The vast majority of us didn't inherit castles or manors or anything like that. Because of this, we Americans tend to have a healthy disdain for "the manor born." At the same time we are curious about our roots--sometimes so much so that we cling tenaciously to the idea that we "are" Irish or Dutch or Italian or German or Norwegian even if there is so much variation among those peoples that it doesn't really mean anything. When I lived in Brighton, Massachusetts I felt like a bit of an outcast because I wasn't Italian. In Pella, Iowa, the saying was, "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much." In Spring Grove, if you weren't 100% Norwegian, you kept it a secret. Although being on the outside of this "heritage-pride" never really harmed me and was generally good natured, it did implicitly suggest that those of us who aren't "pureblooded" are mutts and only have a probationary term of acceptance in the community of hyphenated Americans. Ancestry.com's World Family Tree/23andMe genomics testing makes it possible for everyone (even those who have been adopted) to trace their own ancestors way, way back by finding your connection to already established family trees. It is a fun way to find long lost cousins and connections to people who you thought were cool as a kid--for me Christopher Reeve and Clint Eastwood. Below are some other distant relatives of mine that World Family Tree identified. I can connect with other descendants of a particular person, and together we can bring together family heirlooms or do genetic studies looking for deeper ancestry or shared traits. Most importantly, World Family Tree connects us to a matrix of diverse human beings with unique thoughts and lifestyles, which I feel could balance out the tendencies we have to declare ourselves hyphenated Americans.