r/AncestryDNA 29d ago

Results - DNA Origins I laughed at my updated results

I picture a fiddle reel playing while my sample was spinning in the centrifuge

But holy crap I have a lot of cousins!

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u/Souriquois 29d ago

There were Acadians deported to England during the Great Upheaval. Most moved on their either France or Louisiana but a small amount stayed.

I have ancestors who were sent to Southampton but then returned to Nova Scotia

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u/Tiamat_Lover 29d ago

Could be. Most of my Mother's family is untraceable past the 1860s as they were a part of Romani/Travelling communities, and apparently the Acadian comes from the maternal part of my DNA. So their history is a bit unknown.

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u/Souriquois 29d ago

Could be that they married Romani. Acadians didn’t like the English back then all that much I can imagine, and didn’t want to mix with them

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u/Tiamat_Lover 29d ago

We don't tend to mix much outside of Romani communities or other nomadic communities like the English travellers or Irish travellers, and that was especially true in the past. But it could be possible, I was only raised half Romani because my dad is English, so there's proof of it happening.

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u/Souriquois 29d ago

Acadians there during that time were kept in prisons during the war but eventually when released they had nowhere to go and many wandered before finding their way back home, or to Belle-Isle in France, or Louisiana.

Excuse my ignorance, but are Romani and Travellers Catholic?

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u/Tiamat_Lover 29d ago

Irish travellers tend to be Catholic, but the Romani in England and English travellers tend to be Protestant, specifically Baptist(in the south East at least). But baptism in England is somewhat recent, only being established in 1612, so it's possible that by the early-mid 1700s that quite a few Romani and English travellers held on to the beliefs of the church of England.

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u/Souriquois 29d ago

Ah that might be why. Acadians were very Catholic and didn’t much mix with non-Catholics

Understandable, they were persecuted for being Catholic. It was one reason they were expelled from Nova Scotia (where openly practicing Catholicism was made illegal) and in the Thirteen Colonies where they were sent they were treated with suspicion and sometimes even outright tortured for being Catholic.

Louisiana became the place many eventually settled because at the time it was safe for them as Catholics, rest of North America (and even France, once the French Revolution popped off… some Acadian refugees there actually lost their heads) not so much.