Ancestry.com (ancestry.ca) has this neat feature where they combine all their family trees into a big "One World" tree. If you know your ancestors, you can access the "one world" tree and check to see who you're related to. It's especially fun to see which famous people are your distance cousins.There's only one problem. You really have to know something about your ancestors before you trust the results. Most of the relationships are wrong because someone has entered the wrong data and it gets propagated to the "one world" tree. This is a problem with all such databases—including scientific ones.
Here's one of the reliable hits. It shows how Bette Davis is a distant cousin. She descends from my great10 grandparents Captain Richard Norman and his wife Margaret Alford. They were born in Orchard Portman, Somerset, England (midway between Exeter and Bristol) and came to Massachusetts Colony in 1626.
UPDATE: This is wrong. There's a mistake on the internet! I am NOT a descendant of Richard Norman and Margaret Alford.
20 comments :
Odd; when we met, I immediately thought of Bette Davis...
You mean you're really a 'Merken?
His hair is Harlow gold...
Now, I could see how her eyes might cause earthquakes! :)
John Pieret asks,
You mean you're really a 'Merken?
Nope. Some of my ancestors lived in Connecticut and New York in the 1600s and 1700s. You might recall from your history books that those places were British colonies back then. There were no "Americans" at that time. They were all British citizens.
When the thirteen southern colonies turned into the United States of America in 1782, my ancestors left for the remaining British colonies in the north. They were United Empire Loyalists. They represent the large group of citizens in the Thirteen Colonies who opposed the revolution.
They probably don't teach that in American schools, right? There wasn't a single American at the Boston Tea Party! Nobody on the Mayflower was an American! And all the democratic General Assemblies in the colonies were created in the 1750s by British citizens with the support of Great Britain.
They probably don't teach that in American schools, right?
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They do, just usually not in a positive light.
We humans are all cousins. Big whoop. I'm more fascinated by my cousins the trilobites that are sitting on my desk in front of me right now.
They probably don't teach that in American schools, right?
Of course they do. But you didn't originally say when they escaped over the border just ahead of the law.
hello
I'm afraid you are mistaken. "American" was a term for a person from America long before there was a U.S. As in the 60th Rifle Regiment, "the Royal Americans". So yeah, there were Americans at the Boston Tea Party. OK, not on the Mayflower, but their first-generation descendants. And so on, including your ancestors.
Larry,
Ancestry.com is a business and not a non-profit organization. Most, if not all of businesses today rely on the returning clients and referrals from current clients.
Ancestry.com is no different. I just hope that someone like Larry is not going to base his book on the info he got from ancestry.com
Larry is not American. He has a hard time defining his roots.
His interpretation of evolution must have changed the things... Many things most people just don't care about...
What's new?
What's new? That you're an even greater idiot than we thought.
What an extraordinary response Eric. You claim to have a company yourself, what's your business model? To piss off clients, so they don't return?
Why would a company doing DNA ancestry research for you be different? And don't you think if they, ancestry.com , screwed around with results it would've been all over the internet by now?
I do understand where you fanatical hatred for a company like ancestry.com comes from though. Their results aren't "your ancestry starts 6K years ago when Noah's ark landed on dry ground". But rather the results show something disturbing from your point of view: the results from this company confirm known history about how the populations of humans (and their genes) spread in the past few thousand of years. Of how specific genetic markers from people originating in the northern parts of Europe actually made it into the genetic make up of Irish.
Interesting eh?
What do the stars mean?
They probably don't teach that in American schools, right?
That there was a large group opposing the Revolution, and that in fact the Revolution may not have commanded the support of a majority of the populace? In fact they do, or did in my case.
This is all bullshit. Just think about it, if you can. How do you define the Irish or Polish by genes alone? Shouldn't someone include history in this shit? Why do genes rule? Is it because Darwinists say so? I've figured that one...
Eric,
No one is defining people by their genes alone. Ancestry.com tells you your genetic makeup. This is not determined by Darwinists. It is determined by your biological parents, for when they had sex and produced you, they passed their genes on to you. Do you deny this is true?
Eric,
"Shouldn't someone include history in this shit?"
You obviously mean:
"Shouldn't someone include my version of history in this shit?"
But hey, using your version of history would have ancestry.com say:
"Congratulations, your great-great-great grandfather is Adam, your great-great-great grandmother is Eve."
Lucky for the real world, this company uses scientific facts and real history to determine ancestry.
How do you define the Irish or Polish by genes alone? Shouldn't someone include history in this shit? Why do genes rule? Is it because Darwinists say so?
One reason is because you don't have a greater potential for cancer or for passing fatal or debilitating diseases on to your children based on the geographic locations where your ancestors lived 1500 years ago, but you certainly might based on the genes they passed down to you.
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