How do you find out what your part of ethnically?

Question

I guess that's how you would term it. I've asked my parents what all is in there blood line and they both don't know nor my grandparents. My dad said were part irish and scottish but nobody knows what else they are my dad's side of the family. My mom said Cherokee and german but nobody on my mom's side knows either. I also would want to find out what percentage I am of a particular ethicity such as oh I'm 50% irish or something like that. Does anybody know any websites that you can give samples of blood or whatnot to see where your bloodline comes from? I've tried to trace back my roots and got far back on my dad's side to confirm we do have irish in us but to no avail on my mom's side.

Answer 1

I suggest you get organized and start doing some basic research. If you go to the LDS genealogy website http://www.familysearch.org and learn the basics of genealogy research. They're great at walking you through it one step at a time. http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/R...

While there you can download 2 very important things. The first are family history sheets. The second is a free software package called PAF. Run off a copy of the family sheet 20-30 times and send one to everyone you know in your family, especially aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, grandparents, etc. Just ask them to fill out what they know about their own personal family back to their grandparents. You're looking for names, dates and places. Every time you get a sheet back, enter what's on there to build a nice solid tree. Then go out and verify everything with marriage licenses, death certificates, baptismal records, etc. Every one of those records will help you find the generation before them. Every marriage license asks for the names and addresses of the parents of the bride and groom. Every death certificate tells you where someone was born and when. By the time you're back to 1930, you'll have wonderful records available to you online, whether it's marriage indices or census records, even military records.

You can do a great job by just letting everyone volunteer the little bits that they know. No one was on this continent except for the Natives before 1600. So sometime in the last 400 years, someone was coming here to start your family line. The longer they've been here, the more you have to work with. I'll bet once you start, you'll be amazed how quickly it all falls together. Then it's easy to figure out your heritage because you'll know exactly who came here, when and from where they came.