The How Many Autosomal DNA Matches Do You Have Challenge

In order to read this weeks challenge and obtain the links to the other people's posts that took the challenge please follow this LINK.   My answer to how many autosomal DNA matches do you have is very simple.  Zero.  Zip.  Nadda.  I have tried to read about DNA and I admit the articles are way over my head.  The scientific reading is hard for me to follow.  I get through one paragraph and as I start the next paragraph I have forgotten what the paragraph before said.  Never the less,  I have waded though and conquered more difficult material.  But in order to work that hard I have to feel a need.  So I will use this blog to explain why I don't feel the need to understand DNA as it related to genealogy.   Before I do that,  I will direct  you to my brother's blog.  My older brother is who I refer to for all my genealogy DNA questions.  He is the one that has been tested in our family and the one that understands what matches to contact and what ones to not reach out to.  His blog is not current but I am sure you could still contact him through a comment there if you so choose.   Click HERE.  

To reiterate,  the first two reasons I am not the DNA contact person in my family are that 1) I don't understand it and 2) my brother is good at it.  But there are two more points I would like to make about my lack of interest in DNA as it relates to genealogy.  

My family heritage is predominately Pennsylvania Dutch and shows an ancestry of deeply religious people who were often Amish, Old Order Brethren,  German Baptist, or Mennonite.   These religious groups did not want their members marrying outside of their churches.  As a result they intermarried awfully close by todays standards and my family tree resembles more of a spider web than a tree.  How a DNA test can determine direct lines when lines are so closely mixed in exceeds my understanding.  

My last point reflects my personal feeling in regards to the age old question of "nature verses nurture".  While I concede that some potential is determined by nature or DNA as far as our abilities, it is my opinion that we are much more influenced by our nurturing.   It is those that raised us that instill our values and our morals.  It is the influence of those that are close to us as we grow that determines how we use the potential that  DNA handed us at birth.  Therefore,  I am much more a paper trail kind of genealogist. I don't really worry  if someone was begotten by the milk man somewhere along the way.

In closing, and bringing those two points together,  the question as to whether my ancestors were cousins or married their sisters husbands cousin who was their uncle's mother's son,  or whatever all those crazy relationships are in my family tree, is a mute point.  While I do the paper trail because it is like a fun puzzle for me to try to figure out and I find it interesting, what is important to understanding my heritage is to understand the value system that the Pennsylvania Dutch heritage passed down to me.   What I really need to understand in order to understand who I am is the voyage of the Swiss people across Europe and then on the the New World.  The persecution they were subjected to due to their beliefs,  the hardships they were able to endure,  and their journeys across this country to forge a life out of the land.