[New Englander]

I did it and I'm so glad I did. No wonder I'm so smart. I found out I'm a direct descendant of Albert Einstein.

[dewilson58]

Originally Posted by New Englander

I did it and I'm so glad I did. No wonder I'm so smart. I found out I'm a direct descendant of Albert Einstein.

Send me $100, I'll send you a report that says you are related to George Washington.

[dewilson58]

Do ancestry DNA tests really work?
When it comes to ancestry, DNA is very good at determining close family relations such as siblings or parents, and dozens of stories are emerging that reunite or identify lost close family members (or indeed criminals). For deeper family roots, these tests do not really tell you where your ancestors came from.Oct 15, 2018

www.scientificamerican.com

[oldtimes]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

My interest in DNA testing is about the same as Astrology. None.

Totally agree.

[NotGolfer]

Originally Posted by dewilson58

Do ancestry DNA tests really work?
When it comes to ancestry, DNA is very good at determining close family relations such as siblings or parents, and dozens of stories are emerging that reunite or identify lost close family members (or indeed criminals). For deeper family roots, these tests do not really tell you where your ancestors came from.Oct 15, 2018

www.scientificamerican.com

My kids gave me an Ancestry kit for my birthday. I was wanting more information on my dad's side. I was surprised by some of the information but wondered if it was truly reliable. So from that I signed up with MyHeritage and compared the two. They had compatible information AND I found my lineage going back to the 1600's on my mom's side. Plus I connected with cousins I really didn't know, which was fun. I didn't delve too deeply into this whole endeavor for photos, certificates etc. Perhaps one day I'll go back and do that. In the meantime I have a thick 3-ring binder with my "family's" lineage to pass down to our grandkids.

[dewilson58]

Originally Posted by NotGolfer

My kids gave me an Ancestry kit for my birthday. I was wanting more information on my dad's side. I was surprised by some of the information but wondered if it was truly reliable. So from that I signed up with MyHeritage and compared the two. They had compatible information AND I found my lineage going back to the 1600's on my mom's side. Plus I connected with cousins I really didn't know, which was fun. I didn't delve too deeply into this whole endeavor for photos, certificates etc. Perhaps one day I'll go back and do that. In the meantime I have a thick 3-ring binder with my "family's" lineage to pass down to our grandkids.

Anything in the results explain why you're "NotGolfer"??
(jus kid'n)

[DeanFL]

Originally Posted by New Englander

I did it and I'm so glad I did. No wonder I'm so smart. I found out I'm a direct descendant of Albert Einstein.

.
did you get Al's Modesty gene as well? ...perhaps you developed the comedian gene on your own...
.
.

[charlieo1126@gmail.com]

I found a whole family of cousins and an aunt that I didn’t know existed

[kathyspear]

Our family is really big into genealogy. My older sister is the expert in my family. My husband is also super involved in the world of DNA. (He has gone to numerous genealogy conferences in the US and attended one in Poland a couple years ago, which he enhanced by taking a two-day tour to areas where his ancestors lived. He also did a virtual [due to COVID] presentation last year for a TV genealogy group and will be doing more in the future.)

Several years ago Dan and I asked our siblings, some aunts and uncles on my side, his daughter, and his mom if they would be willing to test with 23andMe. We then bought kits for all of them with the exception of one sister, who declined. Many of us have also tested with Ancestry and all of us have uploaded our data to Gedmatch.

My sister has been able to fill in a lot of blanks in our family tree as a result. In one case, a gentleman living in Germany who matched me as a cousin wrote to try and identify how we were connected. He did not match with my sister (which is not unusual, since we all get different bits of DNA from our parents) but I told him to write to her because she was the family expert. Turns out he has bibles with all sorts of family history recorded within their pages, which he scanned and sent to sis. The information was super helpful to her. We have also connected with a couple of previously unknown relatives who had been given up for adoption back in the days when out of wedlock pregnancy was a bit more of an issue than it is today!

Dan has had a difficult time tracing his family prior to WW2 because of … you know … Nazis burning towns and killing everyone. Doing DNA testing has been a godsend for him.

Two especially interesting ways DNA has been useful to our family:

(1) Dan was matched as 2nd cousins to several young adults who all matched as half siblings. None of them knew the others. He chatted with one on the phone and finds out the young cousin was a DC (donor conceived) baby, which he had always known. Then other half siblings starting popping up. He chatted with another young lady who had no idea who these people were. Dan asks her if she was DC. She says no, she doesn’t think so. Dan says well, you might want to check with your parents. Needless to say, she was conceived through a donor. Her parents, like most people who used donors to get pregnant, had been told NOT to disclose this information to the child. Little did they know what science would come up with in the 21st century! Dan did figure out which 1st cousin has to be donor. He passed that info along to the 2nd cousins but I don’t think he knows if any of them have contacted their bio dad.

(2) My two sons were born with a neurodegenerative disease called Sanfilippo Syndrome. In order to have a child with the disease both parents have to be carriers. If two carriers have a child, there is a one in four chance that the child will have the disease, two chances out of four that the child will be a carrier, and one chance out of four that the child will be unaffected (neither have the disease nor be a carrier).

23andMe allows you to compare your chromosomes with other people’s. Because Dan researched where the “bad gene” lives (which chromosome), he was able to compare my genes with my siblings’ to determine that two were definitely NOT carriers. This meant that their children were NOT carriers and didn’t have to worry about passing this gene on to their kids and grandkids. Several others ARE carriers. In those cases, we were able to convince their kids (all young adults at this point) to let us send them kits so Dan could try and determine if they are carriers. (If it turns out that they are, they would want to have their partners undergo carrier testing before planning to have a family.)

Obviously, Dan and I do not have concerns about privacy with regard to using these sites.

If you are interested primarily in relative matching, Dan recommends using Ancestry because the potential pool of people is so much larger. Whichever site you use, you can download your data and then upload it to Gedmatch which is a free site. The more pools you fish in, the likelier you are to catch a fish.

There are other sites such as Promethease.com that will give you the type of health info you get with 23andMe, much more detailed than 23andMe’s, in fact. You can upload your 23andMe or Ancestry raw data to Promethease and get an amazing health report for $12.

And, finally, I would offer these warnings to anyone dipping his/her toe into genetic genealogy:

(1) You might find out something you don’t know, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the “thing” and your perspective.

(2) You might not learn much that you didn’t already know.

(3) If you were told growing up that you were part Native American, be prepared to learn that you are not. You wouldn’t believe how many people post online that the tests must be wrong because they were told growing up that their grandma was full-blooded [fill in the blank with tribe].

Good luck with your adventure!

kathy

[Cupcake57]

I traced my ancestors back to before the American Revolution on all lines except my maternal grandmother whose parents came from the AustroHungarian empire which is now Romania. So yes, I do believe my DNA testing thru Ancestry is somewhat accurate as the first 10 matches are second and third cousins that I know or know of, and I could figure out the next 10 or so and which line they came thru. Thousands of others with lesser matches are undoubtedly further up the tree.

My cousin is more into this than I, and asked me to upload my DNA to GEDmatch, which is the system that law enforcement is using to identify cold cases.(He is looking for Flynn cousins) So I did, and one time I was called by a woman from Jacksonville claiming to be the niece of a man related to the Ryan family and our genes matched and she wanted access to my family tree. (I haven't found any Ryans in my family). I agreed ( I got nothing to hide) and I never heard again. So I suspect she was someone from law enforcement looking for some hopefully distant cousin who has committed a crime. Or maybe they were a dead body!

Maybe I am naive but I look at it as interesting, and I found out my cousin's son lives in Apopka. Hopefully he's not in jail.

[skippy05]

This is an excellent way for big brother to have more information on you. Also to scare you about potential genetic problems that you have not yet experienced with your health but might. Don't be suckered in by the positive spin on this stuff. Stop and use a little common sense and forget opening yourself up to all the downside such testing can and for sure will bring.

[Footer]

I took the test because my sister did and was curious about how our DNA compared. It came back with the typical distant relatives but one person was a 24% match, slightly higher than my niece. My niece contacted her and it turns out my brother has a 35 year old daughter he never knew about. She is getting married soon and wanted to know about the health history of her father so she took the test hoping to find him. This revelation was only a month ago. As you can imagine it was a bit of a shock to our family, especially my brother's wife, but she is a lovely woman and we are happy to know her.

[Two Bills]

My wife did her family history and it went back to George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys, also known as "the Hanging Judge"

That confirmed my suspicions!

[rlcooper70]

I did in through Ancestry and allowed results to be public. I found a good reason that I have a full head of hair and an IQ over 100 .... my father was not genetically related to the rest of his family .... quite an experience. No regrets. Good luck.

[Dot Rheinhardt]

I did Ancestry and 23 and me. Interesting results. I am much older than most matches, so I could give them info. they didn't know. I found a family of a great uncle (born in 1856). All very nice people, and they live in the general area where I grew up, but never met them or knew about them. I am the youngest of first cousins (one born in 1908), so I have more info. than younger generations. Most of my contacts have been with grandchildren of first cousins. I have family info. going back in the US to 1645.