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My father did and found our paternal Scots-Irish heritage roots, back to a point when records seem to run out. The king of England exiled my family's clan from Scotland to northern Ireland in the 1600s. Apparently his whims moved people around the UK.
His maternal side came directly from Norway on her paternal side, immigrated and had her here in the USA.
So i know that part of my pedigree.
My mothers side is a bit of a mystery, but it has been assumed her side of the family was English, Irish and German. I started search ancestry.com and went back to early to middle 1700s (still in the USA), but it was obscure before that, as to exactly where their ancesters migrated from.
I was thinking about ancestry.com or 23 and me for more info.
So i was wondering how many of you have done so, and what did you learn?
No.
My mother spent over 25 years doing genealogy research on our family.
I know that Joshua Barnes got off the boat without papers in 1752 in Connecticut.
Guess I'm not all that curious about the details. A couple of family members were so they found all that out for me. . No point in reinventing the wheel.
Never been that interested in human history. I'm more intrigued by ecological diversity and evolution of non-humans.
I had DNA testing through ancestry.com and 23 and me. The results were similar and mostly confirmed what I knew - Northern European. Some of the percentages were not exactly as expected - was only 10-15% Scandinavian despite a Scandinavian GGF. And the countries are grouped so the results lump Germany and French into western Europe or England, Wales, and Scotland into one group. Not a lot of differentiation. I was disapppointed not to be Native American but may have a distant German Jewish GG grandparent and was more Neanderthal than most.
23 and me had a lot of health data that was not that informative. What I liked about ancestry.com is that they list any relatives that are in their database - usually 3rd or 4th cousins. But if those "cousins" have developed a family tree, you can access it if you have an ancestry.com subscription and if the tree is not private. Assume you could send the cousin a message and ask them to let you see the private tree if you are related. So I have been going through those family trees to find information on my ancestors. Most of the trees are not very good and can have lots of mistakes so you need to do your own verification. But I have found some interesting stuff.
A word of caution. Some friends have found out that their fathers or grandfathers are not their biological parents. Or friends have been contacted by their adopted cousins in hopes of finding the biological parents. This may be good or bad depending on whether the biological parent wants to be found.
We did ours on both Ancestry and 23 and me. Confirmed a lot that we already knew.
A good surprise was when I was contacted by a woman who was close in DNA, who turned out to be the daughter of my first cousin. He never knew about her. The bio mother had given her up for adoption and never told him she was pregnant. He never had any more children, now he has a daughter and three grandchildren. Her adoptive mom passed away and she decided to try to find her birth parents. Sadly her birth mother never told her now husband and family, and wants nothing to do with her.
Of course before this was resolved there was a lot of back and forth, she asked who of my close male relatives were in a certain state, location, in a certain year. The only one was my cousin. I let him know about the inquiry, I didn’t give her his name, I gave him her phone number. So it was up to him.
He took a dna test and was confirmed. Our family is happy to be expanded.
My sister did a 23andMe thing, which is as good as me doing it. There were some oddities I guess but I didn't find it all that interesting. If you go back say, 10 generations, you have over 1000 progenitors. 10 generations is about 250 years. It is hard for me to get excited that 250 years ago 1 out of 1000 great-great.....great-grandparents was from Spain.
Now if there were a story that went along with those relatives so I could know a little about what sort of people they were, that would be interesting. But just the genes, not so interesting.
I have tested with two companies (23andme and Ancestry). The two reports agree about 75-80% but there are differences that are due to the way the companies process and report findings and divide up the map. Don't expect a lot of detail. It largely confirmed what I know or think I know but with a couple odd results. Some of the odd results are reflective of very low numbers of people getting tested in some regions. A lot of people are disappointed in their results. Somtimes, there are family stories that get upended or secrets revealed. I also had my results interpreted at Myheritage but they were way off. The science is still developing so your results could change over time.
Testing with 23andme provides some health information on genetic diseases or risk levels but mostly on rare conditions. I had a couple risk factors. Ancestry.com combines DNA relative lists with family trees so maybe you can figure out how you are related in some cases.
There are tons of discussions on this topic on the genealogy forum.
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. No point in reinventing the wheel.
