[Magdalen] DNA story

[Grace Cangialosi]

I got a bit of a jolt right off the bat as I saw the Irish-Jewish connection. As I said, my results showed a significant Eastern Jewish component, which made no sense.
I had always “known” that my father’s parents and grandparents were German. I never met his father’s parents, but I did meet his mother’s—just once. As I recall, my great-grandfather spoke with an accent.
My father never talked much about his family, and because he was in the Army and we moved so much, we didn’t see any of them very often.

Well, a few years ago, I found an article clipped from the Fargo paper that was a detailed account of his maternal grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Among the surprises in the article was the information that my great-grandmother was Irish and had moved from Canada when she got married! Her first name was Kathleen.
Irish!! I had no idea.

So we’ll see what turns up. I am going to subscribe to ancestry.com, at least for a little while.

My mother told me a couple of times that when we lived in Germany she had tried to find out something about my father’s family, but had no luck at all. Couldn’t even find his last name. I always thought that was very strange, but maybe not...


> On Jan 1, 2018, at 3:12 PM, Lynn Ronkainen <houstonklr at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Compelling story from last summer. See below.  I sent it to my daughter after she tested her DNA for her 40th birthday- she replied “Mom, is there anything you need to tell us?”
> 
> I’m still on the fence. : )
> 
> Lynn
> 
> “She thought she was Irish — until a DNA test opened a 100-year-old mystery - “ Washington Post
> 
> 
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/she-thought-she-was-irish-until-a-dna-test-opened-a-100-year-old-mystery/