Anybody done an Ancestry DNA test? Worth it?

[wheneverwhereverwhatever]

Hi,

I always tell myself that I'll buy an Ancestry DNA test next time I see them on offer. They're on offer now, but I'm unsure. Any one done one? Worth it? Can't help thinking that it would be an expensive way to discover that I'm totally English (as I suspect!) but I am interested in knowing for sure what my back ground is.

Anyone found out anything interesting from one? Or discovered distant family?

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/c/dna

I did it during lockdown to set up a family tree as something to occupy myself with.
I am an only child and did not expect to find any skeletons in cupboards , and I didn't.

However I found it things from a few generations ago totally fascinating and it certainly occupied me , and I also learnt things historically as well .
A few ancestors as well that I never had any idea about which are semi famous for the things they achieved in their own life.

Yes you can block people

My Brother got us to do 23andme years ago. Looking through the matches there was one who was adopted and from the info I thought that will be easy, he’ll match on Mum’s side so sent him a message offering to help. How wrong I was ! 2.5 years later a small group of 4 of us are working on identifying his father, we have made many many trees from matches and group led some people together. We know a lot about his mother now. I hope we can work it out in the not too distant future as he spent his whole life in a career helping others and his wife has dementia and I want him to be able to tell her whilst she can understand.

My Dad kindly took an Ancestry test so we could confirm that he definitely matches on my Mum’s side and his DNA comes up as a match on both sides which was a surprise as Mum was European. My cousin then tested after Dad died and doesn’t appear to have noticed that Dad was his half uncle. My Stepmum said that the story was my Nan had an affair with an American GI but that isn’t what the DNA is saying !

Also I had a 3rd cousin contact me, we worked out his 2 x G Grandfather is also mine and not who mine says on paper. Last week I was contacted by the daughter of another match to ask if I have someone in my tree. I don’t but ordered the marriage certificate of the couple she said to find that person’s father and from that have ordered what I think is the relevant birth certificate so will see what that says.

I do have a first name for the father and someone of that first name in my tree. He is only supposed to have one daughter but was a casualty in the Boer war at the same time and place that the father of the other person in the wedding certificate so am interested to see how that pans out.

@DNAexpert Do you happen to know what the chromosome painter on Ancestry is about? I don't understand enough to know if it's helpful or not. Thank you.

When your results come back, you get a list of user names & profiles of people you match with. Some people use their full names and add photos and lots of info about themselves. Others use initials for their user name and put no details at all so it’s impossible to decipher who they are or where they fit on your tree. You don’t get access to their real names or their email addresses. You can only contact them through the site. The site then emails them to tell them someone has messaged them (in case they’ve stopped logging on) but, if memory serves me correctly, they need to be a subscriber to access messages (with Ancestry). If you do a family tree, you can also set that to private. It doesn’t stop people from finding out that the person they’re researching also appears in your tree, but they have to contact you and ask you for access.

Obviously there are a lot of people on the sites who you might match with, but they won’t come up because they’ve not done a test, and it does tell you that no test results are available for that person.

It does also tell you how closely you’re related so, if your estranged family member is a parent, they’d probably be able to work out the connection, assuming they did actually do a test, and not just use the site to build a tree. But they can still only contact you through the site and you can block them.

I hope you'll excuse my impertinence and feel free to ignore but as the daughter of a woman who was forced to put her first child up for adoption (young teenager put into a Magdalen home) it broke her.
She never ever ever forgot about him, cried on his birthday all my life. The one little photo a treasured possession.

The ancestry results meant she could send an email to say sorry & to tell him he was so loved. It gave her peace & him a knowledge that he was very wanted.

He lives other side of the world with good parents so no one was trying to make more of it or insert themselves.

But the relief I seen lift when she was able to send that letter to him.

Like I say, not to interfere with your decision- just a peek behind the curtains on the other side.

For myself. I did the ancestry test so I could give my kids some info. I found out some rather disturbing information about my grandfather which has left me a bit shell shocked which you have to be prepared for.
I also found loads of interesting stuff on my mums side further back. My cousin is closely related to her best friend.

I find it fascinating but as pp's have said. You can't unknow some stuff. So be prepared.

Thanks @DNAexpert

Thank you also @Jellycats4life That makes me confident enough to give it a try.

I'm hoping to find details of my maternal grandfather as my mother was adopted by my grandfather.

That's why I did it too - I've not had as much luck as you though!

I'm sure that I read a review where the reviewer had taken DNA tests with several of the companies offering testing - to try them out.

The results, with percentages and heritage ( country/ area of origin) were different from each company.

Maybe not so reliable.

There's definitely some researchers, identical twin sisters, who did tests with various companies and came back with wildly varying results. I think the vid can be found on youtube, I suppose there's lots of people doing similar experiments also.

I was thinking of the one which shoes more health data as I'm pretty sure I have Alzheimer's to look forward to when I'm older. I'm interested in heritage but my actual relatives apart from the immediate ones are probably best avoided.