I've never done any kind of test but know some of the oral history that's been passed down. On my Mother's I know that her mother was born and raised in Del Rio Texas. As a child we would sometimes drive out to Texas to visit some of that side in our family tree. Sometimes the Texas relatives would come out to California to visit us as well. It was on one of these trips to Southern Texas that I heard the story of how my great-grandmother had come to America.
Her father was Mexican and her mother was Native Indian. When Pancho Villa came to town talking about how he wanted to take Mexico back for the Mexican people her father knew his Indian wife and children would not be safe. My great-grandmother was just a little girl at the time and remembers her mother waking her up in the middle of the night, telling her that she needed to choose her favorite doll and favorite dress to take with her because the family was leaving and would never return to that house ever again. She cried in the back of the covered wagon as they left their home. At one point they had to cross a narrow bridge that was not meant for wagons. Her older brothers had to get out lanterns and guide her father to drive the horses slowly across. If the wagon drifted more than an inch or two either left or right then the wheels would go off the edge. They eventually made it into Texas and settled in Del Rio. I asked if she remembered the town in Mexico where she had lived, thinking it would be neat to go and look for the old family home. Unfortunately she could no longer recall.
My mother's father was born in Mexico but was sent to live with his aunt in California. Apparently, when he was born he had part of the embryonic sack still wrapped around him and his mother thought it was a bad omen and didn't want him around. He lived with his aunt until he was thirteen, that's when his aunt died and he lived in her house alone after that. He worked in the train yards for several years until he was old enough to lie about his age and joined the Army, of course the Army was not too picky as Japanese planes had just attacked a naval base in Hawaii and they were taking anyone they could get.
As a quick sidenote: My grandfather was the one who really introduced me to the paranormal. Before his aunt died she said that there was a little man with a big nose that would sometimes appear in her room at night and frighten her. She died of a heart attack and my grandfather always believed it was caused by this little man, which may or may not be related to the bad omen his birth mother had been worried about. He spent the next few years sleeping in his aunt's room so that he could confront the little man if he ever returned. I found out recently that my younger sister used to have nightmares about a little man hiding in her room growing up and he would pop out of the shadows to grab her and scare her. She always dismissed it as a bad dream caused by the movie Child's Play as the little man was a lot like Chucky but with a bigger nose. She never knew about Grandpa's childhood so this has me a little concerned.
I don't know a whole lot about my Dad's side of the family. I know that his father was born shortly after the family arrived in the US from Ireland. There was fighting and famine happening in Ireland at the time and the family decided to seek freedom and prosperity in America. The story is that my great-grandmother discovered she was pregnant with my grandfather while on the boat to America. This grandfather was also in the Army during WW2 and worked in intelligence. However he was a hard man and didn't really like talking to children. So I never learned much about him before he died when I was in grade school.
I also don't know much of my grandmother's family. They are of French and Scottish decent and one branch owns a vineyard in Northern California. Growing up my father was seen as a bit of a black sheep because he married a "brown" woman. So I never got a chance to really talk to most of the family and learn their history.
When my grandmother died we were going through some old boxes and found a very old photo of a man in a black suit standing in front of a log cabin. Everyone stopped what they were doing to take turns gasping at the photo until my Dad said that I really needed to see it as the man in the picture looked almost exactly like me. My hair was different as I was in the Army myself at the time and he looked to be a few years older than me at the time but was otherwise a dead ringer. My grandmother's older sister was there and recognized the photo but couldn't remember who it was. We also found a picture of my grandmother at about 16-17 with a few other girls of roughly the same age and a young man in his early 20's. The guy in the photo looked very familiar to me and I asked the room "Is it just me or does this picture of Grandma look like she's hanging out with Frank Sinatra?" My grandmother's sister scoffed and in a tone of disgust said "Yes, that's him. I don't know why she insisted on hang around that loser." I knew my grandma liked Sinatra's music but never knew this was the reason.
