The DNA Test

When I left off the last post, my first genealogy post, I stated that have my family tree dating back to the 17th century when my ancestors first came to "Nouvelle France" was good enough for me. And so that is where it remained for over 30 years.

In the Fall of 2018, my oldest daughter sent my wife and I a copy of her DNA tests that she had analyzed by the company 23andme. She had the complete set of DNA tests done which not only shows who here DNA relatives where but gave a complete health + ancestry report based on her DNA profile. The DNA profile showed her ethnicity plus possible siblings and relatives.

I proposed to my wife that we should buy DNA kits and see what it would tell us about our ancestry. We chose Ancestry.ca because it seemed to be more focused on genealogy. The kits arrived between Christmas and New Years. We decided to wait until after the holidays because we did not want the samples to be lost in the holiday mail rush. The first part of January 2018 we spit in the little tubes provided as instructed and sent the sealed packets off to Ireland for DNA analysis and waited for the results. We received the results around the middle of February.

I was surprised and confused by the results.  My expectation was that I would be 100% French and I would find relatives with the surname Gauvin. This was not the case. According to Ancestry I was somewhat less than 100% French and I found that the DNA match was someone named, Leonard Parent. Ancestry has a messaging system where you can send a message to someone without using your personal email address so your privacy is protected. Using Ancestry, I sent a message to Leonard Parent asking him if he knew who I was and how we might be related. I included some personal information about my family and myself. Leonard answered back that he knew exactly who I was then proceeded to give me even more personal information. The most shocking thing that he told me was that we were first cousins and that my father was Gildore Parent.

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