Ancestry testing

[dustydrawers]

Has anyone done it? I’ve looked at 23andme and ancestry uk. But wondering which is better. Thanks

I agree with starting with Ancestry and then uploading to My Heritage, Gedmatch, Family Tree DNA and Living DNA. My Heritage do charge a one off fee (or they did) for unlocking things on their site but I have occasionally seen they do a weekend where you can access it for free.

@deeahgwitch I’d do Ancestry and upload to My Heritage. My German second helpfully tested on My Heritage which has made things a lot easier.

Pro Tools has been amazing for moving along a case I have spent over 3 years so far helping one of my DNA matches on. He was adopted and wants to find out who his biological parents are. We had a huge amount of information and large numbers of people who fitted into 2 big family trees but were struggling to be able to tie in more of his maternal line for which we had established a tree.

A genetic genealogist is on board now and with her help and the shared and enhanced matches on Pro Tools we have established that his maternal tree isn’t matching the paper tree and have identified the likely scenario about his Father and have for the first time got a potential surname for him. His highest match anywhere is 113cM but finally now things are beginning to slot into place. Huge game changer.

The warnings about expecting the unexpected if you test are really important. My cousin tested recently and it has confirmed that my Dad and his Dad have different fathers. Cousin doesn’t seem to have noticed this yet and it is unclear if he knows but from what he was saying he doesn’t. My Grandfather on my Mum’s clearly has a different father to his birth certificate and I’ve gained a lovely 3rd cousin as my 2 x G Grandmother had an affair with his 2 x G Grandfather who lived around the corner from her half sister. 3rd cousin’s wife found she was donor conceived and has helped many people in a similar situation.

Apparently Apartheid would not have been possible with DNA testing.

I read, "When she was white" the story of a girl with white parents who was fine until she went to school and other parents complained about her not being white.

It is an interesting story and a fascinating insight in to how people were 'classified'.

Sorry if you have already read it I'm assuming you haven't.

@missjeanbrodie123

A few years ago there was a report on YouTube. It was a US reporter who happens to have an identical twin. They both did tests with the different companies and explained why there can be differences.

Thank you to everyone who said I could do this with high privacy setting/not using my real name :)!

I am mostly interested in the ethnic make-up because that will confirm my suspicions that my paternal grandfather was not my father's real dad...

Thank you so much for the explanation. There is a similar feature on MyHeritage that is included in the subscription and I've found it very useful indeed.

"I think you have to be at that stage of wanting to take it to the next level and match up either a specific person or want to work out all your matches. If you are just doing it casually it's not worth it."

That is very much the point I am at. There are a group of around 90 people living in the USA who are all related to each other somehow and also related to my dad as 5-8th cousins.

I'm trying to work out if there is just one common connection between them and my dad so I'll likely first have to do a tree linking all (or most) of them up and then work backwards from there to find where the connection is.

I think that I might sign up for a month or two just to get all the connections I need and then note them down to use later.

Thank you @theDudesmummy and @Another2Cats and @Seaitoverthere re which is best for German ancestry

I have a massive cluster like this with my Dad's family.

They turned out to be Mormons. If your cluster is Mormon related it's worth searching their own databases for pedigrees as their early founders often have biographies saying where they came from. You can also find this from looking at other people's family trees.

I found the link to my Dad in this way and it was easier than going through the DNA.

I think I have about a hundred now linked into my tree from then using protools from an initial cluster of about 20.

Another cluster I found a common place that they all seemed to come from but didn't know how it linked. I knew the cluster was matching with the 'Green' Family matches I knew and could place in the family. Using the name of the place they settled I did a search for the founders of the town. This lead me to the title of an old book which documented the history of the town. This isn't that uncommon for Canadian or American towns. As it's an old book (over 100 years old) it's out of print - so is available for free on archive.org (just search the title of the book). I searched for the common family name and bingo there were three brothers from the same town as my ancestors. Further research found that their death certificate in Canada did give the names of their parents and where they came from.

So there are a few ways to use information outside genealogical websites to find additional information.