My mother's people come from Beaver Falls, Penn., a tiny town on
the western edge of the Keystone State. Steel country.  My
grandmother was a pianist who practiced on a white baby grand in
her living room. In her spare time, she wrote songs — lush, old-
fashioned tunes with dramatic flourishes that ventured far into
the piano's upper and lower registers. I can still hear her
fingernails click against the keys as she searched, toward the
end of her life, for the precise notes.  When my grandmother
died, I said goodbye to a woman I loved but didn't really know.
So when I had an opportunity to learn more about my maternal
ancestry, I grabbed it.  Or, rather, I swabbed the insides of my
cheeks, placed the swabs in an envelope provided by Oxford
Ancestors (, and sent them off to England, a country whose
general oldness and sense of history gave me confidence.  Oxford
Ancestors is a genetic testing company that captures DNA from
saliva samples to trace an individual's ancestry. My DNA, the
company said, linked me to