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My sister had always felt that we had Huguenot ancestors on our mother's side who fled to England in the 19th century from France.
I had always had the strongest feelings and emotions of German blood. My family always dismissed any such possibility.
My sister sent off a sample for Ancestral DNA testing of the maternal side. Then she continued her researches into documents including the public census in Britain as far back as 1811.
She came back with the results of this search. Our great-great-grandmother was Irish, born in 1800. She had borne five children. Our great-great-grandfather was an Englishman. He had been the declared father of three of these children. He had been very ill, and died in 1844.
The same month as his death, g-g-grandmother Mary married a German. What interested me very much about this German was whether he might have been having an illicit affair with g-g-grandmother, or perhaps had taken over as "father of the family" some time earlier with the permission of the ailing husband.
The ancestral DNA results came back.
English blood 8%. A shock. Not enough for any English descent. We could not be descendants of the alleged "g-g-grandfather".
Irish blood 30%. That would be our g-g-grandmother. Correct.
Scandinavian blood 25%. I asked my sister if she had any better information about the German.
"Yes, his surname was Förn."
That is a Swedish surname. Scandinavian.
"Any more information about Förn?"
"Yes, his father was a farmer in Mecklenburg from the 18th century."
And so the ancestral DNA had got it right again. In the 18th century there had been considerable immigration of Swedes into Mecklenburg, the big province of lakes and marsh on the Baltic which at that time was a Duchy but was then incorporated into the German First Reich by Bismarck.
And so there had definitely been some "funny business" between g-g-grandmother and the German Förn, and he IS our g-g-grandfather although the English family name was retained.
As for the Huguenots, it appears to be impossible to separate French, Belgian and West German blood along the Rhine and so we also have 25% West European blood but no real way of tracing to whom it belonged.
The ancestral DNA results combined with the documentary research done by my sister were absolutely fantastic and self-confirming.
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