Thank your lucky clovers because almost everyone in the 23andMe database is connected to someone who is Irish, and plenty of others have at least a wee bit of Irish ancestry.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-20593 size-medium" title="Irish Ancestry" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-300x300.jpeg" alt="Kiss Me I'm Irish" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-300x300.jpeg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-150x150.jpeg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-768x768.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-880x880.jpeg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-271x271.jpeg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-372x372.jpeg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish-574x574.jpeg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kiss-Me-Im-Irish.jpeg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, 23andMe researchers looked at the aggregated and anonymous data of our customers to determine just how many had a connection, even if it was a small one, to the Emerald Isle.
What we found out was that about 87 percent of our more than 600,000 customers have at least a tiny amount of ancestry that is shared with someone of confirmed Irish descent. This doesn’t mean they have Irish ancestry, but that they share ancestry with someone who is Irish. We can do this by looking at DNA segments of a certain length that are shared with people of with confirmed Irish heritage.
For comparison’s sake in the US population about 11 percent of people report that they have Irish ancestry, according to the US Census. Boston has the highest concentration among U.S. cities with more than 20 percent listing themselves as Irish American. The total US population of more than 34 million people who report being Irish American dwarfs the 4.6 million people living in Ireland today. The total population of Ireland makes up only a very small fraction of all the people in the world today with Irish ancestry.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-20611 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Countries-of-Origin_Ireland-copy-300x203.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="203" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Countries-of-Origin_Ireland-copy-300x203.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Countries-of-Origin_Ireland-copy-768x519.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Countries-of-Origin_Ireland-copy-1024x692.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Countries-of-Origin_Ireland-copy-880x594.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Countries-of-Origin_Ireland-copy-1180x797.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Countries-of-Origin_Ireland-copy.jpg 1704w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Just in case you’re calling “blarney” on 23andMe’s estimates, it’s important to note a few things about how we derived our percentage. Because our researchers are looking at DNA segments that are very small – in this case about 7 centimorgans – that probably equates to a common ancestor with someone who is Irish within the last 10 to 12 generations. That’s way, way back.
Although our <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/23andme-makes-more-improvements-to-ancestry-features" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ancestry Composition</a> tool can tell you what percentage of your DNA comes from populations around the world, breaking down the Asian, African or European ancestry. It also can give you finer detail, but the overlapping nature of DNA means that it groups Irish and British ancestry together. To get a better idea of Irish ancestry, customers can look at our Countries of Ancestry tool. This can show a customer DNA they have in common with other people who have confirmed ancestry from various countries, including Ireland. Our researchers used aggregated and anonymous data from all of our customers to determine what the percentage of customers who have shared segments of DNA with people who have confirmed Irish ancestry.
Ultimately we think the numbers mean you don&#8217;t need to to be Irish to be connected to someone who is.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

23andEire

In the early 1990s when he was on the cusp of turning 50, Paul Dodds didn’t have a midlife crisis, he had a midlife surprise.
Paul learned that the man he thought was his father wasn’t.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20446" alt="Paul Dodds - Young Man" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Paul-Dodds-Young-Man-262x300.jpg" width="262" height="300" />
“It kind of made sense because although he was always there, he never bothered with me or my brother (he wasn’t his father either),” said Paul, about his brother who is two years older.
<h6>Searching with 23andMe</h6>
Although he’d never been very close to his dad, it never occurred to him that there might be a reason for that because as he said, “I never knew anything different.”
But the revelation propelled Paul on a two-decade-long search to find his biological father, a quest that only ended after 23andMe helped him find a half-sister and his father’s name. Now he wants to tell people about it.
“I would like to pass on the good things that have happened to me through 23andMe,” Paul said.
<h6>The War</h6>
His story starts in Wales just after the end of the Second World War. Although he didn’t know it, Paul, it turns out, was one of tens of thousands so-called “War Babies,” the offspring of liaisons between American servicemen stationed overseas during the war.
<div id="attachment_20447" style="width: 213px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20447" class="size-medium wp-image-20447" alt="The photo of the man Paul wrongly thought was his father. " src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Paul-Dodds-4-203x300.jpg" width="203" height="300" />The photo of the man Paul wrongly thought was his father.</div>
After he was born, Paul’s mother married a sailor with the UK Merchant Navy named Len. But unbeknownst to Paul – or Paul’s older brother – Len couldn’t have children. The family lived in Cardiff. In 1968 Paul immigrated to Canada where his father had moved after leaving his mom.
“He met me at the train and spent a day with me then that was about it, said Paul, who worked as a steel fabricator.
<h6>A Surprise</h6>
More than 20 years later, doctors contacted Paul about his dad, who had died from very rare cancer. The doctors wanted to know a little bit more about his father’s life and the family’s health history. As Paul scrambled to find out whether it ran in the family, he got a jolt when talking to one of his uncles in England.
“I called my uncle in Newcastle, and when I started asking questions, he immediately said, ‘Paul, Len is not your father,’” he said. “That is how I found out.”
<h6>The Search Begins</h6>
So Paul started looking for the identity of his biological father. He also learned that he and his brother were really half-siblings so he started searching for his brother’s father as well.
“Part of the reason it became so important to find him is that it was deliberately hidden from me,” he said.
His mother gave him false leads, at one point telling Paul that his father had died when the ship he was on sunk. At other times she was simply evasive. He wasn’t sure why perhaps she didn’t know herself, Paul said.
<h6>An Old Photo</h6>
But there were two bits of information that his mother gave him that turned out to be true. His mom once told Paul he had “Jewish blood.” She’d also told Paul that his biological father had known his stepfather during the war when his stepfather had been in the British merchant navy.
But at the time none of that information helped Paul. Instead, he spent years chasing down false leads, and that went on even after his mother died. Soon after she passed away, one of Paul’s daughter’s found an old photograph of a man in a U.S. Army uniform.
<h6>Searching Records</h6>
Paul believed at the time that the man in the photo might have been his father, so he spent years figuring out the unit the man served with by looking at the insignias and ribbons on the uniform. He then tried to cross-reference that with units stationed in the area at the time of his conception. Then he winnowed down names until he thought he had the right man. There had been writing on the back of the photo, which he had analyzed. But all of that painstaking work, which included searching military records in Britain and the United States, all came to naught.
<h6>Turning to DNA</h6>
It wasn’t until last year that Paul finally got a break when he tested with 23andMe. First, he got a DNA Relative match with a first cousin, who helped him track down a woman, who they believed was his half-sister. She recently tested with 23andMe.
Both Paul and his half-sister were ecstatic about finding the connection.
Paul learned his father, Leon Rossien, had been a merchant marine who served on the USS Cristobal, a troopship. Leon was in port around VE Day in May of 1945. Paul believes he may have been conceived during the celebrations around the end of the war.
His sister filled him in on his father’s life. After the war, his biological father had been a jeweler. His father, who died in 1999 not long after Paul started looking for him, also liked to bet on horses and was married four times. Paul learned he had two other half-sisters, who passed away.
“I’ve seen some photos of him and there are some resemblances,” said Paul. “The same long chin and eyebrows.”
He hasn’t yet met his half-sister in person, but they’ve spoken several times on the phone.
“She’s excited by this,” he said.
As for Paul, he has felt a whole range of emotions.
“All these things have fallen into place at last,” he said. “Good things are happening. Thank you 23 and me.”

War Baby

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-20419" alt="Genetic Network SXSW" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork.jpg" width="792" height="1224" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork.jpg 792w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-194x300.jpg 194w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-768x1187.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-663x1024.jpg 663w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-569x880.jpg 569w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-764x1180.jpg 764w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 792px) 100vw, 792px" />For the tens of thousands of people at the <a href="http://sxsw.com/">South by Southwest</a> conference in Austin this week, attending is about more than just seeing new music and hearing about new ideas, it’s about making new connections.
But 23andMe researchers found that just about everybody there is already connected. In fact any two people attending the SXSW conference is connected through just one or two or three other individuals.
<h6>Interconnectedness </h6>
Why is this a revelation?
This isn’t a social connection; it’s a genetic connection. It’s not that you are connected to someone else because of who you know, it’s that you are connected to someone else because of who you are related to.
Previous theories of connectivity focused on social connections; the idea that we are all – all seven billion of us – linked to each other by six degrees of separation. These links were first written about by <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2786545?uid=3739256&#038;uid=2&#038;uid=4&#038;sid=56200129733">Stanley Milgram </a>from experiments he did in the late 1960s. It’s a little more complicated than what Milgram theorized but he got the gist right. More recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/technology/between-you-and-me-4-74-degrees.html?_r=3&#038;scp=1&#038;sq=4.74&#038;st=cse">Facebook</a> and LinkedIn have shown that just four social connections could link any two people together.
<h6>Three Degrees of Separation</h6>
This theory of connectivity even spawned the game,  <a href="http://oracleofbacon.org/">“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”</a> Kevin <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2014/events/event_IAP28467">is talking in Austin</a> this week. But the theory of social connections that spawned the game doesn&#8217;t quite match how close we all really are.   23andMe can connect an attendee at SXSW to any other attendees through three or four genetic connections. To do that we would make the connection by finding someone an attendee is related to, who is related to someone who then connects them to someone else at SXSW. There may be two or three cousins that separate each attendee from someone else at the conference, but the connection the two have is made through genetics.
Looking at the <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/?conference=interactive">SXSW Interactive</a> portion of the conference, every one of the 30,000 of those people going has a cousin in attendance. A few may have as many as 35 first cousins, meaning that they share a grandparent.  On average everyone there has between one or two second cousins, meaning that that they each share the same great grandparent.
SXSW is about bringing people together, but they are all already closer than they know.

Three Degrees of Separation At SXSW

Editor&#8217;s note 3/17: Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates wrote about Kasia&#8217;s research and &#8220;hidden African ancestry&#8221; in the The Root. Check it out.
Scientists have long used DNA to inform our understanding of big epochs of<a href="http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/"> human change and migration</a>. But what about the smaller changes, can DNA tell us something about recent human history?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-4565" alt="diversity photo" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/iStock_000004751590XSmall.jpg" width="300" height="199" />
23andMe researcher Katarzyna &#8220;Kasia&#8221; Bryc, who is also a postdoctoral research fellow in<a href="http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Welcome.html"> David Reich’s lab</a> at Harvard Medical School, gathered anonymous aggregated data from our customers to look at the mix of African, European and Native American ancestry in the United States. What she discovered was an illuminating genetic portrait of the U.S. that both confirms some of what we know about America’s social history but also other things that are surprising and new.
“Perhaps one of the greatest discoveries stemming from recent advancements in genetic genealogy is that previously held assumptions about race and identity are being brought into question,” Harvard Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. wrote<a href="https://www.theroot.com/do-most-whites-have-traces-of-african-dna-as-i-do-1790874465"> recently</a>. “It was always known throughout American history that there was at least some intermixing of races, but only now, through DNA testing, can we see the extent to which this actually occurred.”
Gates was writing about something we’ve reported on in the past, the “<a href="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ASHG2011poster-Mountain-1.pdf">hidden” African ancestry</a> among white Americans.  Because of the ugly history of slavery, most African Americans have at least some European ancestry. But what is less known is how many individuals who identify as being of solely European ancestry – or white – also have African ancestry.  
Note that we use the term “hidden,” because these individuals self-identify as white and because of their very small percentage of African ancestry, may be unaware. But some of these individuals may indeed know about that African ancestry.
Kasia’s research confirmed in more detail 23andMe’s earlier findings, and she looked at how that mix of ancestry for self-identified whites, African Americans and Latinos differed from state-to-state.
Taken together Kasia’s research helps fill in more detail of how migration, as well as social and racial divisions shaped America.
<h6>Hidden African Ancestry Redux</h6>
A few years ago, Joanna Mountain, 23andMe Senior Director of Research, presented<a href="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ASHG2011poster-Mountain-1.pdf"> preliminary findings</a> at an American Society of Human Genetics conference looking at the numbers of individuals who identified as white, but who had what was likely “hidden African ancestry.”<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20364" alt="African Ancestry for Self-Identified Whites" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-300x174.jpg" width="300" height="174" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-300x174.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-768x446.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-880x511.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites.jpg 1012w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
In an update to that work, our researcher Kasia Bryc found that about about 4 percent of whites have at least 1 percent or more African ancestry.
Although it is a relatively small percentage, the percentage indicates that an individual with at least 1 percent African ancestry had an African ancestor within the last six generations, or in the last 200 years. This data also suggests that individuals with mixed parentage at some point were absorbed into the white population.
Looking a little more deeply into the data, Kasia also found that the percentage of whites with hidden African ancestry differed significantly from state-to-state. Southern states with the highest African American populations, tended to have the highest percentages of hidden African ancestry.
In South Carolina  at least 13 percent of self-identified whites have 1 percent or more African ancestry, while in Louisiana the number is a little more than 12 percent. In Georgia and Alabama the number is about 9 percent. The differences perhaps point to different social and cultural histories within the south.
<h6>The DNA of African Americans</h6>
Most African Americans know they have some European ancestry. It’s a vestige of slavery. But what can be surprising is what that mix of ancestry can say about social history in America.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20365" alt="African Ancestry in African Americans" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-300x186.jpg" width="300" height="186" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-300x186.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-768x477.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-880x547.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans.jpg 882w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Previous published studies estimate that on average African Americans had about 82 percent African ancestry and about 18 percent European ancestry. But in self-identified African Americans in 23andMe’s database, Kasia found the average amount of African ancestry was closer to 73 percent.
Kasia found significant differences in state-to-state comparisons. African Americans in the northern and western states have more mixed ancestry than those in the southern states. African Americans living in South Carolina have the highest proportion of African ancestry, about 84 percent, compared to those living in any other state.
A significant percentage of African Americans, more than 5 percent, had at least 2 percent Native American ancestry. This is much higher than previous estimates or data from the US Census.
<h6>Latinos in the USA</h6>
Looking at the mix of European, African and Native American ancestry, self-identified Latinos in the 23andMe database had the most diversity in their ancestry. But again, just as the mix of ancestry among African Americans and whites differed from state-to state, so too did Latinos, which again sheds more light on their social history.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20369" alt="Native American Ancestry in Latinos" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Native-American-Ancestry-in-Latinos1-300x173.jpg" width="300" height="173" />
On average Latinos had about 70 percent European ancestry, 14 percent Native American ancestry and 6 percent African ancestry.
The remaining ancestry is difficult to assign because the DNA is either shared by a number of different populations around the world, or because it’s from understudied populations, such as Native Americans. Obviously that large “unassigned” percentage means that those “averages” could be higher. As with African Americans, looking at the regional and state-to-state numbers for self-identified Latinos, the differences are striking.
Recent studies have shown that countries across South America, the Caribbean, and Mexico have different profiles of genetic ancestry molded by each populations&#8217; unique history.
According to 23andMe’s data, the United States has its own set of unique regional histories.
For example, some Latinos have no discernible  Native American ancestry, while others have as much as 50 percent of the ancestry being Native American. Latinos in states in the Southwest, bordering Mexico – New Mexico, Texas, California and Arizona – have the greatest percentage of Native American ancestry. Latinos in states with the largest proportion of African Americans in their population – South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama – have the highest percentage of African Ancestry.
<h6>Every Picture Tells A Story</h6>
America is a crossroads of cultures and our DNA reflects this. Kasia’s research sketches a picture of a few of those cultures but is far from offering the full genetic portrait of the people of the United States. Still her work illustrates the power of DNA – and the 23andMe database – to tell us about ourselves and our history.
*Apologies to Bryan Sykes for our appropriation of the title of his 2012 book, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/recommended-reading/dna-usa/">“DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America.”</a>  A great read, the book is both a travelogue and a series of short profiles of people with different ancestral backgrounds, who have had their DNA tested.

DNA USA* Revisited

Libby is a geneticist for NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for the management and conservation of living marine resources. One of her responsibilities is to genotype endangered species of fish, tracking generations of families. That’s right, fish have families. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20356" alt="Libby_Amsterdam" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-225x300.jpg" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-660x880.jpg 660w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-885x1180.jpg 885w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam.jpg 1578w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />They have pedigrees. The irony is, Libby does not.
She turned to 23andMe to help her explore the health and family history she couldn’t learn about any other way. 
Adopted in 1963, Libby never knew a biological relative until her children were born. She had scant information regarding her birth parents. She knew her birth mother was born in Rupert, Idaho, but no names of immediate family members.
“I would search for clues, maybe find a name, but would not really know if I was on the right path because I had nothing to go on,” she said. “It was disappointing”
Libby only had a cursory family health history. Like many adoptees, Libby has never had a family medical history to share with a doctor to help guide her care.
Several years ago, Libby was able to get her original birth certificate with her birth mother’s name and birthplace.
“I kind of sat on that for a while, did some searches and nothing came up so I thought it was just another dead end.”
Then Libby became a mom.
The search for answers was not just about her but for her children as well. She has a “family”, the loving couple that raised her. What she is looking for is “history”.
“I guess it happened when I had kids of my own and I could see the resemblance when I look at them. And other people will say ’Oh, yes. She IS your daughter.’ But then I would look in the mirror and say, “Who do I look like?”
Libby had no family photos. No faces to look at and compare.
A colleague told Libby about 23andMe. She immediately sent in a test kit for herself. The information she received amazed her. Soon, she ordered test kits for her husband and children.
On the ancestry side, 23andMe matched her with a predicted third or fourth cousin.
“One of the family locations she listed was Rupert. The hair on the back of my neck stood up: this could not be a coincidence,” Libby said. “ It is difficult to convey the heady feeling of finally discovering a biological relative after all these years of searching and wondering.”
Not long after, an even closer match, a woman named Dianne who turned out to be Libby’s birth mother&#8217;s second cousin.
“She was kind and welcoming enough to help me fill in many of the names that she knew, and pointed me to a wealth of published family histories to fill in names of my other ancestors.” Libby said, who learned she had nine first cousins from Dianne.
Libby knew that her mother’s pregnancy had been kept secret from the families of her birth parents. Libby learned that her mother had gone to great lengths to conceal the pregnancy by attending college in Hawaii while pregnant and then giving birth in Oregon. Her birth parents were college students at the time and this was after all, 1963.
“My existence came as a surprise to Dianne – she had really only been searching for information about her father&#8217;s side of the family and did not expect to uncover a new cousin,” Libby said. “I am a secret no more.”
Libby has now started sketching out her biological family tree. She only has a few branches but it is growing. She can now trace her maternal line back five generations!
“What 23andMe has done for me personally is nothing short of a breakthrough, and the best part is that my story just keeps growing.”

A Secret No More

When he was seven years old, Francisco Caravayo’s Puerto Rican grandmother told him a secret that he didn’t really grasp until decades later when he tested with 23andMe.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to finally have confirmation of my history,” Francisco said.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-20313 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Francisco-Photo-1-248x300.jpg" alt="" width="248" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Francisco-Photo-1-248x300.jpg 248w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Francisco-Photo-1.jpg 411w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 248px) 100vw, 248px" />
<h6>Hidden Ancestry</h6>
When he tested with 23andMe, Francisco had wanted to contribute to research while exploring a little of his family’s Portuguese ancestry.
“My brother and I always felt as if there was a culture of secrets in our family,” said Francisco.  “When my grandmother said to all my cousins, ‘Never forget, you are of God’s chosen people,’ I knew what she meant, but didn’t understand why we couldn’t talk about it.”
In telling his story, Francisco goes back to his childhood, growing up in a Latino neighborhood. Most of his friends were Catholic, and although his family was  Lutheran and went to church regularly, something didn’t feel quite right to him.
“We went to church, but my father was always saying things like ‘Remember, Jesus was a Jew,’” Francisco said.
<h6>Conversos</h6>
After Francisco went away to college, he had a discussion one day with a Portuguese professor about his last name.  She told him that his surname was taken by Portuguese Jews many of whom had been forced to convert to Catholicism by the Inquisition, and many of these <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20316" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-180x300.jpg" alt="Star of David" width="180" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-180x300.jpg 180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-768x1280.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-614x1024.jpg 614w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-528x880.jpg 528w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-708x1180.jpg 708w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-scaled.jpg 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px" />
There were other clues.  His grandmother lit candles on Friday nights.  She taught the family that dairy and meat were not to be mixed and that shellfish were to be avoided.  Pork was eaten apologetically.  Christmas and Easter were not celebrated with joy, but with what can only be described as an obligation, as if performing a chore.  And when Francisco’s father died, Francisco followed family tradition: no clergy were present at the funeral and no Christian iconography was put on the gravestone.
<h6>Exploring His Jewish Ancestry</h6>
He began to explore his Portuguese roots and studying more about Judaism.  Shortly afterward, he saw an article in OUT Magazine about 23andMe’s research.  Francisco decided to get tested as a way to not just contribute to research, but also explore his own ancestry.
His results indicated Iberian ancestry, but also he saw that his paternal haplotype was shared by 20-to-30 percent of Sephardic Jews.
“That information was so grounding,” said Francisco. “I didn’t expect to find that I was 100 percent Jewish, because my ancestors tried to blend in and marry non-Jews, but I finally had evidence.”
He traced his haplogroup’s migration, and it matched up with the diaspora’s migratory patterns.  He was one of the thousands of families whose ancestors had escaped persecution by hiding their religion.
“I was sitting at the computer crying,” said Francisco
Not only did Francisco find answers to his past, but he also found a community of people on the 23andMe message boards that shared the same haplotype.  Through the online community, he’s been able to meet others like him and trade stories and information.
Francisco has now completed his conversion process to Judaism.  While he was going through the conversion, he met his current partner, who is Jewish too.
“I finally felt whole,” he said.

23andMe Helps Uncover Hidden Jewish Ancestry

Not long before his grandmother died, DeSean Stokes sat with her as she shared stories of her life.
<div id="attachment_20206" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20206" class="size-medium wp-image-20206" alt="DeSean with his grandparents Evelyn and Isham Brown." src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DeSean_Stokes_Evelyn_Brown_Isham_Brown-300x221.jpg" width="300" height="221" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DeSean_Stokes_Evelyn_Brown_Isham_Brown-300x221.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DeSean_Stokes_Evelyn_Brown_Isham_Brown-768x567.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DeSean_Stokes_Evelyn_Brown_Isham_Brown-880x649.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DeSean_Stokes_Evelyn_Brown_Isham_Brown.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />DeSean with his grandparents Evelyn and Isham Brown.</div>
One of 15 children brought up in the segregated south, his grandmother, Evelyn, was the first in her family to go to college – Alabama State University, Class of 1954. She became an elementary school teacher, working for 50 years in the classroom. Evelyn was happily married to Isham Brown for 56 years and the couple raised three bright and successful kids.
When she died in early 2013, DeSean said it was the stories she told him that kept running through his mind. He wanted to know more, not just about her but where she came from and the generations that came before.
That’s where 23andMe came in.  It helped him delve into parts of his ancestry that he wouldn’t have been able to find just from the stories his grandmother told him.
“23andMe opened up even more doors to my ancestral story,” he said.
<h6>Stories Become Songs</h6>
An actor and musician, DeSean said much of his work involves telling or even inhabiting the stories of others.
“As a musician and actor, my job is to tell interesting stories,” he said.
But after his grandmother’s death, it was his own family’s story that he wanted to tell.
“There is so much history you can learn about yourself and family just from sitting down and talking with your oldest living relatives,” DeSean said.
Those conversations with his grandmother also inspired him to write a<a href="https://youtu.be/nEW9m5VGHVw"> song for Evelyn</a>.
“Music is in my DNA &#8212; I live it, breath it and feel it in everything I do,” DeSean said.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20207" alt="DeSean_Stokes_Photo_By_Jeffrey_Hornstein" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DeSean_Stokes_Photo_By_Jeffrey_Hornstein-256x300.jpg" width="256" height="300" />
<h6>Sharing with Evelyn</h6>
He played the music for her just before her death in early 2013. After she died he felt a need to learn more, not just about her but about her ancestors. His grandmother’s stories could only take him back so far.
An African-American, he knows the history of slavery and what that meant – mixed-ancestry and very little information about where in Africa his ancestors came. Looking at family photos he also couldn’t help but notice the different shades of color in his family. It left him wondering. He’d heard from Evelyn and his grandparents about their families, but not much more.
“They only knew the details of a couple generations before and the rest was unknown,” he said.
<h6>DNA Testing</h6>
Using DNA testing, DeSean could peer into the past that was locked away by time.
From his 23andMe results, he learned that his ancestry, was, not surprisingly, mostly from West Africa. But DeSean also learned that about a quarter of his ancestry was from Europe and included connections to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Russia, and Poland. He even found that his ancestry included Jamaican ancestry, Native American ancestry, and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.
Using 23andMe, DeSean has connected with newly discovered relatives from around the world.
“I am so thankful for the time I had with my grandmother,” he said. “She will always be a part of me. The freckles on my face remind me of her every time I look in the mirror.  I am thankful for everything she passed down to me.  I am also grateful to 23andMe for opening up even more doors to my ancestral story.  It is the music I&#8217;ve been longing to hear.&#8221;
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

This Is My Story

Amy’s story begins: “Once upon a dime…”
And then, as she says, “It just gets weirder.”<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19797 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-300x277.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="277" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-300x277.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-768x708.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-880x811.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012.jpg 1022w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Amy, a writer and director of a small library in an Alaskan fishing village, always knew she’d been adopted. That wasn’t news. But her birth story certainly was.
Amy came into this world on November 16, 1964. Mr. and Mrs. A.T. House found her before dawn lying on the floor of the “Grover Bungalow Launderette” at Baker and 19th Street in Lawrence, Kansas. Amy had been left on an old white blanket. Near her was a pay phone with a dime left on top.
“Apparently so somebody could call the minute the child was found,&#8221; Police Lt. Dick Stanwich told the local paper at the time.
All this was news to Amy. She shared with us her unbelievable story and how she is using 23andMe to help fill in some of the blank pages in her life.
Now with children of her own, she peeked into this chapter for the first time on Christmas Eve of 2012 when she opened up a parcel that arrived that day from the Kansas State Department of Vital Statistics. This early Christmas gift was her original birth certificate.
“I had been adopted in 1965 by two wonderful people, but I had always wondered about my &#8220;real&#8221; name,” Amy said. “We stared at that envelope for quite awhile. Then I opened it. And, what I found broke my heart.”
Like a lot of adoptees, she had fantasies about her birth parents and how they might have reluctantly given up their child at the hospital with a kiss to the forehead. But seeing the birth certificate, with parents listed as “unknown,” and learning she’d been abandoned at a Laundromat pained her greatly. She immediately wanted to know more.
“I telephoned the launderette, which still exists, and left a message that began with: ‘Hi, this is going to be the weirdest phone call you&#8217;ve ever received&#8230;’&#8221;
Amy also called the local newspaper, the small but well-respected Lawrence World-Journal. She was lucky to find a helpful reporter who looked through the newspapers archive and found a few old clips that documented her arrival into this world.
A photo of one of the nurses holding her was on the front page with the headline:<a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CUMyAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=PuYFAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=3884%2C4105340"> “New Infant Found At Launderette.”</a> The next day she was again page one with the story:<a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CkMyAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=PuYFAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=5020%2C4207773"> “Amy Getting Plenty of Care.”</a>
Everything in those articles was news to Amy. She never knew.
“On Christmas Day, I called my parents and told them I&#8217;d received my pre-adoption birth certificate,” Amy said. “There was a prolonged silence followed by my mom&#8217;s voice. ‘Oh.’ Then, there was more silence. Then: ’And what did you find out?’”
She told her mom what she learned. There was more silence on the line.
“‘But, you knew that story,’” Amy told her mom.
Yes, her mom protested but: “I didn&#8217;t know THE NAME of the launderette!&#8221;
&#8220;’Mom!’&#8221; Amy said laughing.
“Then, I could tell she was crying,” Amy said.
Her parents had kept the name the nurses had given her and then she told Amy:
“‘We didn&#8217;t care where you came from! We never wanted you to feel unloved or unwanted because we loved you and wanted you so badly!’”
Amy knew how lucky she’d been to be adopted by her mom and dad, but she still had questions. The Lawrence World Journal reporter Chad Lawhorn had forwarded her the old articles and then wrote up her story. She hoped someone would come forward with information about her birth parents.
But the stories of her birth also gave her comfort too. She’d been surrounded by love and cared for by strangers.
“My world became a little warmer, and tragic,” she said.
Amy learned the name of the attending physician that night, Dr. Godwin, and found out he was still alive. The reporter called him. Dr. Godwin remembered Amy.
“Just a couple of months ago, I was thinking of her,” Godwin told the reporter. “I wondered what ever became of that baby. This is good because that has sort of hung over me for a while.”
Although the couple who found her had passed away, their children were still alive and they knew her story. She talked to their daughter, Debbie House. Debbie told Amy more details that left her speechless.
Amy had been found on the exact one-year anniversary of Debbie’s grandfather Wallace Grover’s death. He died in the morning of a heart attack in the exact spot where Amy was found.
“A year to the day. Maybe even to the hour,” said Amy. “And here, Wallace&#8217;s daughter walks into the Laundromat on the anniversary of her father&#8217;s death in the place and finds &#8230; a crying baby.”
The details she’d gleaned up to that point told her so much, but she decided to test for 23andMe to learn health and ancestry information that couldn’t be found in paper records.
One of her<a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/relfinder/"> DNA Relative</a> matches sent her an enigmatic note “nice to meet you. I may have the answer to your Lawrence connection.&#8221; That helped her find a surname that she believes will help in finding out more.
“I think I&#8217;m closer than ever to figuring out who the people in the earliest moments of my life were,” said Amy.
She also feels closer to the woman who was her birth mother.
“I would love to say thank you to her. That’s the gist of it. She had choices. The mother always has choices, and she made a great choice. I hope it got better for her. I really hope she found peace. I wouldn’t want her to go through life thinking something bad happened, because it didn’t.”
Not long ago, Amy went back to Lawrence Kansas. She met with Dr. Godwin. She wanted to see the spot where she’d been found. The laundry was closed up, but she put her hand up to the glass door and it swung open. So she went in.
“It was rundown and pretty well trashed,” Amy said. “The sign on the door states that the place is being re-plumbed and will re-open &#8220;soon.&#8221; I have my doubts … but I got to see where the phone had been … and, I know this is going to sound cheesy as all get-out, but I left a note to ‘Amy&#8217;s Mom’ and taped a dime to it. It&#8217;s just a ‘Hi, I stopped by’ kind of note, but also that I wanted to leave the offer of communication open. Yeah. And then I stuck it to the bulletin board and pulled the door shut behind me.”
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

Amy’s Story

23andMe’s popular Ancestry Composition just got a little better.
The feature estimates what percentage of your DNA comes from populations around the world, breaking down the Asian, African or European ancestry to give you insight into the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/">geographic origins of your ancestors</a> going back many generations.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19805 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="220" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1.jpg 661w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Customers should start seeing the update to their Ancestry Composition over the next several weeks. It will offer people with African or Asian ancestry greater detail than they had before. We added several additional reference populations – for a total of 31.
Customer’s ancestry results are broken down by region, and then subregions and then even finer detail. So for example, we may breakdown the results of someone of African Ancestry by first identifying the percentage of “Sub-Saharan African Ancestry.”
That in turn might be broken down between percentages of west, African, central and south African.
The update allows 23andMe to offer individuals with African ancestry more detail into whether their ancestors came from eastern Africa, western Africa, southern Africa or central Africa. This is similar to how 23andMe reports out data for people of European ancestry, but 23andMe is not yet able to break down African ancestry by country or tribe. We are currently working on an <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andmes-african-ancestry-project/">African Ancestry Project</a>, which we hope will ultimately improve results for people with African ancestry.
<div id="attachment_19787" style="width: 291px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19787" class=" wp-image-19787 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry-281x300.jpg" alt="" width="281" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry-281x300.jpg 281w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry.jpg 500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px" />An example of an Asian American&#8217;s ancestry results.</div>
Customers with Asian ancestry will get much more detail into their ancestry, breaking ancestry between eastern Asia, southeastern Asia and south Asia.
In addition the update will now provide much more detail for customers with East Asian ancestry by breaking down that ancestry among five countries – China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and eastern Russia (people with Yakut ancestry).
23andMe is conservative in making ancestry assignments, so in many cases we may list a certain percentage of a customer’s results as “non-specific” to a particular region. A customer’s results may include a certain percent of “Non-Specific Northern European” ancestry, for example.
That simply means that while 23andMe has identified the broader region of their ancestry, we do not have enough information to be able to predict the country of origin for that ancestry. We do offer customers the opportunity to select a more “speculative estimate,” which can sometimes give them more detail.

Ancestry Service — Page 23