I was raised in a culture that was very keen on genealogy. Thus, relative to many other people whom I have known, I’ve always had a pretty good understanding of my heritage. My childhood predates genetic anthropology, so there were lots of folk beliefs about our deep origins, mostly rooted in traditional Protestant readings of the Christian bible. Closer to my birth, there were probably family rumors/legends about some Indian (Native American) ancestor, thrown in the mix. Nonetheless, traditional genealogical research provided me a fairly complete family tree.

This family tree has seven generations, with me being generation one. The graph is generated from data that has been entered by my ancestors and relatives, with very little quality control. The graph is color coded by country of birth. A quick look at the legend, should bring up some questions about data representation. For a more in-depth discussion of these issues go here

As a source of health data, what are some of the things this chart can tell us?

Here is my discussion of this question

How does this compare to genetic ethnicity estimates