So my 23andMe holds a real mystery. Keep in mind this history:
Father’s family came over from Transylvania in 1940, near the tail end of chain migration that started in the early 1900s.
Maternal grandmother’s family came over in 1906 from Warsaw. I don’t know anything about her family because she was estranged from them (I believe there was a wicked stepmother and several younger siblings).
Maternal grandfather’s family came over in 1913, by chain migration from Belarus, probably going back at least 10 years.
My mother was born in Moscow, after her parents, who were communists, moved there to fight for the revolution. They came back in 1935 when Stalin started purging the foreigners.
Analysis of my DNA indicates that my parents were NOT related to each other.
BUT NEARLY EVERY ONE OF MY 1040 DNA RELATIVES ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER!!
How can that be?? At first I thought it might be that all of the relatives were related to just my father’s side (because they were the only ones I recognized names), and that possibly my mother was adopted in Modcow (she was my grandmother’s only live birth out of 6 or 7 pregnancies), but I have since figured out several that are definitely related to my mother’s father’s side.
How the hell could my two families have interbred when they all got to NY around the same time, such that almost all are related to each other?? It makes no sense to me.