Recently, I spit in a test tube and sent it off to 23andme to get genetic information about me analyzed. Some of it is to better understand my own genetic makeup and family medical history. For example, relatives have passed away from Parkinson’s Disease and Essential Tremors and I wonder what my LINGO1 gene says. Some of this is to support research. 23andme is gathering a lot of information about medical history, including medications taken, that may be helpful, not only in recognizing increased genetic risk factors for certain diseases, but genetic risk factors for drug interactions. Of course, of particular interest to me is the use of genetics to find possible distant cousins.

I’ve traced much of my family history and am fairly conversant in it. Some lines are hard to trace. Others go back to around the American Revolution, and others go back to the early European immigrants to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I have a great database of my ancestry, but it is on a hard disk of a twenty year old computer with a dead power supply. One of these days, I’ll manage to extract that data and restore my database.

One of my ancestors is George Washington Gordon. He was born August 13, 1844 in Lowell, MA and died Nov 2 1897 in North Conway, NH. The website, Find A Grave has a bit of information about him, and searching their website, it looks like many of my relatives are buried there.

Another relative is Mitchell Gordon. Records list him has having been born in St. Charles, Canada. Tracing his family, he appears to have moved to Essex Junction, VT, St Albans, VT, and eventually to Walpole, NH. His son Ezra, appears to have moved from Essex Junction and St. Albans, down to Windham, VT and then to Winchester New Hampshire. Based on this, I’m assuming that Mitchell was born in St. Charles sur Richelieu Quebec.

I mapped out some of the history in Google Maps, and it seems like an interesting app would be a map that shows your ancestors travels and they come together, have kids, move, etc.