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[delphica]

Related to some recent conversations with friends about the 23&Me DNA testing, my mother recently had it done. I have been giving her a hard time (in a fun way) because she paid them to tell her what she already knew (no surprises for us, 1/2 Eastern European and 1/2 Irish) BUT it's also kicked off a bunch of conversations about various family

Comments

[delphica]

I noted that my first reaction was maybe more sympathetic. Wow, just imagine being in a camp with nowhere to go and you've got your little kids ... you'd be so desperate to do anything to get out. Because surely you wouldn't bilk some honest Buffalonians unless things were really, really bad, right?

But my mom was a little more ambivalent. She agreed that okay, maybe it was out of pure desperation. Ooooooor, she pointed out, maybe if you were sneaky ANYWAY you would be more adept at sneaking your way out of the camp using the black market.

[delphica]

Oh, another bit of business that I thought you would enjoy -- the Irish folks have the surname Clark, and were not at all creative about naming children, it's all Charles and Robert and Mary and Ann. So much so that in my family, there is a Charles Clark with children named Robert and Mary, and there is ANOTHER, unrelated family in Buffalo with the same surname and another Charles who spawned a Robert and Mary.

I've gotten to the point where I can usually quickly glance at someone else's family tree and figure out right away which Clarks they are. I was looking at one of these not-us Clarks, and something caught my eye -- another son born in Buffalo in 1901 and his name was William McKinley Clark! I wonder if there was a big surge of William McKinley tribute children around that time. Assassination drama!

[crankyasanoldma]

What an astounding story.

[crankyasanoldma]

What is interesting to me is how much stuff like this that the DNA testing might reveal. I mean, these people fessed up, but what if they hadn't? Imagine you growing up close to them and thinking they were your family and then you guys do the testing and your profiles turn out different in ways that can't be accounted for. You'd be wondering where that happened, and how. Did great-aunt Thelma have a thing with the milkman? Did a baby get swapped at a hospital by accident? Did an entire family buy some fake papers?

[delphica]

I think the fake papers would be low on my personal list of conclusions to jump to, and then I would be casting all sorts of aspersions on people.