Story by Elizabeth Geris

After the game of pacing between the folding tables and washing machines at the local laundromat finally reached its amusement threshold, I spotted a magazine table boasting a relatively recent Newsweek. Within minutes I was knee-deep in a story about Family Tree DNA, a Houston, Texas,-based company that will mail customers cheek swab kits, and in return for their DNA scrapings, will scientifically identify their ethnicity, mail them personalized certificates assuring the reliability of the results, and offer regularly updated, password-protected web pages devoted to the customers’ genetic info, all within a matter of a few weeks.

Generally speaking, there are two basic tests. One tests the Y-chromosome on male customers only, shedding light on their male paternal ancestors; and another option tests the mitochondrial DNA of both male and female customers, providing clues to the origin of their maternal-side women relatives. More specific tests and refinements are also available virtually at any time desired, as all genetic material is housed solely for the customers’ personal use for a period of 25 years.

Now, maybe to some of you, merely asking Grandma for stories of the old country or even looking in the mirror is enough to answer your ethnic heritage questions; that is, if you have any to begin with. To me, however, it’s not that easy. By the time I started to wonder about my ancestry, all four of my grandparents had passed on, and only one left behind even a photograph. Studying my own features in the mirror only offered a few hints about my general, catchall European origin, and even my last name hasn’t shed much light on my cultural past; after all, can you say that you have ever met a “Geris?” Better yet, can you pronounce “Geris?” Neither can the majority of others, although several friends and passing acquaintances have offered some merciful guesses to both questions. As the months passed on following my remarkable visit to an ordinary laundromat, the option of handing over the burden of my ethnic mystery to a bunch of geneticists in Texas became an unlikely source of exhilaration.

Although I have since discovered a portion of my cultural history though general test findings, some questions present themselves as I await the results of sharper refinements presently on order: Why can’t I, and thousands of other European-American Family Tree DNA customers, as well as traditional genealogists, be satisfied with identifying ethnically with our birth country? Why must we refer to ourselves as hyphenated Americans, instead of just, well, Americans?

“We all came from somewhere and this is inescapable once you start interviewing your relatives … who often still speak in an accented version of English,” said Bennett Greenspan via e-mail, president and CEO of Family Tree DNA. Not to come as a surprise, Greenspan further illuminated that “this is universally loved, but because genealogy is a Western sport, we have a huge customer base of English, Irish, and Scottish folks, and we have a very extensive client base of Eastern European Jews as well.”

Staunton resident Janie Sherman’s personal motivation to map the family tree struck more as a smart slap than a long, nagging hunger. “It was after I was 40. You’re raising your kids, you’re working on your career, and you’re so busy at that time, and then suddenly you think, Oh, where did I really come from?” said the German-, Irish-, and English-American Sherman. With a rather ironic starting point, Sherman’s genealogic research got some legs, so to speak. “The mailman was my favorite person, because I would send off for a death certificate; death certificates are my favorite documents, because they have so much information,” Sherman said. A former English major with a teaching degree, Sherman, who is recently published and holding 15 years of experience as certified genealogist under her belt, guides other family historians across the globe when she’s not hunting the few stray missing pieces to her own historical puzzle. Sherman also helps locals who want to be more ethnically self-informed. Her annual four-week genealogical workshop held at the Staunton Public Library is coming up again in July.

“One thing that I advise also in my class is … to contact the oldest person in their family and call them and start asking questions about genealogy, and I don’t mean just about dates, I mean about stories, because that is the most interesting part about genealogy,” Sherman said. I began to hope that my mother’s ability to remember some family history had improved, owing to recent discoveries shared with her by her aunt. After all, there was my maternal great-grandmother Lucinda, whose dirty blond chignon, round eyes, and slight sweet smile had been preserved in a black and white 8-inch-by-10-inch photo on a dresser in my mother’s home for years. So, after explaining to my mom that Family Tree DNA placed Lucinda’s origins back to Central Europe instead of Ireland like we all thought, the response Mom had to the news surprised us both: She suddenly remembered some ancestors who owned a pen factory in Germany.

Perhaps now, I can place the responsibility of my blond hair on my mother’s side, but my blue eyes came from my father, whose wacky genetic markers are still being investigated by the unlucky geneticists in Texas on whom I have inflicted this task. However, I have discovered that it’s not my physical traits that particularly intrigue me, nor is it even the possibility of discovering a long-ago war-hero ancestor – what I am really looking for in a hyphenated title is a sense of ethnic community and belonging that I apparently have not tapped into with the other hyphenated title as plain-old American. Although I can now look back and smile on all the Christmas dinners in my childhood that always included sauerkraut salad and German chocolate cake, the jury is still out on the Gerises. Moreover, when I hear my husband’s siblings jovially rib one another about the assumed personality quirks associated with their Italian-Polish ancestry, I wince in envy at my lack of such a complete family history. I long for the day when I can officially identify with and laugh at all of my own ethnic peculiarities, and with what is shaping up to be quite a varied cultural identity running through my genes, just think of the wealth of idiosyncrasies I can start blaming on four whole countries!

Nevertheless, sometimes DNA tests such as the one I have under further investigation at the lab can yield a response of “unknown origin.” The possibility that my cultural heritage may only show a partial picture is an inevitability that I must acknowledge, but is that really so bad? I started to think that maybe I should take a cue from Sherman, whose own personal genealogic journey sparked more interest in the role her ancestors filled in the founding of America, rather than in the nationality that those same ancestors changed in favor of calling themselves simply Americans. “I was really just so interested in American … you know the founders of America, my ancestors who were there at the time of the founding of our country.”

I started to notice that my tendency to look back on the ancestors from the mother countries stopped short of looking forward to their arrival on the shores of the United States. Why the hesitance? After all, I do live in an altogether different country that, although relatively young, arguably has many personality traits and icons (good and bad) deemed uniquely American, and I do happen to love the beautiful landscape, varying seasons, cuisine, and abundance of Southern friendliness found in Virginia – my home state residing in my home country of, you guessed it, America. More so, perhaps a person’s genealogic journey can also double as a good opportunity to form a holistic identity – not just the, say, German, but also the identity of an American, a Virginian, a night owl, a worrywart, a Gen-X’er, and whatever else a person wants to call herself. In all fairness, there is a sense of community found in any group we can think of; as long as we embrace and own these titles we can be sure there is at least one other person out there who can relate. Two can be a great start to a community, or even an army, as far as I’m concerned.

Filed under: 1-July 2008 Issue