Got my 23andme results!

Well, today I sat down at the library with grand plans to study. It was about 2:30 and I decided to stay at school for a while and maybe take the 7:50 ferry home.

Then, around 3'o clock, I checked my email on my iPod and I got an email --- "Your Genetic Profile is Ready at 23andMe!"

Yes, I packed up my stuff and ran for the bus so that I could catch the 4:20 ferry.



And I have since been examining my results. No homework is going to be done tonight, I can guarantee that.

The results really are fascinating.

Some are relatively mundane (click to enlarge if necessary):


Yes, I do indeed have brown eyes, as predicted. I was hoping for this result because it means that I can potentially have blue-eyed kids. I really like brown eyes but I do like blue eyes too. Variety is the spice of life, yeah?

Two of my grandparents were blue-eyed and two were brown-eyed, and my dad had brown eyes, while my mom has hazel eyes. I thought one of my grandparent's blue-eyed genes might have made it down to me, but could never be sure before now. But it has! There are more genes to eye color, which I am still exploring, but this is the main one, so I am happy to see a G.

Yes, indeed. I know that my dad was type A from his military records, and now I can see that he must have been AO in order to give me an O. This means my mom is either type B (with a genotype of either BB or BO, like me) or type AB. (She doesn't know her blood type).


There are also quite a number of traits that are included in 23andme, for example multiple sclerosis:

And the ancestry section is quite fascinating, and improving all the time.

Look at all that blue! Apparently I am 100% European, which I was pretty much expecting from my genealogy research. However my dad did always tell me that we had Native American relatives somewhere so I wondered if a bit of orange for Asian would show up. Guess not. My dad's mother did grow up in an area that was roughly 80% Native American, so I wonder if he heard stories from her about Native Americans and maybe that's where the rumor came from.


And check this out, I can see this quickly becoming my one of my favorite parts of 23andme:

Check out all those cousins --- 23andme found 214 matches for me so far. I have already contacted some and sent out some lists of my relatives for them to compare to their relatives --- we will see what happens!

Check out the site www.23andme.com for more information.

Hmm, I wonder if I can recreate this picture?


This is my grandmother's sister Rita Smith at the University of Washington, the school that I attend. This picture would have been taken in the late 1930s.

My knowledge of UW history is shaky, so I don't know what building she is in front of or if it might still be standing, but I am definitely going to head to the library and see if anyone can help me. If the building still exists --- I will post the results!

Introduction.

Hey everyone, I decided to start a blog. Hopefully I will have the tenacity to keep it up.

My name is Andrea, I'm 19 years old, and I am currently a junior at the University of Washington. I will be getting two degrees, a B.A. in Medical Anthropology & a B.S. in Public Health. The extra degree is going to take me an extra year so I will be graduating in 2012. I am planning on getting my master's in Epidemiology.

I like genealogy. Even as a little kid I would run around interviewing my older relatives about what their childhoods were like and stuff like that. I recently ran across something that I thought was kind of cute:


It was a genealogy book that I had filled out circa age 9, haha.

I have been seriously researching for about two years now. Genealogy takes up a good amount of my spare time (not to mention my spare money!). I imagine a good amount of my posts will be about my relatives & ancestors, hence the blog name.

My other interests....hmm, I was checking amazon.com this morning and discovered that they know me better than I know myself.


Yes, I like all of this stuff. Thanks, amazon.


Here's a pic of me at my great-great grandparent's headstone (Charles Schmidt & Lizzie Graffenberger). They are buried at the Toledo Cemetery in Toledo, Washington. Their grave was easy to find because it was the biggest in the entire cemetery --- apparently they were quite wealthy. You can kind of see it towering over the other headstones.

My father's ancestors are overwhelmingly of English origin, with a bit of Irish & Scottish mixed in, and for the most part they have been in the United States since colonial times, gradually migrating west. My great-great-great grandparents were born in the East --- mainly Virginia & New Hampshire. Then their children were born pretty much in Illinois or Indiana. My grandparents eventually made it to Washington from South Dakota and settled near Seattle, where I live now.

My mother's ancestors are a bit more of a mixed bag. Quite a few of her paternal ancestors were born in Scotland & Ireland, and then spent some time in Canada before immigrating to the U.S. Her maternal grandmother was born in England and immigrated to the United States as a child. Her maternal grandfather was born in the United States, but his parents immigrated from Germany. So in general, her ancestors have immigrated to the United States much more recently than my father's ancestors.

Okay, I will write more later.