Grandmother was adopted and not sure where to start

[Mamad28]

My mother's mom was adopted and her records are sealed for 100 years. I am not sure where to start. I am actually just looking to find out my nationality not really concerned to find family but just where we came from.

[Mamad28]

I have not taken any DNA test as of yet to find my background because I'm not sure which would be the best approach

[KATM]

An autosomal DNA test will give an estimate of the population groups of your ancestors, your ethnic breakdown or makeup. Family Tree DNA has the Family Finder test for autosomal testing, which will show your ancestral regions in the "myOrigins" section.

If your grandmother is still living, it would be best to have her do the Family Finder test to get an idea of her ancestral regions, since they are the ones unknown. Do you know your maternal grandfather's and your father's ancestry?

Ancestry's DNA test, and 23andMe's test also provide estimates of your ancestral regions. No company can give you the exact country, or nationality, but will give you regions. FTDNA's Learning Center has a page describing the Population Clusters in myOrigins. That page describes the current Primary Population Clusters:

• Western and Central Europe
• East Central Africa
• Eastern Europe
• Native American
• North Africa
• Northeast Asia
• Central Asia
• Southern Europe
• West Africa
• British Isles
• Finland and Northern Siberia
• Scandinavia
• Asia Minor
• Ashkenazi Diaspora
• South-Central Africa
• Southeast Asia
• South Asia
• Eastern Middle East

The myOrigins section is supposed to be updated soon, so the above may change a bit. The Family Finder test will also give you a list of matches, and tools to work with them. See https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/...-finder-pages/ for a description of the Family Finder results pages.

Do you live in the USA? What state seals the adoption records for 100 years? You also get help from DNAadoption.com

[Mamad28]

My mother's mom was adopted and her records are sealed for 100 years. I am not sure where to start. I am actually just looking to find out my nationality not really concerned to find family but just where we came from.

Yes I do live in the united States. From what I have read they seal them to protect the birth parents. I know we have had slot of politics in my family and I also read that we would need a court order to open them which I'm sure is not cheap lol

[Dabney Carr]

Does your mother have any brothers who would be willing to take an autosomal test? Because your mother's brothers (your uncles) will have got their X chromosome from your grandmother. You could then look at your uncle's X matches to try and see some people your grandmother was related to.

There is also the mtdna test which will give you your maternal haplogroup and may give a broad idea from where your maternal line originated from like Native American, European, Asian, Jewish, African, etc.

[prairielad]

As mentioned if your Grandmother is still living, your best course of action would be to test her with an autosomal test (ie Family Finder here at FTDNA)

After testing you can upload Raw Data to a site Called Gedmatch and play around with their admixture calculators which give ethnicity estimates also.

If Grandmother is unavailable to test, then test as many of her children as you can. Each child received a random 50% of her DNA. On average one can get close to complete coverage of a parents DNA if they test at least 4 children.

Test the oldest generations if possible before yourself as they will more of her DNA then you do (on average you only inherited around 25% of her DNA)

[KATM]

Yes I do live in the united States. From what I have read they seal them to protect the birth parents. I know we have had slot of politics in my family and I also read that we would need a court order to open them which I'm sure is not cheap lol

I thought I had another site or .pdf bookmarked, but I found this one which seems to show the policy for each state of the U.S. for obtaining birth records for adoptees: https://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/state.php . Some do require a court order, but it depends on the state. A court order may or may not be expensive, but I don't have any knowledge about that.

You should check in with the DNAadoption.com folks, though; I've heard they can really help adoptees.

[KATM]

You could also try the DNA Detectives group on Facebook.

[Mamad28]

I thank you very much. My grandmother is still alive but have not seen her in about 13 years due to family issues. I did touch base with my cousin and we are going to try and get some more o formation about the adoption since she is very curious also

[BBA64]

DNAadoption.com

A great place to start. Some very good resources there. Test your grandmother in as many ponds as you can, too.