Ancestry.com

[Chance]

Anyone tried this? My father has spent some time with it, and I'm pretty impressed thus far.

They offer a DNA testing surface, and provide access to thousands of digitized documents. The DNA revealed my paternal line is primarily British and Scottish (we thought it was German).

The documents revealed I have a great-great-(x ~ 7)-aunt who was sued for "bastardry" on multiple occasions. I understand this to mean, "Having a child out of wedlock," this being 1750's era terminology. She also owned a slave named "Leroy." So she was either a sex worker, or Leroy was pulling some extra duty.

I think I'm going to like using this. Anyone else try it?

[Permethrin]

Anyone tried this? My father has spent some time with it, and I'm pretty impressed thus far.

They offer a DNA testing surface, and provide access to thousands of digitized documents. The DNA revealed my paternal line is primarily British and Scottish (we thought it was German).

The documents revealed I have a great-great-(x ~ 7)-aunt who was sued for "bastardry" on multiple occasions. I understand this to mean, "Having a child out of wedlock," this being 1750's era terminology. She also owned a slave named "Leroy." So she was either a sex worker, or Leroy was pulling some extra duty.

I think I'm going to like using this. Anyone else try it?

consumer grade dna tests for trying to reveal group ancestry are so filled with holes as to be useless. you or your dad have been had.

if you're having fun with it though, have fun

[Chance]

consumer grade dna tests for trying to reveal group ancestry are so filled with holes as to be useless. you or your dad have been had.

if you're having fun with it though, have fun

Can you link to some independently verifiable information, or did you just want to swing by and be an asshole?

[Permethrin]

a great place to start would be the information communicated by the companies providing these tests regarding how they are performed, how the results are developed and what conclusions you can draw from them.
you or your dad received this as part of the process.

i appear to have triggered your sensitive gene :)

[HCM]

Ancestry's DNA results have issues.

http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2012/06/19/problems-with-ancestrydnas-genetic-ethnicity-prediction/

[NEPAKevin]

Anyone tried this? My father has spent some time with it, and I'm pretty impressed thus far.



My wife has done he family tree back umpteen generations and they seem to have fun with it. We even visited the grave of an ancestor who was in the Civil War. I too am skeptical of the home DNA test thing.

[Chance]

Ancestry's DNA results have issues.

http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2012/06/19/problems-with-ancestrydnas-genetic-ethnicity-prediction/

I totally get the reservations with regard to biogeographical estimation. When they reported "Western European" with regard to some of my results, my immediate reaction was, "...And that means what, precisely?"

Nor am I alarmed that they've cautioned people their models will change. "All models are wrong, but some are useful," et cetera, et cetera.

[HeavyDuty]

My late wife and I did the test almost three years ago. I haven't pursued her results that came in after she passed (she was the last of her line and we never had kids), but mine has been scary accurate. It correctly identified several known relatives, several distant ones I never knew about and one biggie - a half sister. (My natural father had zipper problems.)

[HCM]

I totally get the reservations with regard to biogeographical estimation. When they reported "Western European" with regard to some of my results, my immediate reaction was, "...And that means what, precisely?"

Nor am I alarmed that they've cautioned people their models will change. "All models are wrong, but some are useful," et cetera, et cetera.

Given all the wars, genocides, Viking raids, migrations, mercenary armies, crusades, and randy sailors floating around Europe the past 2,000 years any distinction finer than Western Europe is about as scientifically based as Ms. Cleo the Jamaican Psychic.

[Chance]

The inherent lack of precision is illustrative on its own. For instance, my mother's side of the family insists they're "Bohemian," which I've been told links to either Eastern Europe via present day Czech Republic, or something to do with the early 1900's era version of hipsters.

[jlw]

The testing on Ancestry is for autosomal DNA. This isn't as accurate as a y-DNA test (direct paternal line) nor mt-DNA test (direct maternal line), but it will allow you to identify cousins out to several generations. I was actually able to identify a set of great-great-grandparents this way. One of my DNA matches and I shared information and found a family member with an old family Bible. They had a picture of a woman they couldn't identify. It was my great-grandmother.

The ethnicity estimates are guestimates and will vary from company to company depending upon their database and algorithms.

Here's my list of cautions for genealogical research:

-Be prepared to accept what you find.
-What you find may be different than what you have been told.
-Be prepared to go down numerous rabbit holes.
-Be prepared to run into brick walls.
-You are not responsible to the actions of your ancestors.

I had two goals when I began my research:
1- I wanted to find my original surname immigrant.
2- I wanted to prove my Native American ancestry.

As to #1, I have found the first in my paternal surname line to come to GA in 1795, but everything beyond him is a jumbled mess. The surname has a royal branch in Scotland, and many people with the name do everything they can to attach to that branch of the family. Another issue is that two people with similar names alive at the same time but serving in different military units and living in different parts of SC have been morphed into one person that never existed in the online sources. While I have an educated guess, I don't trust anything beyond my great-great-great-grandfather in that line. I'm now involved in a y-DNA project in which numerous researchers are trying to sort it all out.

As for rabbit holes, I have traced the above line to many living relatives scattered across the country and now have contact with a number of them, and it has been fun to swap information with them. I've also been able to lay eyes upon the original family homestead in GA. As for being able to accept what you find, that same 3rd great-grandfather was a prominent man, but he owned slaves and most likely fathered children with them. His will list people as property. See above list about not being responsible for the actions of your ancestors.

As to #2, I was able to prove my Native American ancestry, but it was through more sophisticated and expensive testing than the autosomal kits such as Ancestry.

Other things that I found keeping my above list of cautions in mind:

-I found out that the woman that I knew, actually knew, as my great-great-grandmother was actually my step-great-great-grandmother.
-I found out that I have one line of Jewish ancestry.
-My 7th great-grandfather on my mother's side was a captain commanding a company of Rangers at the first Siege of Ninety-six.


I could keep going for while.

It can be fun, but it can also eat up massive amounts of your time.

[Wondering Beard]

I know enough about my immediate family that I don't want to know about any extended family out there ;-)

We're mutts from different continents and that's fine with me.

[blues]

I know enough about my immediate family that I don't want to know about any extended family out there ;-)

We're mutts from different continents and that's fine with me.

Hey, we're mutts too! I knew we had to be related! :cool:

[TGS]

No idea about the DANA thing, but our family did it and discovered a "lost" history in our family tree. Turns out I had German ancestors that moved to Berks County PA in 1738 and fought in the French and Indian War, and then two of my great grandfather fought in Revolution, the one marrying a girl from the area I used to live in while he marched from the Battle of Trenton to Princeton. Turns out that girl was from a family whose name is in a petition/protest to the King that is still preserved at the Trenton barracks. My 6th great grandfather fought with Washington's German Battalion and his father (born in Saarland/Rhein-Pfalz area of Germany) with the Berks County Militia, a unit of rifleman.

It was an incredibly proud thing to learn about our family history. Our rehearsal dinner and anniversary dinners are at the Washington's Crossing Inn....it's really cool to connect your history with your current life.

I say go off the deep end with it. There's a lot more we learned, and tracked our family back to the 1000-something AD through Catholic church records and town registers.

[Wondering Beard]

Hey, we're mutts too! I knew we had to be related! :cool:

:eek:

Sooo ... you're the cousin every one whispers about but never names.

[EricP]

My Mom has been working on our family's genealogy for 40 years. As a little kid I remember sitting in church and town hall basements while she went through records that were hundreds of years old.

She now uses MyHeritage.com. You can get some really good information looking at actual records. Having some existing family genealogy knowledge is beneficial, so the web site is filling in and validating lines, as well as, finding new ones. You have to be pretty careful looking at data that matched you to someone else's tree as the software doesn't keep you from adding everyone named John Smith on four continents over the last six hundred years.

As Lee mentioned, you have no control over who you may be related to. She relayed any number of people that I would preferred to not be related to.

[JohnO]

Nope no way! I am not going to sell my shillelagh, bodhrán & Irish flags. Nope not going to go out and buy a pair of lederhosen. If people can identify with any gender then I am well within my rights to maintain my Irish American heritage even if I am descended from Zulu warriors.

[blues]

Nope no way! I am not going to sell my shillelagh, bodhrán & Irish flags. Nope not going to go out and buy a pair of lederhosen. If people can identify with any gender then I am well within my rights to maintain my Irish American heritage even if I am descended from Zulu warriors.

Mazel tov! ;)

[peterb]

My wife hasn't used the Ancestry DNA tests, but has enjoyed using some of the other tools and record searches to fill out her family tree.

[HCM]

Nope no way! I am not going to sell my shillelagh, bodhrán & Irish flags. Nope not going to go out and buy a pair of lederhosen. If people can identify with any gender then I am well within my rights to maintain my Irish American heritage even if I am descended from Zulu warriors.

What - you've never heard of the "black Irish" ? ;-)

[Shotgun]

Nope no way! I am not going to sell my shillelagh, bodhrán & Irish flags. Nope not going to go out and buy a pair of lederhosen. If people can identify with any gender then I am well within my rights to maintain my Irish American heritage even if I am descended from Zulu warriors.


Mazel tov! ;)

That's funny right there.

Chance, have fun. I got on Ancestry.com a few years ago and traced family back in Texas for five generations and hit a dead end. The searching was much fun. I did not continue because I could see that consuming too much time. I don't need another hobby. Have not done the DNA test, but thought that would be interesting. It would be fun to know if there is anything other than Western European in the bloodline. Whatever it is, it's all Texan now.

[KeeFus]

I did mine a few months ago. Spent HOURS doing the research. Made some family members mad with what I found. Oh well, I've always been one to send a torpedo up the river of denial.

From what I have found I'm from Wales, Yorkshire England, and Scotland. I had a few fight for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Its been interesting learning where my first name, Joel, came from. I have traced its use in my family back to the 1800's and has been used several times.

Ive hit a brick wall and cant go any further with it. It was a fun learning experience to say the least.

[willie]

Ancestry.com has a fee to participate on their site. Some municipal or regional libraries have a genealogy dept already hooked into this site and or others. You or a family members' library card may give you this benefit so check before you pay. I did, I checked, and I'm a nobody. :D

[JTQ]

One of the "click bates" I often see when I open up a gun forum, before logging in had a picture of the Dahm (I believe) triplets. Three very attractive blondes from Minnesota, who I believe ended up in Playboy at some time. It was difficult to avoid clicking on that picture for several weeks. The story was they each did the Ancestry DNA test for I think a Dr. Phil show they were on. They each got different results. In the generic, their backgrounds were the same, but the percentages for each were often off by 10% points or so.

[blues]

One of the "click bates" I often see when I open up a gun forum, before logging in had a picture of the Dahm (I believe) triplets. Three very attractive blondes from Minnesota, who I believe ended up in Playboy at some time. It was difficult to avoid clicking on that picture for several weeks. The story was they each did the Ancestry DNA test for I think a Dr. Phil show they were on. They each got different results. In the generic, their backgrounds were the same, but the percentages for each were often off by 10% points or so.

That's why you can't trust the Dahm results from those Dahm sites. (And why I haven't wasted my Dahm money.)

;)

[Wondering Beard]

That was terrible :-)

[blues]

That was terrible :-)

Now you know why I'm that cousin that "everyone whispers about but never names". ;)

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I've read that we share 98% genes with chimps and 35% with green peppers. Send that as a report. It's baloney, IMHO.

[jlw]

Suppose your mother is 50% German and 50% Italian. Your father is 50% Irish and 50% Spanish. That doesn't mean that your DNA is going to be a perfect 25% of each. You'll get a random shuffling of DNA from each parent. Your siblings will get a different random shuffling from each parent. So, your DNA results and the results of your siblings won't be identical.

One would think that identical twins/triplets/etc would have identical DNA though.

As I stated in a previous post, the ethnicity estimates are guestimates based upon the respective company's database and algorithm. One also needs to understand migration patterns. Native American DNA can prove tricky as there is no way to test for specific tribes, and they were a migratory people who walked across at least two continents. One needs to try to match up their DNA results with a paper trail as much as possible. I'm showing some Siberian DNA in my autosomal results. Nothing in my paper trail indicates a connection to Siberia, but but I do have Native American ancestry. When I did specific mt-DNA and y-DNA testing, I got Native American markers in my results. There is a debate about whether the Native Americans came from Asia or Europe, but there is consensus that they walked across Siberia to cross the Bering Strait to get into North America. My guess is that the Siberian DNA showing in the autosomal test is actually Native American.

[JohnO]

My father's sister living in Ireland at the time traced our family heritage back to the 1500's through church records and graveyards. On my mother's side no one went to that depth. However my mother's older brother told me about one of my relatives he met as a kid in the 1930's. This relative AKA Paddy the Bomber came very close to killing Queen Elizabeth's father (King George VI) before she was conceived. He was captured in England, escaped, captured again in Canada, escaped and here in the U.S. when my uncle met him.

I kind of doubt I need a test to tell me where my DNA came from.

[blues]

...I kind of doubt I need a test to tell me where my DNA came from.

http://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/SHAKEW.png

"He doth protest too much, methinks!"

[jlw]

Here's another one:

One of my coworkers came in one day and told me that one of his ancestors had been killed in the Battle of Kings Mountain and that he wanted to join the Sons of the American Revolution. He asked me to help him find documentation.

I very quickly did find documentation that his ancestor had been killed at Kings Mountain, but...


... he was a Torie.


No Sons membership for him.

[willie]

On the ads for these sites, some invite you to enter a name. When you do, wheels turn, and then you're told that X number of records exist for the name. Try this. Add two nonsense words like Castle Nut or Chief Sucks. Wheels will turn, and you're told that X number....This fact by itself makes me see scam.

[voodoo_man]

Anyone used 23andme genome service or their $199 service with the health info?

[Pacioli]

Guys,

I don't own any tin foil hats but I do wonder whether there is reason for concern with having DNA samples stored "somewhere," in "somebody's" server that is probably not bullet proof. I don't know what a bad actor would do with it if they got it. It just gives me a little pause when I think about it. Am I off base?

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Sometimes you really don't like the results: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/white-nationalists-dna-ancestry/537108/

[voodoo_man]

Sometimes you really don't like the results: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/white-nationalists-dna-ancestry/537108/

This is awesome, because history and reality always has a way of slapping you in face when you start day dreaming.

[Drang]

The only relative who has actually ponied up cash to do any genealogical research wound up going to England to track down relatives there.

None of them would talk to him. As in doors slammed in his face.

Yep, it's genetic...

And, yeah, the "send us a sample and we'll tell you who you are" services are.... dubious, at best. (Besides the fact that their commercials are just howlers.)

("Whenever we traveled around the world, people would ask me what I am..." TELL THEM YOU'RE AN AMERICAN, YOU STUPID BITCH!!!)
(Although "That's rude, what's wrong with you?" would also be an acceptable answer.)

[Wondering Beard]

Sometimes you really don't like the results: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/white-nationalists-dna-ancestry/537108/

And on the other side: I Celebrated Black History Month… By Finding Out I Was White (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-celebrated-black-history-month-by-finding-out-i_us_58b1ce17e4b0e5fdf61972bb)

If you make your heritage be so much of who you are, you're doing it wrong.

[voodoo_man]

Just got my 23andme results back


99.9 European
99.9 Ashkenazi

Can't say I'm surprised.

[jlw]

I can update with two new finds:

I got an autosomal match to a person who is the descendant of a man believed to be at least the half-brother of my great-great-great-grandfather. He took the y-DNA test, and we matched. This proves the common direct male ancestor link; thus, proving several of my theories. I'm now definitively back to the 1730s in that line and can put eyes on every primary homestead in my direct male line to that point.

I also got a match to a woman who is 83 and never knew who her father was. She was matching several cousins as well. Based on her age, place of birth, and a few other factors, we determined that she was the daughter of one of my great-uncles. I was able to give her a bunch of pictures of her father and fill in her in on a lot of things.

As a group, we all decided that she isn't responsible for the circumstances of her origin, and we have welcomed her.

[NEPAKevin]

Wife gave me a DNA kit for Christmas and this weekend got the results back. Heinz 57

Asia East 49%
Scandinavia 21%
Europe West 10%
Low Confidence Regions
Europe South 6%
Great Britain 4%
Iberian Peninsula 4%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales 2%
Europe East 2%
European Jewish 1%
Caucasus < 1%

[Sherman A. House DDS]

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180227/5e0d476deaf9b958d7de2d138600b978.jpg

The first cousin it gave me was actually...my first cousin!


civiliandefender.com

[blues]

The first cousin it gave me was actually...my first cousin!


civiliandefender.com

Come On-A My House


https://youtu.be/mriXncI96lw

[LOKNLOD]

Mom and dad did a kit my sister gave them as a gift.

Apparently the results mean I’m mostly Irish, with a little Scandinavian?

Now every time I talk to dad he reminds me we’re Irish Vikings. :D

[LOKNLOD]

Mom and dad did a kit my sister gave them as a gift.

Apparently the results mean I’m mostly Irish, with a little Scandinavian? At least that’s how he has chosen to interpret it...

Now every time I talk to dad he reminds me we’re Irish Vikings. :D

[Sherman A. House DDS]

Oh, one other thing...I found a photo from my DNA results that show my Great, Great Great Grandfather from Vienna, circa 1891.

The family resemblance is uncanny!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180227/c9faf5a4caf006c9c0e69d59f66e0347.jpg


civiliandefender.com

[jlw]

Mom and dad did a kit my sister gave them as a gift.

Apparently the results mean I’m mostly Irish, with a little Scandinavian?

Now every time I talk to dad he reminds me we’re Irish Vikings. :D


Those two are not mutually exclusive. The Vikings conquered and occupied much of Ireland; so, someone being of Irish descent would likely also have Scandinavian DNA.

[Darth_Uno]

I know where most of my immediate family comes from back to great-great-grandparents. My grandmother always claimed we were direct descendants of Paul Revere, and great-great-grandmother was supposedly Cherokee (I think it's legit, she looks like it in old pictures). Always wanted to dig into it but never took the time. Are Ancestry's resources worth the money?

[Sherman A. House DDS]

I know where most of my immediate family comes from back to great-great-grandparents. My grandmother always claimed we were direct descendants of Paul Revere, and great-great-grandmother was supposedly Cherokee (I think it's legit, she looks like it in old pictures). Always wanted to dig into it but never took the time. Are Ancestry's resources worth the money?

I think it is. For $60, I’ve had my tea leaves read at the Renaissance Festival.


civiliandefender.com

[HeavyDuty]

My late wife and I did the test almost three years ago. I haven't pursued her results that came in after she passed (she was the last of her line and we never had kids), but mine has been scary accurate. It correctly identified several known relatives, several distant ones I never knew about and one biggie - a half sister. (My natural father had zipper problems.)

Since I posted this in August, I found two more half siblings via the DNA testing.