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I uploaded my DNA to my MyHeritage this weekend. Still waiting for the results :-) I also didn't realize that I had had an account with them since 2009 with a tree already since I have been using FamilySearch instead. I uploaded my husbands Ancestry results on MyHeritage a couple weeks ago and like the way they show matches because I can see a summary of the DNA (shared amount, segments etc)
I have had my tree on FamilySearch for years and love the site! I also found out that I can go to a local LDS church even if I am not a member and use their computers for searching Ancestry. I told my husband we are going to have a date there...lol!
My tree is pretty extensive on my father's side dating even before the 1200's for the Campbell family (The Campbell Clan of Scotland) and also the Stewart family (many of these Earl's and other titles which I was surprised by) and the Voorhees in the Netherlands dating back to the 1500's. My Mother's maternal side was easy since they came directly from Ireland. It was just her Dad's side that has been difficult plus I heard New York is not good about releasing old records (there was talk about him also being probably an illegitimate child).
I'm now trying to see how I can upload my tree on FamilySearch to other sites. I thought I saw it is not a GEdcom file like other sites and I didn't do a test on Ancestry (I used 23andme) so didn't have an account but I just realized my daughter did so I can do it on her tree :-) I swear this stuff is addicting! I'm up until 3 or 4 in the morning now :-)
Yes, it's very addicting! Glad to hear you did My Heritage, they have so many cool tools like sorting matches by country. My biggest gripe is I can't select favorite match profiles... Yet! Hopefully they will. I also love they give surnames and trees when a match has added it and chromosome browser. I've started trying to learn DNA painter which is easy to use with My Heritage. With GEDmatch and Genesis you have to pay $10 a month to be able to do the chromosome browser from what I understand.
I suggest joining some DNA FB groups. I'm in Scottish, Irish and English DNA groups for my son's sample. All you have to do is upload to GEDmatch and Genesis then join the groups, adding your GED and Genesis numbers to the form with any surnames you know. They have something called Matchbox which matches your GED and Genesis DNA with people in the groups. It's really cool and may help break down a wall
You can upload a GEDcom to Family Search but can not download your tree from there. There is a program called Roots Magic that will sync your tree with family search. I have not done much of it yet so can't say more but I assume that would be how to eventually back it up.
By the way, I paid for the extra tools on FTDNA ($19) for my profile (I run 6 DNA profiles) and compared to My Heritage, My Heritage is superior. I doubt I will pay for it on any of the others I run. It really hasn't given me anything I feel is worth $19; maybe at a later date if my uncle submits his Y-DNA.
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Originally Posted by NRaleigh Mom
I typically only reach out to strong matches that have logged in recently (this is on Ancestry for my husband and Daughter's stuff) and do look to see who has a decent tree along with people that list a lot of surnames (23andme). I'm also finding that the older people are much more responsive and am now reaching out to them more :-)
I do love FamilySearch and won't pay for an Ancestry membership which has a ridiculous price! I've had my tree going for numerous years on FS and have tool found that my tree has been added onto or modified over the years which has been VERY helpful!! It kind of ticked me off at first! I was like who is touching my tree but then I realized that it is more of a collaboration and welcomed the "gifts". But I always double check the records because sometimes they have inaccurate data.
It has provided me with some great "gifts" because I had no idea about my ancestors from the Netherlands (Voorhees). I also just recently found out that we come from the Campbell Clan of Scotland! So now I definitely have to plan a trip to Scotland to see the Inveraray Castle! However it is just "crickets" on my mother's paternal side....lol!! Hopefully soon I can find more info out!
Basically, family search is a public tree like Wiki Tree; which you should also search relatives to see if someone made a profile there. There is one profile per person if done correctly. You can also go to your tree, find a profile there, then bottom right corner to look for duplicates and will get a list of profiles that may have more info then what you have. You then merge them if you're comfortable doing so. It's pretty easy to do.
I personally have not been gifted there by someone adding info but I hope others feel gifted with all I've done
I uploaded to Genesis this weekend as well (I have 23andme version 5 so it only works with certain places). The kit still shows pending migration but I guess since I have the kit number from registration I can go ahead and join some of those pages you mention!
I also read about Roots Web and Ancestral Quest Basics this morning for the ability to transfer my FS tree. It looks like Roots Magic might be better for me since I have a lot of records and probably will have duplicates due to some of the people in the tree. But still haven't researched enough about these programs yet.
I uploaded to Genesis this weekend as well (I have 23andme version 5 so it only works with certain places). The kit still shows pending migration but I guess since I have the kit number from registration I can go ahead and join some of those pages you mention!
I also read about Roots Web and Ancestral Quest Basics this morning for the ability to transfer my FS tree. It looks like Roots Magic might be better for me since I have a lot of records and probably will have duplicates due to some of the people in the tree. But still haven't researched enough about these programs yet.
Thanks again for all your info!!
You're very welcome!
Let me know if you can't find the FB groups; I can grab the URL's. They should come up searching Irish DNA Genealogy; then do the same for each. There are 2 Irish ones if I remember right, one is non DNA but good for records help.
Yeah, 23 and me's new version doesn't play well with many sites. It's why I always suggest people do their DNA there last to get their money's worth. Ancestry is the most popular. I also liked wegene because it gave haplogroup for free.
My wife got a message from a woman in TX saying she found her as a relative. I can't remember the relationship exactly, but after some shared research it turns out that my wife's great grandmother and her great grandfather are half siblings.
It filled in a lot of blanks for both of them. My wife had been trying to find information re her great grandmother, but the town where she lived as a child had the courthouse burn and all records were lost. Census data showed a couple of possible matches but not 100%. Nicknames had everyone guessing.
My wife now knows has has a large extended family.
I have a nephew and niece that no one knew about. The nephew lives a few miles from where we lived for 28 years. Contact has unfortunately been somewhat minimal. I'm the baby of the family and they have two half brothers that are the ones to decide. One has been told and the other hasn't (Money. Lots of money) and I have decided that since I disagree with what the other family members are doing I am bowing out of the situation.
The DNA stuff is junk science. You inherited your DNA from millions of ancestors, and so did everyone else. It's all floating around out there. Sometimes you end up with the same DNA, and you are related only because your ancestors had sex 15,000 years ago.
You may as well buy a horoscope.
You are halfway right as in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter as we are descendants of only 20,000 original human beings, but on the recent end it gives many some answers as some of us have no other way of finding out where our people were from.
That is great he got back with you! I guess everyone has different reasons for doing the tests and may not be initially looking to research their family tree.
Personally I find it fascinating learning about where I came from and I often imagine myself living in their shoes, in that place at that point in time. It is making me want to travel which typically I'm not fond of doing. But I would love to touch the soil of my ancestors and find old homes (castles), graves, farms etc of those that came before me!
I have over 1000 matches on 23andme.. Most of them are so far spread that there's just no chance at all of finding the connection. 15 out of 1011 matches have at least a 1% DNA match.
Now.. Before you start off thinking I'm poo-pooing the results here. Let me mention that my mother is adopted. We had no idea about her family.
I had my dad tested so that I could tell the difference between matches from his side and her side. I found a match at 5.71% from her side. That's a pretty close match.
I tracked that person down, as they wouldn't respond. And tracked back to their mother. Spoke with her, and paid for her to take a 23andme test. She came back as a 12.7% match. Which is either First Cousin or Half-Aunt.
After some figuring, we're 90% sure that her mother was my grandmother. The clues in this.. She got married about 6 months after my mother was born. She 'disappeared' for a time around when my mother was born. Her father was a Baptist preacher, in the south, in the late 40's.. Her sisters were all married at the time. My mother was adopted from a county over from where they lived.
so, all the evidence put together shows that she got pregnant, her father the preacher likely sent her to a "Home for Wayward Girls" to have the baby, it was put up for adoption.
Haven't noodled through who the grandfather was just yet.. But, now that I have a half-aunt on there, anyone who matches me from my mothers side who does NOT match the half-aunt.. If someone joins 23andme.. I have a way to try to track that back.
So.. It's not hocus-pocus. But, there's an awful lot of flotsam that you have to sort through to get to the good stuff.
Part of me wanted to do my DNA test to see what my ancestry composition was but I also wanted to see who my matches were (and hopefully see a picture and see where they are living) and to just share info. However it seems that others aren't interested like I am.
What has been your experience when reaching out to a match? Did others contact you at all? If so did you at least get back with them or just ignore them?
Funny, just yesterday I received an email from a fourth cousin via the Ancestry site. She was looking for relatives of my dad's and any info I could give her. I responded that very day. I'm not super big into genealogy, but I thought it would only be polite to respond. It's not like she's going to appear on my doorstep with her suitcases or anything (I hope).
Most people seem to take the DNA test for the ethnicity report (or, if you're on 23andMe, the health report), so the DNA matches part of it doesn't interest them. I think often people look at their ethnicity/health report when it first comes in and then never go back to the site again so they may have never even read or seen your message. Particularly on 23andMe, they no longer host family trees, so it's really difficult to get any info from your DNA matches unless they respond.
I do get people messaging me, or responding to my messages sometimes, but it's mostly on AncestryDNA - people seem less responsive on other sites.
I agree with this.
I actually often reach out to my matches just to let them know about their ancestry because on quite a few lines of my family tree, I know who common ancestors are. For these people, I only send messages to folks who have been on ancestry within the past month (usually the last week) as I feel they may be actually interested in genealogical reserach and not just the ethnicity report.
I've gotten lots of replies back and lots haven't responded. However, since I've become specific to only sending messages to people with recent activity on ancestry, I have been getting more responses back.
I also am a member of many online genealogical groups and those groups get similar inquiries to the OP. I always give the same advice to people who ask these questions - you need to be specific about what you are asking for. If you just send a message saying "hi can we meet" or "hi do you know how we're related" then you probably won't get many responses. I personally also don't always respond to these sorts of messages. The "can we meet/share" stuff is kind of stalker-ish to me. Plus I have a public tree with a lot of pictures that I share so the guise of "sharing pictures" for me is not one that I'd take up the offer on unless the person was specific about them having pictures of someone in my tree.
The "how are we related" ones are very generic and sometimes I do respond to them if I do know how we're related. I have a "system" of sorts where I label my matches that I know who are connected to me via specific common ancestral lines and if that person falls under one of those ancestral lines - then I'll tell them how we are connected and refer them to the tree. But I don't know all the common ancestors - I only know 6 of them and so if they fall outside of those 6 then I don't know and will tell them I don't know and suggest they build a tree of at least 3-6 generations to see if we can determine the common ancestor. Most people are kind of lazy and don't want to build their own tree. They seem to want me to give them all the information - like on the commercial lol, so we don't find out. If I ever do find out, I'll be nice and let them know. I have recently found a suspected 7th line that I'm investigating all the common matches to see if we share a common ancestor. I've confirmed 5 other people also share my 4th-5th great grandparents on this line and so I'm pretty sure that all of us are from these particular ancestors (husband/wife - a couple of the people I've reached out to show as having an ancestor who is the child of this particular couple but another couple show only to be connected to the wife - they are descendants of her siblings). I'll go through my messages to see if anyone who matches my newfound cousins has sent me a message about "how are we related" and I'll respond to them.
I also agree some people use the app and don't know how to check messages. I have the app and don't know how to check my messages on the app but I mostly use the website via a laptop and so I see the messages when I log in.
Yes, it's very addicting! Glad to hear you did My Heritage, they have so many cool tools like sorting matches by country. My biggest gripe is I can't select favorite match profiles... Yet! Hopefully they will. I also love they give surnames and trees when a match has added it and chromosome browser. I've started trying to learn DNA painter which is easy to use with My Heritage. With GEDmatch and Genesis you have to pay $10 a month to be able to do the chromosome browser from what I understand.
I suggest joining some DNA FB groups. I'm in Scottish, Irish and English DNA groups for my son's sample. All you have to do is upload to GEDmatch and Genesis then join the groups, adding your GED and Genesis numbers to the form with any surnames you know. They have something called Matchbox which matches your GED and Genesis DNA with people in the groups. It's really cool and may help break down a wall
You can upload a GEDcom to Family Search but can not download your tree from there. There is a program called Roots Magic that will sync your tree with family search. I have not done much of it yet so can't say more but I assume that would be how to eventually back it up.
By the way, I paid for the extra tools on FTDNA ($19) for my profile (I run 6 DNA profiles) and compared to My Heritage, My Heritage is superior. I doubt I will pay for it on any of the others I run. It really hasn't given me anything I feel is worth $19; maybe at a later date if my uncle submits his Y-DNA.
Basically, family search is a public tree like Wiki Tree; which you should also search relatives to see if someone made a profile there. There is one profile per person if done correctly. You can also go to your tree, find a profile there, then bottom right corner to look for duplicates and will get a list of profiles that may have more info then what you have. You then merge them if you're comfortable doing so. It's pretty easy to do.
I personally have not been gifted there by someone adding info but I hope others feel gifted with all I've done
I was thinking of going ahead and paying the $19 for FTDNA for my grandfather since there are a lot of DNA research studies there on his ancestral communities/surnames that focus on southeastern indigenous ancestry. I already have his info on MyHeritage and I agree it is a great site. The ethnicity portion is VERY different from other sites but they have tools that are very easy to use and are free. Thanks for the tidbit about you viewing FTDNA as not as good as MyHeritage in this regard. I still will probably upload and pay the $19 for one of my grandfather's first cousins though when her DNA results come back just to participate in the DNA studies. She is the only female relative of my grandfather who I know personally is a direct maternal line descendant of his mother and I want to participate in the study along with getting her maternal haplogroup. I mentioned in another thread about indigenous ancestry that I don't have any native DNA. My grandfather does and I have a paper trail that proves it is on his maternal line and so I want to have our cousin test to confirm this match on the maternal line an din the future maybe apply to become part of the tribe (or give that information to one of my nephews so he can apply - he has some health issues and that particular tribe is eligible for Indian health services - they require proven descent from the tribe via paper trail and DNA results are also helpful to submit - there is no "blood quantum" requirement like all people seem to believe is the case for all tribes when it is not as I doubt my nephew has any indigenous DNA markers due to him being 10 generations removed from my grandfather's known indigenous distant great grandmother).
Note - I also feel that MyHeritage is superior to Gedmatch tools that I've used. I don't use Genesis though so cannot comment on what that offers. I also have submitted kit IDs to Irish and Scottish groups online so maybe we're related lol! My grandfather also has a lot of Irish/Scottish, and English ancestry as does my father.
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