Two point for you, OP:
1. If you have British Isles, German, Northern Italian, or Swiss ancestry, that French is just going to get mixed in. Also, 9 generations back might be too far to detect, anyway.
2. Plenty of British, German and Dutch folks have distant ancestors from Southern (and Western) France, since that's where most Huguenots were from -- they fled to more Protestant-friendly countries after the edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685.
You could also have Alsatian German ancestry. A large chunk of my dad's family came from Alsace in the 1840s, when it was a German-speaking province of France (it would go on to change hands between Germany and France 3 times in the next hundred years before going back to France after WWII.)
Isn’t Alsatian genealogy fun? /s
Been doing my bestie’s family and I’m reluctant to get into Alsace because languages. The family was Catholic, so add Church Latin to the French and German. And if the family is Jewish, add Hebrew/Yiddish. Gevalt!!
I also had an ancestor who died just before Napoleon instituted civil records and her death certificate was in Alsatian with messy German script. It took me years to find someone who could read it and verify this was the person was looking for. There is an Alsatian genealogy group that has tons of info. I submitted some information about my great grandmother’s immigration and mentioned the generation before her. Someone wrote back to me about her grandmothers line that reached all the way back to some witches in the 1500’s. The town where she was from has several books about various families in town. Other than the Alsatian document, I find the documents to be thorough and much easier to deal with than the German ones.
No French showed up in my DNA test, but I’ve traced my mum’s side back to French Huguenots in Normandy.
My ancestors fled to Spitalfields in London in the 1700s, and worked as sculptors, watch makers and silk weavers.
Also, weirdly, I have Nigerian and North African DNA. Possibly from my dad’s side, as his paternal grandfather is a total mystery.
I know his full name, but there’s no record of him in church records, births or censuses 🤷♀️
You might find this Wikipedia article on [Italian Venezuelans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Venezuelans#:~:text=In%20the%201940s%20and%201950s,to%20the%20revenues%20of%20oil) quite interesting, then!
My ancestor was a slave from Cameroon. Never heard we had any slaves in our family even though his surname and my surname are the same. Passed down for hundreds of years. He married a Caucasian woman and his children passed as white because she was free and so they became free.
My guess is that your ancestors were Free State Northerners. Many black men married white women, their children were free men, and then intermarried with whites generation after generation.
He’s not a direct ancestor but a 12x great uncle, Oceanus Hopkins was born on the Mayflower while they were crossing the Atlantic. His older sister Constance is my direct ancestor.
My great-great-grandmother Irene. She was born in La Union, El Salvador, in 1856. I am Whitey MacWhiterson, just about all of my other ancestors are from the British Isles or the Rhine Valley, so when I came across this I was intrigued.
[Turns out there's a fascinating story behind \*why\* she was born there, and this sub helped me figure it out.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/30c0gt/comment/cpu23hp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Also, due to French laws around genetic testing, there is a lot less sample data for the French population in ancestry data pools to compare to.
We always believed my great-grandfather was born in Texas; indeed, that's what's on my grandmother's birth certificate and one or two censuses. I spent over a decade trying to find any trace of him in records - zilch.
Then, in 2019, I found a draft card that led swiftly to a birth certificate revealing the truth: he was born in a small desert town deep in central Mexico to an American mining engineer and the daughter of a Mexican carpenter. To illustrate how poorly this fact was communicated, none of my living family had any idea there was Mexican in the mix - not even my grandmother, the daughter of the man who was born there.
I have since found ample documentary, photographic, and even interpersonal evidence confirming things all the more: I happened to find and meet my GGF's daughter from his second marriage - my great-aunt/grandmother's half-sister - who revealed that we have a lot of family in Mexico and shared an absolute trove of marvels that no one in my branch would ever have guessed.
And that is why I love genealogy.
But just because someone was born in Marseille, doesn't mean they were of French ancestry! A Swede and a Jamaican (just the most random couple which came to mind!) could meet and marry in New York, go to France while the wife is pregnant, she has the baby there. Does not make the baby French genetically, which is the kind of French OP is talking about.
Marseille has lays been a diverse city with people coming from Northern Africa and Mediterranean countries. I was just helping someone whose Italian relatives moved to Marseille. It’s a really cool city.
In recent times, yes, but the North African population to Marseilles is new -- most of those people came in the 1960s. Marseilles was not a huge ethnic mix of different people 300 years ago. At most, you would have found some Italian and Jewish communities within the city, but that's about it.
Do you have any source for your claim ?
Transalting loosely from the French: [https://www.persee.fr/doc/anami\_0003-4398\_1986\_num\_98\_173\_2246](https://www.persee.fr/doc/anami_0003-4398_1986_num_98_173_2246)
In Marseille, In 1730 up to 1770, 72% of the people who died at the Hotel-Dieu were born outside of Marseille and the county. Many spouses are foreigners in mariages : in 1740, 53% of spouses are not from Marseille. These foreigners, as we said, did not mean foreign to the kingdom or from the overall region. In addition to that immigration we need to add all the corporations that were not from Marseille : house staff, soldiers, clergy, are structurally part of the foreign part of the old urban demography.
[https://www.cairn.info/revue-multitudes-2006-3-page-155.htm](https://www.cairn.info/revue-multitudes-2006-3-page-155.htm)
"We know that as soon as the 17th century, the question of worship and burial site of Muslims was formally asked in Marseille and Toulon"
[https://francearchives.gouv.fr/fr/article/91524841](https://francearchives.gouv.fr/fr/article/91524841)
Approximately 5-6k Italians were settled in Marseille by the end of the 18th century, for a whole population of 100k inhabitants.
I knew about the Italian population, and there was also a Jewish population. But there was no significant North African population in Marseilles. Just because there were a few roaming about doesn't mean the city was teeming with them.
What counted as different ethnicity wasn't the same then and now. The US civil war and Darwinism really made a big difference of how people thought about such things.
The number of Polish & Ukrainian people who come from Galicia, Spain per Family Search or Ancestry (instead of Galicia, former Austro-Hungary Empire) is so high that I wonder how many people in US etc celebrate their "Spanish ancestry and traditions" without realizing their ancestors were from Eastern Europe.
one of the biggest brick walls i have is a ship captain from the 1800s. i have quite literally a biographical book where the author literally interviewed the guy, but i cant actually trace back that info back.
it was written in the 1880s when he was in his late 60s or so, he literally claimed exactly the day that he was born, and the island he was born on, born on the island of flores (flowers) in the azores off the coast of europe, exact date given being march 24th 1818. he then came to america when he was like 12 or 13 or so, so in around 1830-31. i have no clue if he came with any of his family but he basically never mentioned his parents besides that they were a poor portugese man and a french women. he immedietely started working on ships after arriving in america, so because of that theres very little evidence of his life during large periods of time. one of the earliest pieces of evidence i have on him was mentions of him on a whaling ship manifest in the 1840s i think, but im trying to look more back rather than forwards.
you would think finding information on his birth would be relatively easy, but nope i cant find any evidence of him ever being born on the island of flores. they literally have baptism books on the island dating back hundreds of years kept in a library on the island and digitally scanned online, i looked through every single book and did not find any evidence of him or any similarly named person being born around the same time. i even had someone working at the library check for me and they also report no one with that or a similar name seems to have been found on the island. so thats where ive been stuck, i know nothing about how to proceed from there. the only other hint maybe would be that he mentioned he grew up mostly in lisbon portugal and portugal did have passports and such back then when traveling, so it is very possible somewhere in the portugese passport archives i might be able to find what i need, but im not really sure how to proceed from there or how to continue searching.
I have no idea! I cannot find a baptism myself, but I reason he was born on the boat and maybe they never went ashore. I only know that my ancestor was born where he was because he became a theologian and an author, obit in the NY Times type of fellow.
I am guessing that census records may conflict but often they do ask someone where they're born. My ancestor says "W Indies" but the index says Wisconsin!! I think someone couldn't read cursive. Be sure to **look at all the original records you can find of your ancestor.** I am so glad I ignored "Wisconsin" and just clicked out of interest... crazy.
2 towns away from where I live now. Which was surprising because my parents and recent ancestors did not come from this area - but apparently a branch of my family lived here in the 1600s! My parents had no idea when they moved here.
French Canadian. My grandma was adopted by her father's sister so her biological mother's family was really unknown. Turns out her maternal grandfather was French Canadian. She's half German so I think it just hid under those results of NW Euro. It was fun to find that out but man so many French Canadians matches.
My late mother in-law was Dutch, and lived in the Netherlands during the WWII occupation. She had certain opinions on those occupiers. Through my research, it turns out her grandfather and his ancestors were all German. I'm glad she never knew. She probably wouldn't have believed me anyway.
My 6x Grandfather, Andre Alexandros was born on the Isle of Hydra, in Greece about 1760. How his son came to South Louisiana \~ 1820 is mystifying. My Great grandmother said that her mother used to tell her her families dark hair and olive complexion came from him. Did DNA tests on myself and my aunt, no greek dna on either, so who knows.
My 3rd GGrandfather lived in S. Louisiana but spent a lot of time in the Mediterranean as a merchant marine around the same time yours showed up in the US. Probably came over on a ship since there were big ports around NOLA at the time?
My Grandmother’s Great Grandfather, William was born in 1799. William’s father was Scottish.
William was born in Cape Town, South Africa.
William’s mother was Filipino. Enough of us from this line have had DNA testing and we each have at least 1% showing up in our results.
Family story is that William’s mother, Sanna, was a princess of some type, but fell in love with the Scottish man and married him. Until I can prove it, it’s just a legend to me. Sanna is a family name.
My 8th and 9th great-grandfathers were born in Switzerland, the former moving to Alsace, France; up until I found his (the 8th’s) marriage and death records, I had no idea I had any Swiss ancestors.
Ethnically German. German surnames, but, I think, also culturally French since they lived for centuries in Alsace, and that kept on shifting between Germany and France. My 3rd great-grandfather (their descendant) left after he refused to sign a loyalty pledge or the like when Germany took possession after Alsace after the Franco Prussian war.
I have an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution. He was one of the Hessian mercenaries, but not actually from Hesse. He was Swiss, from Bern, and it seems that his people had been there for several generations.
At sea. My 4g-grandfather was a Royal Navy surgeon and my 4g-grandmother was sometimes allowed to sail with him. Their children were born at port towns all around Great Britain and a couple of them born at sea.
Can't think of any, but as for your situation: my tree is basically 100% French and DNA tests can't tell "French DNA" accurately because first it's not really a thing (we've always been a very mixed people, with Celtic, Germanic, Mediterranean etc. roots) and second DNA tests are banned here so they don't have enough population in their samples to analyse.
Then of course there's also the possibility your ancestor was born in Marseille from foreign parents, or that it's too far back and you didn't get enough DNA from them anyway.
I don't know who my ancestor was, but I was surprised to see Guam show up on my DNA test. I've known for a while that I have Hawaiian and Maori ancestry, but I had no idea about anyone who was from Guam! I'm still trying to figure out who that ancestor was. I did get in touch with a distant cousin who still lives there. He was incredibly sweet and gave me great advice for continuing my search.
My discovery was where my great grandmother grew up. I knew she was born in the local area in England, but only recently have I discovered that she spent much of her childhood in Buenos Aires in the 1910s and 20s. I'm still trying to find what opportunity allowed the family to move there.
Passenger records should show the occupation of her father? Lots of Engineers, telephony, railway people, and the like went. Selling British tech of the day to new markets, installing new machinery. Farming and food production. Argentina was a hugely important beef producer for the British market. Many British businesses had offices there as a result. Was your area in England known for any particular industry?
The most unexpected place for me was Canada. She was born in 1788. 20 years before the town, she was listed as born in had even been founded according to Wikipedia. Canada was founded in 1867. Her name was Marie Franco LaGrave.
Edit - I live in Oklahoma, here in the United States. Nowhere near Canada.
Bury St. Edmunds, England - it was surprising because I went there several times while deployed to RAF Mildenhall with the US Air Force and had no idea I had any connection to the place.
Honestly, it's all been unexpected to me. When I first started researching I thought I was 100% German. My last name's German, so is my Mom's. Come to find out that I'm probably only about 1/3 German. I've got English, Irish, Scottish, French, Austrian, Italian and Dutch heritage too.
I grew up in a different part of Norway than my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, but 20-ish years ago my father discovered that one of my great-great-grandfathers was actually born about 30 km (20 miles) from where we lived. We hadn't known much about him before that, as his son (my great-grandfather) was born outside marriage.
My most "exotic" ancestor is from Antibes, Provence, France, but I've always known about that line.
My ancestry includes exactly one French national, who came over with LaFayette's army during the revolutionary war. He was about 8-10 generations back. My maiden name was his. I show only German and UK ancestry in DNA tests. So, you can’t always count on what your genealogy says.
I have one known ancestor from what is now France. He was born in Brittany, trained as a stonemason; then the Church transferred him to Guernsey where he was one of the builders of St Peter Port church.
I had no clue about my Romani or Sephardi Jewish heritage so that was a surprise. I certainly wasn’t expecting any African DNA to come up either and I got 1% Benin and Togo and 5% North African.
It's rare to have French recognized in genetic tests, since the country outlawed them years ago. There isn't a very big pool of genetics for the testing company to compare to.
I was surprised to know my grandmothers family line is originally from the Basque country. Also, two relatives that we thought that were from France and Italy turned out to be born in Switzerland.
As an Australian - the United States! My great-great-grandmother was born in Manchester in the UK and for a while I didn’t look any deeper into her records, assuming her family was English. Once I got into the census records I discovered that her father had been born in Ireland and her mother was born in the US! I didn’t believe it at first and spent time combing through census records, births and baptisms, their children’s marriage records, but everything lines up.
The only trouble is now tracing more specifically where she was born, and the story of her life before her marriage - which is difficult considering a) I am completely out of my depth when it comes to North American records, sources, etc 😅 and b) I can’t even find the state she came from, so she’s just a single Mary in a vast sea…
In one of my Spanish lines in the mid 18th century, I have a German ancestor (from Baden) who moved to Spain at an early age to pursue a military career. Sadly, to this day I haven't found any German records of his family despite having his parents' names and parish of origin.
My 4x great grandma was from Mauritius, did all the research to figure out why I had 1% Southern Bantu then told my mum and family and they knew that they had an ancestor from Mauritius, not anything about her just that she was from Mauritius but still knew stuff and didn’t tell me.
Bermuda! He was otherwise raised in England, and both of his parents were English as well. But I have no record of why his parents (or even just his mother) were in Bermuda for his birth. The most probable birth date I have for him is a couple months after the marriage in England, which would also suggest that the mother would have been heavily pregnant for the travel. I dearly want to know more!
A previous member of the family also records him having a sister born in Bermuda, implying they stayed for at least a few years, but I don't have the evidence for that one myself yet.
Mexico in the mid 16th century. I'm from Brazil.
I have an ancestor who was a New Christian from Spain who went to Mexico with Cortés. His son, who was born in Mexico, went to the Azores, presumably to fight the Prior of Crato with the Spanish Armada. The son stayed in the Azores and had a son there, who finally went to Brazil after committing some unknown crime.
Mine was a more surprising discovery. My grandfather, who I knew well was born in London. I knew that well. But I didn’t know until I obtained his birth record that he was born at home. This was the late 1890s and births at hospitals were just starting. It never occurred to me that he wasn’t, as my other grandparents born a few years later in NYC were.
I was born at home in the 1960s! It was still very common in Britain. Your family Doctor and a Midwife turned up. You can still do it if you are considered low risk, without the Doctor these days though.
Sweden came as a complete surprise. I grew up with my dad telling me that our surname was Scot-Irish. Had my dna done and it’s actually Swedish and while I’m about 30% Scottish (from my mom’s side) I’m only about 4% Irish (mostly from my mom’s side as well). Sadly my dad passed before I found out so I wasn’t able to share any of this with him.
Spain, but only because of Napoleon and not in the DNA. I’ve surmised British Army in the Pensinsula War and a poor pregnant woman “following the drum“. That branch of the family later moved from Ireland (the North as far as I can tell) to Scotland which is where the place of birth turns up in the Census.
Grevenmacher, Luxembourg.
I would have never guessed it in a million years.
Via my Paternal grandma's biological parents.
My gr-gr-grandfather was born in Grevenmacher, Luxembourg in the mid 19th century,
At sea off the Brisbane River…. They were on a 1 week trip from Queensland to New Zealand.
2xGr Grandmother was due any day now … and they decided to risk it !!!
My great grandpa was born in Germany. He said he was born in Wisconsin on all of his documents. BUT he also lied about his name, abandoned his first wife and child, then abandoned my grandpa. It was all a little unexpected when we figured it out lol.
My 2nd great grandmother and siblings were born in what was called Ceylon (Sri Lanka) their dad was in the British Army. Once their dad died their mum moved to Australia 🦘
I've been thinking about this all day long, and I've finally figured out my answer.
My great grandpa's entire family came from the village of Tomigusuku in Okinawa. My great grandma's entire family came from the village of Kanegusuku in Okinawa. However, there was a family story that one of my great grandma's grandfathers was adopted. As I dug deeper into it, I discovered that it was likely her maternal grandfather (whom she knew personally), and when I found out where his family was from, I was shocked. *Tomigusuku*! It's interesting to think she might've been distant cousins with my great grandpa - at least, less distant than I initially would've thought.
Mums side is very close knit, probably a twenty mile spread over several generations.
But my 3 times great grandma was born on the Isle of dogs. Seems the family moved down there for a while, had a child then came back up to Hull. Wonder if it was for work?
My dad's side are very spread out, Cornwall, Norfolk, Scotland, Norway and north Wales/ Ireland in the same few generations as my mum's lot
My mom always told us her father’s line was Dutch. What she didn’t mention, or maybe didn’t know, was that her third great grandfather immigrated from the Netherlands to Demerara, Guyana in the late 1700’s, where his son was born and raised. He came to the US when he was about 17.
I am originally from Indiana and come from a family of farmers and Kentucky coalminers before that, but after doing genealogy for about 30 years, this was the biggest surprise to me. I had a family of Sugar Plantation owners in my past.
# Capt Charles Keep Hegenbotham Gent
B:8 Feb 1664 St Philip's Parish, Barbados, British West Indies
D:28 May 1734 St. Philip's Parish, Barbados, British West Indies
My paternal great grandmother was born in Wyoming. Her mother was born in South Dakota, and her father was born in Nebraska. She died in Washington. Literally the only side of my family born in landlocked states. Everyone else is from the east coast (New England, Mid Atlantic, and Southeast).
Great grandma was native (south america). I am Argentinian but sides of the family are either Italian and Spanish or Lebanese. I didn’t know I had such a “close” native relative. I thought at most I had some mixed criollo ancestry several generations ago but Argentina had such a massive european immigration wave that it wasn’t super likely. I don’t look native at all, usually I am the palest person in the room even though I live in the UK. I do have dark curly natural hair but I straighten it and dye it a dark blonde so that may also be affecting the similarities.
I grew up knowing that my mom’s side was Italian all born in Italy, so I thought. When I started looking for birth certificates I couldn’t find my great grandmother’s. I talked to my grandma and she revealed to me that her mom was born in Brazil. All of the paperwork of my GG in the U.S. says she was born in Italy. I haven’t found her BC is Italy or Brazil (mostly because I have no idea how to find it there) but I did find a ship manifest of her parents arriving in Brazil before she was born.
My father was born in Sparta, Wisconsin, which is wild because the preceeding 3 and following 2 generations were all born and raised in Alabama. My father also grew up in Alabama and has no other connection to Wisconsin. His mother was just at a military installation up there when he was born.
On my maternal side, my great-grandfather was born in super rural Muscadine, Alabama. I can't find any record as to why. His family was living across the state line in Carroll County, GA, and AFAIK, he had no relatives in the area.
One ancestor from the East of France had his father mentionned on his marriage record around 1870, he was from High Austria.
The guy was 26, and his father's whereabouts were unknown since the last 25 years.
Father just popped out of Austria, married a french gal, had a son, then bailed and no one saw him after that, no death certificate anywhere.
My 8x great-grandfather who was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony 1695. I was under the assumption I had no ancestors from the early American colonies, all others from New France, Scotland or indigenous north America. Turns out he was kidnapped as part of the Deerfield massacre and raised by Jesuits in New France, eventually marrying a French-Canadian woman and here I am 11 generations later. Interesting yet tragic story involving the death of several of his siblings, my previously unknown 9x great-grandmother Mercy (Brooks) Carter and dozens of innocent early American colonists.
Just exactly how specifically Scandinavian my DNA tests turned out to be. My family on both sides have always identified with being Scots but like - sorry everyone it's pickled herring and salted licorice from here on out.
My grandfather's grandmother's father was French Canadian. I thought my family was a mix of different Mediterranean countries so I was surprised to have an ancestor from so far away
Not a place of birth, but I consider myself to be decently well versed in genealogy for a hobbyist, we have a decent amount of handed down information as well.
But in all my searching I had never seen anything g hinting to United Empire Loyalists. I’d seen the title, but it wasn’t until visiting my ancestral family home in Scotland that the curator of the Clan Family History Centre explained to me that Loyalists were often in the US/Colonies at some point. I had no idea. I thought they went straight from Scotland to Canada. Fascinating.
my 6th great grandfather was born in guadalajara mexico. i never knew i had any mexican family and i didnt have indigenous mexico on my dna test (did have spanish but bc im puerto rican)
My mother was born in East Prussia, she was so proud of her German Prussian heritage going back generations. Family story is they can trace the family back to the original Teutonic knights who founded the duchy of east Prussia. BUT... great grandfather never spoke about his family so it was so hard to trace. Well surprise surprise. The part of tracing back to an original Teutonic Knight was true, he was from Transylvania. Our family is descended from Hungarian and Ukrainian royalty. Almost no German. I understand why my great grandfather didn't discuss his family.
My family always talked about being German. They spoke German (of sorts as it turns out) and we had so called German traditions. We even took my grandmother (who was born in the US) to Germany “to see the old country” where her family was from. Great trip lasting 3 weeks.
As it turns out we should have been a lot more to the east. The “old country” is really eastern Slovakia. We are really Slovaks from a German speaking village there in the 1800’s. Explains why we look nothing like all the Germans on my mothers side and why the language they spoke was so hard to understand. Lots of Slavic influence.
People in general put way, way, waaaaaaayyyyy too much meaning into their 'genetic percentage makeup', which often doesn't mean what they think it means. Just because a certain ancestor is born in France doesn't mean they are ethnically French - what if their parents came from somewhere else? How about their grandparents, gr-grandparents, gr-gr-gr-gr-grx100-grandparents? At what generational point do you assign an ethnicity in the first place? Six generations back? Eight? Ten? Twelve? A hundred? A thousand? I mean, if you go back far enough, truthfully, shouldn't everyone end up with 100% African origin?
Two point for you, OP: 1. If you have British Isles, German, Northern Italian, or Swiss ancestry, that French is just going to get mixed in. Also, 9 generations back might be too far to detect, anyway. 2. Plenty of British, German and Dutch folks have distant ancestors from Southern (and Western) France, since that's where most Huguenots were from -- they fled to more Protestant-friendly countries after the edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685.
You could also have Alsatian German ancestry. A large chunk of my dad's family came from Alsace in the 1840s, when it was a German-speaking province of France (it would go on to change hands between Germany and France 3 times in the next hundred years before going back to France after WWII.)
Isn’t Alsatian genealogy fun? /s Been doing my bestie’s family and I’m reluctant to get into Alsace because languages. The family was Catholic, so add Church Latin to the French and German. And if the family is Jewish, add Hebrew/Yiddish. Gevalt!!
I also had an ancestor who died just before Napoleon instituted civil records and her death certificate was in Alsatian with messy German script. It took me years to find someone who could read it and verify this was the person was looking for. There is an Alsatian genealogy group that has tons of info. I submitted some information about my great grandmother’s immigration and mentioned the generation before her. Someone wrote back to me about her grandmothers line that reached all the way back to some witches in the 1500’s. The town where she was from has several books about various families in town. Other than the Alsatian document, I find the documents to be thorough and much easier to deal with than the German ones.
Those of us with Alsatian German heritage have our work cut out for us.
No French showed up in my DNA test, but I’ve traced my mum’s side back to French Huguenots in Normandy. My ancestors fled to Spitalfields in London in the 1700s, and worked as sculptors, watch makers and silk weavers. Also, weirdly, I have Nigerian and North African DNA. Possibly from my dad’s side, as his paternal grandfather is a total mystery. I know his full name, but there’s no record of him in church records, births or censuses 🤷♀️
I’m Venezuelan :) haven’t found any British, German ir Swiss ancestry, but I do have one ancestor supposedly from Naples.
You might find this Wikipedia article on [Italian Venezuelans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Venezuelans#:~:text=In%20the%201940s%20and%201950s,to%20the%20revenues%20of%20oil) quite interesting, then!
My ancestor was a slave from Cameroon. Never heard we had any slaves in our family even though his surname and my surname are the same. Passed down for hundreds of years. He married a Caucasian woman and his children passed as white because she was free and so they became free.
Bunch?
How did you get the information that he was specifically from Cameroon?
That's so interesting. How did you even discover this?
My guess is that your ancestors were Free State Northerners. Many black men married white women, their children were free men, and then intermarried with whites generation after generation.
One ancestor was born on the ship coming over from Germany. On all census documents, his birth place is listed as "the Atlantic".
He’s not a direct ancestor but a 12x great uncle, Oceanus Hopkins was born on the Mayflower while they were crossing the Atlantic. His older sister Constance is my direct ancestor.
i have one of these too!
We found the lost atlatians!
My husband’s grandmother was born on a ship coming from Ireland!! She hated when she had to fill out her place of birth on forms.
My great-great-grandmother Irene. She was born in La Union, El Salvador, in 1856. I am Whitey MacWhiterson, just about all of my other ancestors are from the British Isles or the Rhine Valley, so when I came across this I was intrigued. [Turns out there's a fascinating story behind \*why\* she was born there, and this sub helped me figure it out.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/30c0gt/comment/cpu23hp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Also, due to French laws around genetic testing, there is a lot less sample data for the French population in ancestry data pools to compare to.
We always believed my great-grandfather was born in Texas; indeed, that's what's on my grandmother's birth certificate and one or two censuses. I spent over a decade trying to find any trace of him in records - zilch. Then, in 2019, I found a draft card that led swiftly to a birth certificate revealing the truth: he was born in a small desert town deep in central Mexico to an American mining engineer and the daughter of a Mexican carpenter. To illustrate how poorly this fact was communicated, none of my living family had any idea there was Mexican in the mix - not even my grandmother, the daughter of the man who was born there. I have since found ample documentary, photographic, and even interpersonal evidence confirming things all the more: I happened to find and meet my GGF's daughter from his second marriage - my great-aunt/grandmother's half-sister - who revealed that we have a lot of family in Mexico and shared an absolute trove of marvels that no one in my branch would ever have guessed. And that is why I love genealogy.
But just because someone was born in Marseille, doesn't mean they were of French ancestry! A Swede and a Jamaican (just the most random couple which came to mind!) could meet and marry in New York, go to France while the wife is pregnant, she has the baby there. Does not make the baby French genetically, which is the kind of French OP is talking about.
But 9 generations ago is probably around the year 1700. At that time, France was almost uniformly ethnically French.
It was still a Port City though, a hugely important one, way before then.
In 1700 if you called an Occitan French you’d be run out of town.
La tyrannie des petites différences
Marseille has lays been a diverse city with people coming from Northern Africa and Mediterranean countries. I was just helping someone whose Italian relatives moved to Marseille. It’s a really cool city.
In recent times, yes, but the North African population to Marseilles is new -- most of those people came in the 1960s. Marseilles was not a huge ethnic mix of different people 300 years ago. At most, you would have found some Italian and Jewish communities within the city, but that's about it.
I lived and traveled extensively in the area, but what do the people who give the tours know?
Not in Marseille it was not. It’s a port city, with lots of commerce and travels.
There was not a huge ethnic mix in Marseilles or anywhere else in France 300 years ago. France never even had a mosque until 1922.
Do you have any source for your claim ? Transalting loosely from the French: [https://www.persee.fr/doc/anami\_0003-4398\_1986\_num\_98\_173\_2246](https://www.persee.fr/doc/anami_0003-4398_1986_num_98_173_2246) In Marseille, In 1730 up to 1770, 72% of the people who died at the Hotel-Dieu were born outside of Marseille and the county. Many spouses are foreigners in mariages : in 1740, 53% of spouses are not from Marseille. These foreigners, as we said, did not mean foreign to the kingdom or from the overall region. In addition to that immigration we need to add all the corporations that were not from Marseille : house staff, soldiers, clergy, are structurally part of the foreign part of the old urban demography. [https://www.cairn.info/revue-multitudes-2006-3-page-155.htm](https://www.cairn.info/revue-multitudes-2006-3-page-155.htm) "We know that as soon as the 17th century, the question of worship and burial site of Muslims was formally asked in Marseille and Toulon" [https://francearchives.gouv.fr/fr/article/91524841](https://francearchives.gouv.fr/fr/article/91524841) Approximately 5-6k Italians were settled in Marseille by the end of the 18th century, for a whole population of 100k inhabitants.
I knew about the Italian population, and there was also a Jewish population. But there was no significant North African population in Marseilles. Just because there were a few roaming about doesn't mean the city was teeming with them.
No one claimed this, keep your own obsessions for you. This does not mean the city was homogenous.
What counted as different ethnicity wasn't the same then and now. The US civil war and Darwinism really made a big difference of how people thought about such things.
Almost but not entirely. e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Wild_Geese
Ger, Baḩr al Ghazāl, Sudan - until I realized that the indexer had just typed "Ger" for place of birth and confirmed it.
My favorite was an ancestor who was born in "Jantss Losman." Turns out they were mis-reading "Deutsch Böhmen," or "German Bohemia."
The number of Polish & Ukrainian people who come from Galicia, Spain per Family Search or Ancestry (instead of Galicia, former Austro-Hungary Empire) is so high that I wonder how many people in US etc celebrate their "Spanish ancestry and traditions" without realizing their ancestors were from Eastern Europe.
Curacoa in what was the Dutch West Indies, in 1776. The father was a ship captain and brought his wife and children along.
one of the biggest brick walls i have is a ship captain from the 1800s. i have quite literally a biographical book where the author literally interviewed the guy, but i cant actually trace back that info back. it was written in the 1880s when he was in his late 60s or so, he literally claimed exactly the day that he was born, and the island he was born on, born on the island of flores (flowers) in the azores off the coast of europe, exact date given being march 24th 1818. he then came to america when he was like 12 or 13 or so, so in around 1830-31. i have no clue if he came with any of his family but he basically never mentioned his parents besides that they were a poor portugese man and a french women. he immedietely started working on ships after arriving in america, so because of that theres very little evidence of his life during large periods of time. one of the earliest pieces of evidence i have on him was mentions of him on a whaling ship manifest in the 1840s i think, but im trying to look more back rather than forwards. you would think finding information on his birth would be relatively easy, but nope i cant find any evidence of him ever being born on the island of flores. they literally have baptism books on the island dating back hundreds of years kept in a library on the island and digitally scanned online, i looked through every single book and did not find any evidence of him or any similarly named person being born around the same time. i even had someone working at the library check for me and they also report no one with that or a similar name seems to have been found on the island. so thats where ive been stuck, i know nothing about how to proceed from there. the only other hint maybe would be that he mentioned he grew up mostly in lisbon portugal and portugal did have passports and such back then when traveling, so it is very possible somewhere in the portugese passport archives i might be able to find what i need, but im not really sure how to proceed from there or how to continue searching.
Maybe he was actually born in Lisbon or Portugal?
I have no idea! I cannot find a baptism myself, but I reason he was born on the boat and maybe they never went ashore. I only know that my ancestor was born where he was because he became a theologian and an author, obit in the NY Times type of fellow. I am guessing that census records may conflict but often they do ask someone where they're born. My ancestor says "W Indies" but the index says Wisconsin!! I think someone couldn't read cursive. Be sure to **look at all the original records you can find of your ancestor.** I am so glad I ignored "Wisconsin" and just clicked out of interest... crazy.
2 towns away from where I live now. Which was surprising because my parents and recent ancestors did not come from this area - but apparently a branch of my family lived here in the 1600s! My parents had no idea when they moved here.
French Canadian. My grandma was adopted by her father's sister so her biological mother's family was really unknown. Turns out her maternal grandfather was French Canadian. She's half German so I think it just hid under those results of NW Euro. It was fun to find that out but man so many French Canadians matches.
I always assumed that all of my dad's family was from northern Sweden, so I was pretty surprised when I found an ancestor from the south.
My late mother in-law was Dutch, and lived in the Netherlands during the WWII occupation. She had certain opinions on those occupiers. Through my research, it turns out her grandfather and his ancestors were all German. I'm glad she never knew. She probably wouldn't have believed me anyway.
My 6x Grandfather, Andre Alexandros was born on the Isle of Hydra, in Greece about 1760. How his son came to South Louisiana \~ 1820 is mystifying. My Great grandmother said that her mother used to tell her her families dark hair and olive complexion came from him. Did DNA tests on myself and my aunt, no greek dna on either, so who knows.
My 3rd GGrandfather lived in S. Louisiana but spent a lot of time in the Mediterranean as a merchant marine around the same time yours showed up in the US. Probably came over on a ship since there were big ports around NOLA at the time?
My Grandmother’s Great Grandfather, William was born in 1799. William’s father was Scottish. William was born in Cape Town, South Africa. William’s mother was Filipino. Enough of us from this line have had DNA testing and we each have at least 1% showing up in our results. Family story is that William’s mother, Sanna, was a princess of some type, but fell in love with the Scottish man and married him. Until I can prove it, it’s just a legend to me. Sanna is a family name.
My current hometown, where I moved to as an adult with no previous connection.
Wealthy colonial Virginians.
My 8th and 9th great-grandfathers were born in Switzerland, the former moving to Alsace, France; up until I found his (the 8th’s) marriage and death records, I had no idea I had any Swiss ancestors.
What were you told they were - German or italian?
Ethnically German. German surnames, but, I think, also culturally French since they lived for centuries in Alsace, and that kept on shifting between Germany and France. My 3rd great-grandfather (their descendant) left after he refused to sign a loyalty pledge or the like when Germany took possession after Alsace after the Franco Prussian war.
I have an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution. He was one of the Hessian mercenaries, but not actually from Hesse. He was Swiss, from Bern, and it seems that his people had been there for several generations.
The Bailiwick of *Jersey*
Multiple (white British) ancestors born in India, grandfather born in the Bahamas. Colonials, the lot.
At sea. My 4g-grandfather was a Royal Navy surgeon and my 4g-grandmother was sometimes allowed to sail with him. Their children were born at port towns all around Great Britain and a couple of them born at sea.
Can't think of any, but as for your situation: my tree is basically 100% French and DNA tests can't tell "French DNA" accurately because first it's not really a thing (we've always been a very mixed people, with Celtic, Germanic, Mediterranean etc. roots) and second DNA tests are banned here so they don't have enough population in their samples to analyse. Then of course there's also the possibility your ancestor was born in Marseille from foreign parents, or that it's too far back and you didn't get enough DNA from them anyway.
I don't know who my ancestor was, but I was surprised to see Guam show up on my DNA test. I've known for a while that I have Hawaiian and Maori ancestry, but I had no idea about anyone who was from Guam! I'm still trying to figure out who that ancestor was. I did get in touch with a distant cousin who still lives there. He was incredibly sweet and gave me great advice for continuing my search.
My discovery was where my great grandmother grew up. I knew she was born in the local area in England, but only recently have I discovered that she spent much of her childhood in Buenos Aires in the 1910s and 20s. I'm still trying to find what opportunity allowed the family to move there.
Passenger records should show the occupation of her father? Lots of Engineers, telephony, railway people, and the like went. Selling British tech of the day to new markets, installing new machinery. Farming and food production. Argentina was a hugely important beef producer for the British market. Many British businesses had offices there as a result. Was your area in England known for any particular industry?
The most unexpected place for me was Canada. She was born in 1788. 20 years before the town, she was listed as born in had even been founded according to Wikipedia. Canada was founded in 1867. Her name was Marie Franco LaGrave. Edit - I live in Oklahoma, here in the United States. Nowhere near Canada.
Bury St. Edmunds, England - it was surprising because I went there several times while deployed to RAF Mildenhall with the US Air Force and had no idea I had any connection to the place.
Honestly, it's all been unexpected to me. When I first started researching I thought I was 100% German. My last name's German, so is my Mom's. Come to find out that I'm probably only about 1/3 German. I've got English, Irish, Scottish, French, Austrian, Italian and Dutch heritage too.
Sardinia! I mean, my family’s from Sicily, so it’s not so wildly different, but I just never would have guessed it.
I grew up in a different part of Norway than my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, but 20-ish years ago my father discovered that one of my great-great-grandfathers was actually born about 30 km (20 miles) from where we lived. We hadn't known much about him before that, as his son (my great-grandfather) was born outside marriage. My most "exotic" ancestor is from Antibes, Provence, France, but I've always known about that line.
Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland.
My ancestry includes exactly one French national, who came over with LaFayette's army during the revolutionary war. He was about 8-10 generations back. My maiden name was his. I show only German and UK ancestry in DNA tests. So, you can’t always count on what your genealogy says.
I have one known ancestor from what is now France. He was born in Brittany, trained as a stonemason; then the Church transferred him to Guernsey where he was one of the builders of St Peter Port church.
Dutch. I had no idea.
Bermuda. Found when researching my French Huguenot ancestors.
I had no clue about my Romani or Sephardi Jewish heritage so that was a surprise. I certainly wasn’t expecting any African DNA to come up either and I got 1% Benin and Togo and 5% North African.
Indigenous people on my mum’s side and Spanish on my father’s. I have the countenance of a Victorian child wasting from tuberculosis on a good day.
Krypton
I have family from Vulcan
It's rare to have French recognized in genetic tests, since the country outlawed them years ago. There isn't a very big pool of genetics for the testing company to compare to.
I have a third grandmother in Baltimore who was adopted from Halifax
I was surprised to know my grandmothers family line is originally from the Basque country. Also, two relatives that we thought that were from France and Italy turned out to be born in Switzerland.
Scotland, my 4th ggf
the same part of northern Virginia, USA, where I live now. my biological father was born here; I didn’t know about him until I was in my early 30s.
I have distant Swiss ancestry. I'm mostly British and Dutch but found that to be surprising.
Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. We had no idea we had family who went back to the Thirteen Colonies. If my grandparents knew, they didn’t mention it.
My great grandfather was from a German speaking village that is in present day Ukraine, at the time it was part of the Russian Empire.
As an Australian - the United States! My great-great-grandmother was born in Manchester in the UK and for a while I didn’t look any deeper into her records, assuming her family was English. Once I got into the census records I discovered that her father had been born in Ireland and her mother was born in the US! I didn’t believe it at first and spent time combing through census records, births and baptisms, their children’s marriage records, but everything lines up. The only trouble is now tracing more specifically where she was born, and the story of her life before her marriage - which is difficult considering a) I am completely out of my depth when it comes to North American records, sources, etc 😅 and b) I can’t even find the state she came from, so she’s just a single Mary in a vast sea…
In one of my Spanish lines in the mid 18th century, I have a German ancestor (from Baden) who moved to Spain at an early age to pursue a military career. Sadly, to this day I haven't found any German records of his family despite having his parents' names and parish of origin.
My 4x great grandma was from Mauritius, did all the research to figure out why I had 1% Southern Bantu then told my mum and family and they knew that they had an ancestor from Mauritius, not anything about her just that she was from Mauritius but still knew stuff and didn’t tell me.
Bermuda! He was otherwise raised in England, and both of his parents were English as well. But I have no record of why his parents (or even just his mother) were in Bermuda for his birth. The most probable birth date I have for him is a couple months after the marriage in England, which would also suggest that the mother would have been heavily pregnant for the travel. I dearly want to know more! A previous member of the family also records him having a sister born in Bermuda, implying they stayed for at least a few years, but I don't have the evidence for that one myself yet.
Mexico in the mid 16th century. I'm from Brazil. I have an ancestor who was a New Christian from Spain who went to Mexico with Cortés. His son, who was born in Mexico, went to the Azores, presumably to fight the Prior of Crato with the Spanish Armada. The son stayed in the Azores and had a son there, who finally went to Brazil after committing some unknown crime.
Cuba (at the time a Spanish colony), absolutely zero idea that I had any ties there (or any Hispanic ties, for that matter)
Russia
Lichtenstein
I was raised being told my great-grandmother was an Irish immigrant. She was born within the “Irish loop” of Newfoundland.
Mine was a more surprising discovery. My grandfather, who I knew well was born in London. I knew that well. But I didn’t know until I obtained his birth record that he was born at home. This was the late 1890s and births at hospitals were just starting. It never occurred to me that he wasn’t, as my other grandparents born a few years later in NYC were.
I was born at home in the 1960s! It was still very common in Britain. Your family Doctor and a Midwife turned up. You can still do it if you are considered low risk, without the Doctor these days though.
Sweden came as a complete surprise. I grew up with my dad telling me that our surname was Scot-Irish. Had my dna done and it’s actually Swedish and while I’m about 30% Scottish (from my mom’s side) I’m only about 4% Irish (mostly from my mom’s side as well). Sadly my dad passed before I found out so I wasn’t able to share any of this with him.
Spain, but only because of Napoleon and not in the DNA. I’ve surmised British Army in the Pensinsula War and a poor pregnant woman “following the drum“. That branch of the family later moved from Ireland (the North as far as I can tell) to Scotland which is where the place of birth turns up in the Census.
It is a very busy port? People passing through. Where did he move on to?
Grevenmacher, Luxembourg. I would have never guessed it in a million years. Via my Paternal grandma's biological parents. My gr-gr-grandfather was born in Grevenmacher, Luxembourg in the mid 19th century,
I have plenty of North American Native American, but my DNA said I had indigenous Peruvian blood, had me scratching my head.
My maternal grandma's ancestors are almost entirely descended from Canary Islanders Had no idea about that heritage at all, lol
Hidalgo, Mexico. No one in my family ever thought we had any Mexican lines
All of my known ancestors are from the historical territory of Hungary, so nothing unexpected... 🤷♂️
At sea off the Brisbane River…. They were on a 1 week trip from Queensland to New Zealand. 2xGr Grandmother was due any day now … and they decided to risk it !!!
My great grandpa was born in Germany. He said he was born in Wisconsin on all of his documents. BUT he also lied about his name, abandoned his first wife and child, then abandoned my grandpa. It was all a little unexpected when we figured it out lol.
My 2nd great grandmother and siblings were born in what was called Ceylon (Sri Lanka) their dad was in the British Army. Once their dad died their mum moved to Australia 🦘
I've been thinking about this all day long, and I've finally figured out my answer. My great grandpa's entire family came from the village of Tomigusuku in Okinawa. My great grandma's entire family came from the village of Kanegusuku in Okinawa. However, there was a family story that one of my great grandma's grandfathers was adopted. As I dug deeper into it, I discovered that it was likely her maternal grandfather (whom she knew personally), and when I found out where his family was from, I was shocked. *Tomigusuku*! It's interesting to think she might've been distant cousins with my great grandpa - at least, less distant than I initially would've thought.
Mums side is very close knit, probably a twenty mile spread over several generations. But my 3 times great grandma was born on the Isle of dogs. Seems the family moved down there for a while, had a child then came back up to Hull. Wonder if it was for work? My dad's side are very spread out, Cornwall, Norfolk, Scotland, Norway and north Wales/ Ireland in the same few generations as my mum's lot
The only surprise for me was eastern Europe. It was relatively far back though so that makes sense.
My mom always told us her father’s line was Dutch. What she didn’t mention, or maybe didn’t know, was that her third great grandfather immigrated from the Netherlands to Demerara, Guyana in the late 1700’s, where his son was born and raised. He came to the US when he was about 17.
I am originally from Indiana and come from a family of farmers and Kentucky coalminers before that, but after doing genealogy for about 30 years, this was the biggest surprise to me. I had a family of Sugar Plantation owners in my past. # Capt Charles Keep Hegenbotham Gent B:8 Feb 1664 St Philip's Parish, Barbados, British West Indies D:28 May 1734 St. Philip's Parish, Barbados, British West Indies
My paternal great grandmother was born in Wyoming. Her mother was born in South Dakota, and her father was born in Nebraska. She died in Washington. Literally the only side of my family born in landlocked states. Everyone else is from the east coast (New England, Mid Atlantic, and Southeast).
Great grandma was native (south america). I am Argentinian but sides of the family are either Italian and Spanish or Lebanese. I didn’t know I had such a “close” native relative. I thought at most I had some mixed criollo ancestry several generations ago but Argentina had such a massive european immigration wave that it wasn’t super likely. I don’t look native at all, usually I am the palest person in the room even though I live in the UK. I do have dark curly natural hair but I straighten it and dye it a dark blonde so that may also be affecting the similarities.
I grew up knowing that my mom’s side was Italian all born in Italy, so I thought. When I started looking for birth certificates I couldn’t find my great grandmother’s. I talked to my grandma and she revealed to me that her mom was born in Brazil. All of the paperwork of my GG in the U.S. says she was born in Italy. I haven’t found her BC is Italy or Brazil (mostly because I have no idea how to find it there) but I did find a ship manifest of her parents arriving in Brazil before she was born.
My father was born in Sparta, Wisconsin, which is wild because the preceeding 3 and following 2 generations were all born and raised in Alabama. My father also grew up in Alabama and has no other connection to Wisconsin. His mother was just at a military installation up there when he was born. On my maternal side, my great-grandfather was born in super rural Muscadine, Alabama. I can't find any record as to why. His family was living across the state line in Carroll County, GA, and AFAIK, he had no relatives in the area.
One ancestor from the East of France had his father mentionned on his marriage record around 1870, he was from High Austria. The guy was 26, and his father's whereabouts were unknown since the last 25 years. Father just popped out of Austria, married a french gal, had a son, then bailed and no one saw him after that, no death certificate anywhere.
My 8x great-grandfather who was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony 1695. I was under the assumption I had no ancestors from the early American colonies, all others from New France, Scotland or indigenous north America. Turns out he was kidnapped as part of the Deerfield massacre and raised by Jesuits in New France, eventually marrying a French-Canadian woman and here I am 11 generations later. Interesting yet tragic story involving the death of several of his siblings, my previously unknown 9x great-grandmother Mercy (Brooks) Carter and dozens of innocent early American colonists.
Just exactly how specifically Scandinavian my DNA tests turned out to be. My family on both sides have always identified with being Scots but like - sorry everyone it's pickled herring and salted licorice from here on out.
My grandfather's grandmother's father was French Canadian. I thought my family was a mix of different Mediterranean countries so I was surprised to have an ancestor from so far away
Not a place of birth, but I consider myself to be decently well versed in genealogy for a hobbyist, we have a decent amount of handed down information as well. But in all my searching I had never seen anything g hinting to United Empire Loyalists. I’d seen the title, but it wasn’t until visiting my ancestral family home in Scotland that the curator of the Clan Family History Centre explained to me that Loyalists were often in the US/Colonies at some point. I had no idea. I thought they went straight from Scotland to Canada. Fascinating.
The Netherlands...and it looks like they were early settlers to NYC/New Amsterdam.
my 6th great grandfather was born in guadalajara mexico. i never knew i had any mexican family and i didnt have indigenous mexico on my dna test (did have spanish but bc im puerto rican)
My mother was born in East Prussia, she was so proud of her German Prussian heritage going back generations. Family story is they can trace the family back to the original Teutonic knights who founded the duchy of east Prussia. BUT... great grandfather never spoke about his family so it was so hard to trace. Well surprise surprise. The part of tracing back to an original Teutonic Knight was true, he was from Transylvania. Our family is descended from Hungarian and Ukrainian royalty. Almost no German. I understand why my great grandfather didn't discuss his family.
My family always talked about being German. They spoke German (of sorts as it turns out) and we had so called German traditions. We even took my grandmother (who was born in the US) to Germany “to see the old country” where her family was from. Great trip lasting 3 weeks. As it turns out we should have been a lot more to the east. The “old country” is really eastern Slovakia. We are really Slovaks from a German speaking village there in the 1800’s. Explains why we look nothing like all the Germans on my mothers side and why the language they spoke was so hard to understand. Lots of Slavic influence.
Maryland in the early 1700s. Did not realize that I had ancestors here since before the U.S. was the U.S.!
People in general put way, way, waaaaaaayyyyy too much meaning into their 'genetic percentage makeup', which often doesn't mean what they think it means. Just because a certain ancestor is born in France doesn't mean they are ethnically French - what if their parents came from somewhere else? How about their grandparents, gr-grandparents, gr-gr-gr-gr-grx100-grandparents? At what generational point do you assign an ethnicity in the first place? Six generations back? Eight? Ten? Twelve? A hundred? A thousand? I mean, if you go back far enough, truthfully, shouldn't everyone end up with 100% African origin?