Took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that…”
I took a DNA test on Ancestry.com a while ago and it was so cool to see my results. There were aspects of my results that were not at all surprising: the fact that a majority of my DNA is African, and that I’m primarily of West African descent. I know that a lot of Black Americans are of West African descent, especially if their ancestors were brought over as slaves. It’s really nice to get an idea of where my family comes from and on some level, it adds to my sense of identity. I love hearing others share about their knowledge of their own ancestry and where their ancestors lived, so this is my little way of being able to experience that on some level.
The coolest thing of all though, is finding relatives that I had no idea existed. I knew about my great grandfather and his brother, but after putting together my family tree on Ancestry I realized that he had a few other siblings. And then I found out that those siblings had children, many, many children. Somehow my great grandfather, his brother, and parents somehow got separated from one another and relocated to Tennessee while the others stayed in Alabama (their descendants are still there). My family is a LOT bigger than I imagined!
It’s also been really cool to go through all of the records on Ancestry and seeing army enlistment cards, records of different censuses dating back to 1870, marriage licenses, and put together a picture of who my ancestors were. I have an ancestor that was a slave who murdered his slave master, escaped to the North and fought for the Union in the Civil War. He ended up dying during the Battle of Vicksburg of dysentery.
There are so many incredible stories and I can’t wait to uncover them all!