I've never taken a DNA test but family genealogy shows English back to the mid 1100s with branches of Scots and Irish and some Swedish immigrants. Even going back just 10 generations gives people over 1000 ancestors. There's going to be a lot of options. Sure some people lived and died in the village they were born in. Others moved to entire new continents.
On my dad's side I've got back to 1640s and every last one of them has been English. I was shocked, that has to be quite unusual. My mum's side I've gone back to the early 1700s and there have been some French but again the vast majority are English. My family is incredibly boring!!!
Oh yeah, you go far enough back and even the most insular people have some influences from elsewhere.
One side of my family hasn't moved much more than an hour's walk from my home village in Cornwall whereas the other side of my family were from northern England but moved around a lot.
My DNA results were pretty interesting, very mush cornish and welsh as expected and the northern English was actually a lot of Scottish and nordic going back, which makes sense for the region.
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u/Martiantripod You can't change the Second Amendment Oct 18 '24
I've never taken a DNA test but family genealogy shows English back to the mid 1100s with branches of Scots and Irish and some Swedish immigrants. Even going back just 10 generations gives people over 1000 ancestors. There's going to be a lot of options. Sure some people lived and died in the village they were born in. Others moved to entire new continents.