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I would not ever send my dna to anyone, are you people stark raving mad? You are giving up your essence, "they" are just building huge databases of DNA in order to do who knows what with.
I'm not giving up anything, my DNA is still my property, and I'm well informed on what the databases are used for and I'm okay with it. If you aren't, then don't take the test, but please don't call me crazy for having a different opinion on the matter when I am probably better informed about it than you are.
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I traced my family history the old fashioned way, if it was good enough for Grandpa it is good enough for me. You people are crazy sending your DNA off to be categorized in some huge database.
I've been researching my family history the "old fashioned" way for more 10 years now, but DNA has helped me confirm much of that research and break down several brick walls in my tree. Here's my running list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...c7sUOa/pubhtml
DNA is a great additional tool to use with your traditional research - again, if you don't want to make use of it, that's fine, but don't insult people who do. It's rude and uncalled for.
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Just my opinion yours may differ.
When your opinion is to insult others, it's more than "just" an opinion.
Just one word of warning about those family trees. I ran across one on Ancestry with some incorrect information. Some very far removed relative I don’t know listed my father as my (half) brothers’ father. It shows he married my mom in 1965 but fathered my brothers in 1950 and 1955. Now he had a drinking problem before he met my mom but I don’t think he was ever the kind of man to father children and not marry the mother especially more than one then string her along for another 10 years. He’s wasn’t of course. I know all about their loser father AND they don’t share my father’s last name so it should have been noticeable.
Unfortunately, others had copied that tree which leads me to wonder if I can trust any of the shared information. My aunt did lots of research and had copies of documents she found in libraries pre-internet so I know there are those that are painstakingly careful but there’s no way to know which trees are correct. I was having a lot of fun finding out about my father’s family until I hit the false info and started questioning.
PA2UK -- i like your spreadsheet...can you explain how you managed that from dna test results?
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Originally Posted by Bobcat4
Just one word of warning about those family trees. I ran across one on Ancestry with some incorrect information....
Unfortunately, others had copied that tree which leads me to wonder if I can trust any of the shared information.
This is a long standing problem and getting worse. People with incorrect info will bite your head off if you even suggest that they have bad information. Often they copied it from someone else. Sometimes it is on some remote corner of of their tree and they haven't invested enough attention. I will only use other trees as pointers and do my own sourcing.
Just one word of warning about those family trees. I ran across one on Ancestry with some incorrect information. Some very far removed relative I don’t know listed my father as my (half) brothers’ father....
I don't trust any family trees on Ancestry. When I first joined, right after my father died, I had to argue over and over again with a long lost cousin who had him dying 8 years earlier. They wouldn't believe me. And lots of other people copied the incorrect information and I would have had to prove his date of death to each one, one by one. I like Family Search better and it's free.
Just one word of warning about those family trees. I ran across one on Ancestry with some incorrect information. Some very far removed relative I don’t know listed my father as my (half) brothers’ father. It shows he married my mom in 1965 but fathered my brothers in 1950 and 1955. Now he had a drinking problem before he met my mom but I don’t think he was ever the kind of man to father children and not marry the mother especially more than one then string her along for another 10 years. He’s wasn’t of course. I know all about their loser father AND they don’t share my father’s last name so it should have been noticeable.
Unfortunately, others had copied that tree which leads me to wonder if I can trust any of the shared information. My aunt did lots of research and had copies of documents she found in libraries pre-internet so I know there are those that are painstakingly careful but there’s no way to know which trees are correct. I was having a lot of fun finding out about my father’s family until I hit the false info and started questioning.
I've run into that too. I have my maternal grandmother's family back to the 1600s and somebody has listed some people's children with the wrong people and quite a few dates are wonky. Have to say I have no idea which one is right. I found one that had a son born before the father was!
PA2UK -- i like your spreadsheet...can you explain how you managed that from dna test results?
I made a point of going through all of my estimated 4th cousins or closer at AncestryDNA and looking at each one and doing my best to figure out our common ancestor. I started with the ones that already had Shared Ancestor Hints. If they had a public tree, I noted our MRCA in the notes field and then I used MedBetterDNA to have those notes always on display. If their tree was private, I messaged them and asked who the Shared Ancestor Hint was for. I then went through the rest of my list, looking at every match even if they didn't have a tree available at all - in those cases, when I couldn't get anything from them because they had no tree, I looked at the matches we had in common (Shared Matches) and if they matched people who I knew were descended from a certain branch, I made a note of that.
Having both my parents and my paternal grandfather test really helped, as did researching as many descendants of my ancestors as I could, to make linking to other trees easier. I also researched my matches' trees when necessary to make the connection to mine. Having a few endogamous branches also helps. But mostly, it just took time and effort. Every week more matches come in and I look at each one estimated as 4th cousin or closer and do the same process.
I would not ever send my dna to anyone, are you people stark raving mad? You are giving up your essence, "they" are just building huge databases of DNA in order to do who knows what with.
Who cares? I have nothing to hide, and what are they going to do exactly - make a clone of me? Well, I guess that would just make the world a better place. LOL
Seriously, though; I am curious as to what you think they'll do with the information. I didn't send in my DNA, for the record, but my brother did get his done through 23andMe.
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I traced my family history the old fashioned way, if it was good enough for Grandpa it is good enough for me.
Yeah, good luck with that if your heritage includes a group that was enslaved, mass-murdered, or otherwise destroyed on paper... people of African or Jewish descent (I'm the latter), for example, have a VERY difficult time finding anything prior to certain time periods. For my people, the Ashkenazi Jews, most of our familial records and documents were destroyed either in the 1890's or 1930's-40's. So that doesn't give us a whole lot to work with, does it? I have a cousin on each side of the family who does genealogical research the "old-fashioned way," and it's taken decades of research and dedication on their parts. Maybe you have that sort of time, but most of us do not.
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Just my opinion yours may differ.
"You're all a bunch of crazy idiots!!! Just my opinion, though." Is that the equivalent of "No offense, but... (followed by a super offensive comment)"?
Who cares? I have nothing to hide, and what are they going to do exactly - make a clone of me? Well, I guess that would just make the world a better place. LOL
Lol, no one could do that anyway since the results only contain a small portion of your DNA, not your full genome (unless you do whole genome sequencing of course, but that is super expensive).
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Seriously, though; I am curious as to what you think they'll do with the information. I didn't send in my DNA, for the record, but my brother did get his done through 23andMe.
Generally, one of people's fears is that insurance companies will obtain it and use it to disqualify you for insurance - but there are laws which make it illegal for health insurance or employers to use genetic data against you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneti...rimination_Act
The other concern is usually law enforcement having access, but this has been well covered recently in other topics and I'll just remind everyone that law enforcement do not have access to most DNA databases (and they ones they do have access to they do not have access to anything that any other user does not).
Despite this, I can understand why people would still have concerns about privacy - laws can be broken or repealed, the access law enforcement have can change, etc. But to call me crazy for being informed about the situation and coming to a different decision than someone else would is completely unfair and uncalled for.
I learned a lot after taking a Y-DNA test -- which Ancestry does not offer -- from FTDNA.
I know exactly where my paternal ancestors were in Ireland 850 years ago to within a few miles.
There's a town named after them. The town came later, but before that they lived a few miles away and owned all that land.
So, I'm Irish? Nope. They got that land as a reward for being part of the Norman invasion force that invaded Ireland.
Before that, they were living in southern England, and they got that land as reward for being part of the Norman invasion force that defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
From the "Doomsday Book" I got it narrowed down to 16 suspects.
So, I'm Norman French? Nope. I'm actually Greek based on the Y-DNA Haplogroup.
My distant paternal ancestors were Greeks living in the Roman Empire, probably an administrator in Roman government (as many Greeks were), or a ranking member of a Roman Legion, or a merchant. When the Romans colonized Normandy, they went along and set up shop. After the Roman Empire fell, they stayed, then went with the Normans to conquer England, then again with the Normans to conquer Ireland.
Then, the British came to Ireland and stripped them of their land and wealth.
Chalk it up to Karma, I guess. What goes around, comes around. Can't get mad after you push people off their land and then others come and push you off your land.
They went back to England and then came to the US.
By the strangest of coincidences, in 1987, I went to RAF Greenham Common to play with the cruise missile warheads for a month. The air base is just south of a town called Newbury in County Berkshire. The first weekend, we just went to the village across from the main gate and ate a pub. Then the jet jockeys told us there were two Chinese restaurants in town.
We were all Jonesing for Chinese food. There wasn't any Chinese restaurants where we lived in Germany. You had to drive 45 minutes just to get to one, and it totally sucked. Wasn't worth the drive much less the price. The next weekend, we rode the bus into town and spent the day walking around window-shopping and sightseeing, then ate at a really good Chinese restaurant, went to a pub to drink, then piled into an ugly black taxi to get home.
My 3rd great-grandfather was born in Newbury, and he and his father were boot-makers and owned a shop there. I probably walked right by it and didn't even realize it.
He moved to London and set up shop there, and that I did walk by. It was on Mile End and that's where I caught the Tube to take me to Tottenham Court Road, where I switched to another train to take me to Camden where I worked. A few months later, I bought an apartment over in Queen's Park, and that's were I lived.
Anyway, a Y-DNA test will tell you more about your ancestry than a generic autosomal DNA test.
If you want to know your maternal lineage, especially if you're a woman, then get an mt-DNA test.
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