By Dale Welch
I got my DNA done awhile back. It’s official—I’m a mutt!
I purchased an AncestryDNA kit. Being mostly blind, I spit into the little container they sent as best as I could see to do it, registered it online and sent it off. A few weeks later, they sent me another one, saying I didn’t do it right. I sent the second one off. I didn’t fill that one correctly either. I just couldn’t see enough to get that spit level just right. I enlisted a family member to help me judge where to stop at the line. That one worked. Postman Chris told me that I was the only one he ever knew that failed a DNA test so many times.
When I was notified of my results, I was surprised. I came from all over the world. With the last name of “Welch,” I kind of knew Wales would figure in there somewhere, but it wasn’t as much as I thought. Wales was only one to three percent. So was Ireland.
Great Britain was the majority of where my DNA came from. That’s only because I’m related to the same Phillips family three times. I guess that if they didn’t travel very far and the woods were full of Phillips,’ they had to marry cousins.
A good percentage of my DNA was Scottish. They were conquered by the Phillips’—I mean the Britons, imprisoned, enslaved and sent to America to work in the cotton and tobacco fields.
One percent of my DNA was African. I read up on them. They were Southern Bantu people. They were a taller people, who were in the Sudan region, but headed south and conquered the Pygmies. It wasn’t long before another tribe conquered them. They wound up in Nigeria sold to a slave treader and headed out on a ship to America. Once again, my ancestors were enslaved and working in cotton and tobacco fields.
Then, there was a percentage of my DNA that was Western European Jew. We already know how many times they were enslaved. Most of that is in the Bible. I had already run into that from my genealogy research. I even had one ancestor from that bunch that was born in Tennessee before it became a state. It was on Cherokee lands, so his parents were forced to move back across the line. By the time they were there though, they had become died-jn-the-wool Baptists.
I had German DNA. I figure that’s why I like sauerkraut. I had Sicilian DNA. That’s why I love Italian food and, if you mess me over, I won’t get you now, but perhaps down the road somewhere.
I even had Norwegian DNA. The Vikings, baby! I figure that and the Sicilian DNA is where both the Vikings and the Romans conquered the Phillips’—I mean the Britons.
A very small portion of my DNA was Native American. You’d figure Cherokee? Nope. My ancestors were from pre-Hispanic Northern Mexico and into what is now Texas. They were the ones that ran wooly mammoths to death. The animals had to stop and pant because they couldn’t sweat.
My two brothers and my sister and I have my daddy’s light brown hair color. My mother’s hair was jet black until her mid-20s. Almost overnight, her hair turned white. We blame that on the birth of my brother Ronald, who is 16 years my senior and the only one with baby blue eyes. He knows I’m kidding.
It took a lot of people from all over the world to turn out a beans and cornbread person like me. I’mutt and proud of it.
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