against Children Detail of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department are working with genetic genealogist and DNA expert Barbara Rae-Venter to find Lisa’s biological family. Lisa, whose name is being withheld to protect her current identity, was too young at the time of her abduction to know or give any information about her biological parents or where she is from. Authorities are not even sure in which state or country she was abducted; her abductor had been in Quebec, Canada and all over the United States from the New England states to California.

They are not even sure when Lisa was born, but estimate it was about 1981, based on Lisa’s dental development at the time she was recovered. They also believe she was younger than two when she was abducted.For more information on the case or to learn how to help, email Barbara Rae-Venter at GenealogyConsult@gmail.com. Barbara is a retired patent attorney who specialized in biotechnology. In addition to a J.D., Barbara has a Ph.D. in biology, and before attending law school, taught biochemistry and endocrinology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston,Texas.

</div>
A profile had appeared on his list of DNA relatives that wasn’t there previously. It listed Lisa as a likely second or third cousin.
He started receiving messages from a woman named Barbara Rae-Venter who was working with Lisa, and she asked Adam to “share genomes”.


She told him she was a volunteer with DNAadoption, and asked him to send his response to the DNAadoption website query line and that she’d in turn be able to put him in touch with a volunteers who could help him in his search.
<h6>
 More about Lisa</h6>

Even after sharing genomes, Adam was suspicious about the strange messages. He thought it might be a scam or ploy to get money from him. So after not replying to some of her messages, he got a long message from Barbara. She explained that she was working with a deputy from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to help Lisa – not her real name – learn who she is and try to find her own biological family.
As a toddler, Lisa had been kidnapped and was held captive for several years. After a few years, she managed to escape. Her kidnapper was later arrested and put in prison, where he later died. Unfortunately, he never offered up any information about Lisa’s origins, and as a result, the authorities could never identify Lisa’s biological parents to reunite her with her family.
Now more than 30 years later, with the help of expert researchers and genetic genealogists, as well as advancements in DNA testing, they are trying to help Lisa finally find answers. (See the sidebar to learn more about Lisa’s story and the effort to help her.)


At first the story they told seemed so awful that Adam had a hard time believing it.
“It was like something you see on a Thursday night TV crime show. This type of stuff doesn’t actually happen to real people,” Adam said.


They asked Adam for his help.
<div id="attachment_24148" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-24148" class="wp-image-24148 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Rob-Adam-300x277.jpeg" alt="Rob &#038; Adam" width="300" height="277" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Rob-Adam-300x277.jpeg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Rob-Adam.jpeg 537w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Adam, on the right, and his brother Robert.</div>
He quickly shared his birth certificate and adoption records with Barbara, which included his adoptive mother’s maiden name and his birth date.
<h6>Finding His Mother</h6>
This information would allow Barbara, with the help of an adoption search angel, Diana Iwanski, to obtain information from his original birth certificate through a reverse look up microfiche. Within a day, Barbara and Diana had obtained Adam’s mother’s maiden name, his half-brother’s name (Robert), as well as the name Adam was given at birth – Michael Richard Kravan.


Although the deputy asked Adam to wait before trying to contact any family members until he could confirm the information on his birth mother by obtaining a copy of his original birth certificate from San Diego County, that didn’t stop Adam from looking online. Within minutes of learning his birth name and the name of his half-brother, he quickly found his profile on Facebook. It was there that Adam found pictures of his birth mother.
“When I saw them I just started balling my eyes out,” he said. “It’s hard to describe, being in your 40s and your whole life not knowing anything about your birth family and then all of a sudden, you see them. It all happened so fast. I went from getting a crazy email about a kidnapped girl to finding my birth family within a few days.”


All those emotions were mixed together when the deputy got back in touch with Adam a few months later and gave him the OK to contact his birth mother, Patti.
When they finally spoke on the phone, they were both overwrought with emotion. He tried to put her nerves at ease by explaining that he held no judgement, just joy for giving him life.

“I told her I had a great life and am very happy. I am very grateful that she put me up for adoption versus one of the alternatives.”

<h6>Close to Home</h6>

Patti and Robert only lived a few hours from Adam’s home in Oakland, California. He drove up to meet Robert first, then met Patti a few weeks later. The three met several times in those first few months and spent many hours together talking. Adam started getting answers to the holes in his past, and his mother was able to explain to Adam why he’d been given up for adoption.
“She had three children – all with different men,” Adam said. “She was a troubled young woman at the time; lots of drugs and alcohol and unfortunate situations that made raising a child tough.”


She in turn told him that he had another older brother, who she hadn’t seen for decades. Now Adam has put finding his oldest brother on his list of things to do in the coming year.
“Now that I’ve started learning about my birth family, I want to learn more and more,” Adam claimed.
<div id="attachment_24152" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-24152" class="size-medium wp-image-24152" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-His-Grandfather.001-300x193.jpg" alt="Adam's high school graduation picture, right, and a photo of his grandfather." width="300" height="193" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-His-Grandfather.001-300x193.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Adam-His-Grandfather.001.jpg 450w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Adam&#8217;s high school graduation picture, right, and a photo of his grandfather.</div>
<h6>
 Finding his birth father</h6>

His own search led to finding an uncle, Aaron, who is a half-brother of his birth mother, whom she never knew about before. Aaron’s father, Adam’s maternal grandfather was an actor in the 70s and 80s, and shares a striking physical resemblance to Adam.
DNA testing of Adam’s birth mother confirmed that Adam was connected to Lisa through his biological father.
Based on the family tree that Barbara built for Lisa and DNA information, both Lisa and Adam are connected to a man who was one of each of their closest matches. Through that connection Barbara identified the family she believes also include Adam’s father. DNA testing of a member of that family identified him as likely an uncle of Adam’s. But the definitive answer about who his father is, is still being sought. It’s another piece of his and Lisa’s puzzle they are trying solve.
He still can’t help but feel heartbroken by his cousin Lisa’s story.


“She deserves to find her family too,” he said. “I owe her so much and I look forward to the day I can meet her and thank her in person.”


The whole experience has brought peace to Adam. He always felt a disconnect with his adoptive family; they didn’t always get along and had very different personalities and interests. Now, finding relatives who are outgoing and creative like him, not to mention share physical and character traits, gives him a sense of belonging he didn’t have before.


“This entire experience has helped explain why I am the way I am,” he said, “and I am forever grateful.”

A List For Midlife

By Jonathan Fischer
My name is Jonathan Fischer.
I was adopted shortly after birth in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24099 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Jonathan F quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jonathan-F-quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />knowing more than where I was born, I always wondered about my origins and who my parents were. But I was also afraid about what I might find out, so for years I did nothing.
Then not too long ago I tried 23andMe.
Little did I know how much it would change my life.
My decision to take the leap and explore where I came from started in a small cafe along Alki Beach in West Seattle in the summer of 2013. I sat and talked to a dear friend, who is also a genealogist. I told her about both my curiosity and my fears.
She recommended trying 23andMe, so I did.


Right away I learned some health information, and that I was over 3 percent Neanderthal, something my wife says explains a lot.
But I also found people I was related to genetically. Using 23andMe’s “DNA Relatives,” I connected with many cousins some very distant and others much closer and even received a message from one of these close cousins. Turned out he was related to me through my paternal side, and, fortunately for me, he was also a genealogy buff.
He told me that finding me – a second cousin he’d never heard of – piqued his interest. How were we connected, he wondered. Our emails finally led to a phone conversation.
Although my initial intent hadn’t been to find relatives, when he asked me if I wanted to know the identity of my biological father, I didn’t hesitate:


“Yes!” I told him. 
Analyzing a family tree, he used a simple process of elimination to identify the man he thought was my father, and offered up a name.
After that phone conversation I wondered what I had just done. I had no idea what piercing the veil of secrecy would mean for me or this man and his family, but finding a name pushed me to take the next step, so I began taking a more traditional approach: filling out a form with the state of Wisconsin’s Department of Children and Families asking for my adoption file. This would give me access to a redacted file of my adoption.


What I got was my birth certificate and some basic facts about my biological mother but without any identifying information. I learned that only a single parent was listed on my original birth certificate, as my biological mother had not chosen to establish paternity. Although paternity was not established, there were details from the caseworker about my alleged father. Enough detail in fact that I was able to compare some of that information to the information supplied by my newly found second cousin, giving me some confidence that indeed I had the correct name for my biological father.


So in January 2014 I took a deep breath, and wrote him a letter.
The day it arrived, my biological father called four times trying to get in touch. When I got home from work, I quickly called him back and we talked into the night. It was like being born all over again. He confirmed that I was indeed his son, something we triple checked later when he also tested with 23andMe. We stayed in touch and arranged to meet in person.
In August of 2014 I met him, his brother, my uncle, and my half-brothers and sisters at a family dinner arranged for my visit. I had to muster all my courage to walk into that room. While my half-brothers and sisters were initially shocked to find out they had an older brother, they were friendly but guarded. Our relationship has grown since then.
Back when I had asked the state for my adoption file, I had also checked a box requesting contact with my biological mother. I was fortunate for how easy it was for my caseworker to find her.
Because of the success with my father, I also I got my hopes up that I would get a chance to meet her too. But that was not the case, at least at first. After much consideration she declined to establish contact. For years, I’d never allowed myself to even hope I would find her, but being so close and then her declining to make contact was disappointing to say the least. I was crushed.
But I decided not to let it go at that. I still wanted to know who she was.
Using the information I had from my case file, as well as information from the 1940 Census, I found her name. Although there was nothing stopping me from writing her a letter, I felt any contact that didn’t go through the state would be totally inappropriate. Occasionally I would Google my mother’s family. It was a difficult time. I worried that although I knew who they were, I’d never get a chance to meet them.
Then I thought of a quote from the Book of Lamentations:
“The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”


So I waited.


In May of 2016, I was visiting my biological dad for his birthday when I received a text from my wife. Check your email she said. There was a message from my caseworker telling me that my biological mother had changed her mind. She was ready to have contact, and my caseworker wanted to know if I was still interested in meeting her. I said yes, emphatically.


A few weeks later I went to Michigan to meet my mom, and my half-brothers and half-sister and their families.  My half brothers and sister were delighted to find out that my existence was real after all.
Since connecting with them, I’ve been able to establish close relationships with both my biological parents. I talk to my mother every week and my father daily.


I’m a lucky man. I once had but one family, now I have three. My adoption experience was special and I was fortunate to have been adopted by a very loving, successful, happy and intelligent couple. After adopting me my parents conceived my sister.
Now I’ve met both my biological parents and their families, who are also filled with successful, happy and intelligent people. I’ve gone from having one sister to having ten siblings, and a passel of nieces and nephews. Not many adoptees have this kind of success finding biological relatives.
I guess I would have to say that I’m a very lucky guy thanks to 23andMe.


Jonathan is a CPA living in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two kids.

A Lucky Man

Editor&#8217;s note: We first ran this blog post a few years back and thought we&#8217;d revisit it for this year&#8217;s July 4th.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-14170 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/declaration_independence_70222_1.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="504" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/declaration_independence_70222_1.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/declaration_independence_70222_1-300x197.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />
Through the magic of the Internet you can now examine the yellowing<a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/images/wtmanltr.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> letters of Thomas Jefferson</a>, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/bf0017s.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Benjamin Franklin’s first ideas for a colonial confederation</a> in his own handwriting and early<a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/images/frag1.jpg"> drafts of the U.S. Constitution</a> complete with strikethroughs and other edits.
For most Americans, especially on<a href="http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb12-ff12.html"> Independence Day</a>, looking at the handwritten notes of some of the country&#8217;s founders offers a visceral connection to the country’s beginning. Seeing their scratch marks on pages faded and wrinkled with age gives people a connection to their history.
In some ways,<a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/"> exploring your ancestry</a> through your DNA stirs up a similar emotional response.
The “writing” in our DNA doesn’t just tell us about ourselves; it tells us about our connection to human history.
As George Church, the Harvard genetics professor and founder of the <a href="http://www.personalgenomes.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Personal Genome Project</a> once said:
“Written records go back to the dawn of written history. DNA goes back to the dawn of human existence.”
Within each of us is a genetic record of <a href="https://www.23andme.com/gen101/prehistory/outofafrica/#harsher_climate_harder_migrations">our ancestry</a>, including on what branch of the world’s family tree our paternal or maternal lines belong. 
While none of the Founding Fathers were customers of 23andMe, we do know a little about their DNA because of publicly-available records of testing done on their direct descendants. 23andMe customers can look back not just at their own ancestry, but they can also see if they share a maternal or paternal line with the likes of Benjamin Franklin,<a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/brief-biography-thomas-jefferson"> Thomas Jefferson</a>,<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/johnadams"> John Adams,</a> and<a href="http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=h000101"> Alexander Hamilton</a>.
Franklin’s maternal line, which traces from his mother to his mother’s mother and so on back in time, is Haplogroup V. This branch of the human family tree is believed to have originated in Europe 12,000 years ago. Only about four percent of Europeans share this haplogroup, which is much more common among Finns, Sardinians and Basques. Known for his wit and wisdom, Franklin also helped draft the Constitution and profoundly influence the character of the Nation. Although he never became president he embodied what many believe to be the essence of what it means to be an American.
Adams, a Harvard-trained lawyer who served as Vice President to George Washington and afterwards the second US President, had the paternal haplogroup R1b1.
This haplogroup also emerged out of Europe, but 30,000 years ago and is common among people of Irish, British, Dutch and German ancestry. (His son John Quincy Adams, the sixth US President, also shared this paternal haplogroup.)
Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third US President, had the unusual paternal Haplogroup T, which is more common among people of the Middle East, although it is also found in England. Jefferson traced his paternal ancestry back to Wales where T is very rare. DNA has also factored into determining that the rumors that Jefferson fathered at least one child <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/historys-mysteries-finding-answers-in-our-dna">with his slave Sally Hemings</a> are probably true.
Finally, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton">Alexander Hamilton</a>, Washington’s Secretary of Treasury and the guy on the $10 bill, had a paternal Haplogroup I1a. This haplogroup is common among Finns, Norwegians and Swedes.
As we consider our country&#8217;s forefathers this Independence Day, these influential men need not be distant historic figures. Rather, a closer look at our DNA may reveal that these men are family. Those of us who share genetic connections to these forefathers can take pride in their family&#8217;s role in the birth of this nation.

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