Ancestry - good idea, or don't touch it with a bargepole?

[Beeinalily]

I've always been curious about my family, and I'm wondering whether to sign up to one of these family tree type things. My family is a mixed bag though, and I think I might find out some things that I'd rather not know! Have you ever done it, and was it a good idea, or did you regret it?

Go for it but remember you may find something out that you were unaware of that may open a can of worms. I found out I had a sibling from doing an ancestry test.

Just to add something about the DNA tests.

Every single thing I found out about my family has come from documents. You don't need to do a DNA test to research your family tree.

However, if you do the DNA test there's an outside chance of finding relatives you weren't expecting, which can wipe out some of the documentary evidence.

Yes - I've seen info on family trees which refers to my late husband's maternal side.

They have my MIL's DOB totally wrong, the birth order totally wrong. There are two trees, each produced by the descendant of one of MIL's siblings. (MIL was the eldest of four.) Each one has the correct info for their direct ancestor, but the wrong info for the other siblings.

I have a great uncle that went to live in an asylum . In a census it lists him as a lunatic
I remember my mum telling me one of her mother's family had been put in one as he was born ' not right ' .
I think these days we would rightly say sen / special needs . Many years ago parents were told to leave their newly born children at the hospital and forget they were born . Shocking .
On another census dates early 1930s a comment about a person stated they were an imbecile .

Yes, my great x3 grandfather was an ‘imbecile’ apparently, and listed as ‘slow’ in a census. Died at 38 in the workhouse. Have wondered what the cause was, birth complications, childhood illness, foetal development issues, etc. Meningitis and even transmitted diseases such as syphilis can cause similar symptoms.

@JustSawJohnny that's really nasty, to take your DMum's 's freedom of choice away like that.

My mum started before the Internet was widely available and found out that the man my dad thought was his grandad... couldn't have been because of his grandad being away at the Front (ww1). We will always wonder who was.

Also my mum found out her mum was originally born out of wedlock and was given a different name!

I love it. I've been researching most weeks for about 12 years and still finding out new things! It's so interesting.

What do tbey do with the dna ?

@Jennalong and @jennylamb1 I suspect that in my DGG 's case it was PND. Doesn't bear thinking about.

Does anyone know how it works if half your family are from a non-Western country ? Just wondered if there a records. I think I'm assuming that there wouldn't be census records like there are here.

The police are not allowed to use the Ancestry database if they were many does could be identified & murderers/rapists discovered.

They definitely use it in the USA, it’s how they caught the Golden state killer. Uk police are looking into it too by the looks of it. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/dna-technique-genealogy-sites-track-down-suspects-police-b1016603.html

No, they used Gedmatch which is public people choose to upload to. There’s a much smaller database as a result. Family Tree DNA too - there you can opt into law enforcement. Again a much smaller database. With AncestryDNA the subject has to spit into a tube themselves & consent & doesn’t take uploads.

To add there’s a lot of misinformation & assumption re: test taking & ‘DNA’.

Problem is @User14March that if you're not into genealogy and haven't taken a DNA test your entire knowledge is from tv documentaries which are true-crime focused, created for a US audience, and which have no interest in spelling out the law. So people watch them, and think it applies to the UK too. And have no clue what GedMatch is, or the difference between Y dna testing and autosomal, etc etc etc.

Thanks, I know for the golden state killer the police set up a fake profile using his dna but looks like it was the FamilyTree dna database. I don’t mind if even in the future a relative of mine was caught because my dna was on a database, I wouldn’t cover up for someone who’d committed a crime so the police are welcome to my results.

My brother said I shouldn't be doing the Ancestry DNA test because "they" would then have my DNA and he had seen a flim about it.
I said that if they wanted to create a Hopping/Dino hybrid I was fine with that.

In Victorian times men who wanted to remarry or just be rid of their wives could declare them insane and have them commited.

We suspect one day, the government will break up the NHS and sell it to the American healthcare providers, as part of the price of a trade deal with the USA.

Private healthcare providers will choose not to cover some people, on account of what genes they are carrying in their DNA.

For me, taking a DNA test and having the information on a genealogy website, isn't about anything criminal, use by the police or similar.

It is just about my loss of control. If my DNA results are there, my information is available to anyone connected to me. I'm not ready to give my control away and that right to anyone else.

A bit ‘once the genie is out of the bottle’.

I’ll be fucked, I’ve had my whole genome mapped as has dd! 🤣🙈

I don’t know about about our whole genome, but DD1 had about 2,700 genes mapped; and they looked at some of ours; because we carry a genetic mutation and she’s inherited both genes with the mutation.

So, we aren’t in a good place either!

Irishgenealogy.ie and the National Archives for census information and more. The issue is you'll have be pretty accurate to get the info and that can be difficult. For example registrars try to anglicise Irish names and places. I recommend you don't make your search too specific and sift through more results. In one line I am looking at the surname appears with half a dozen different spellings. Ancestry is a good starting point as it throws up lots of alternative people. But that can also be a curse!

I think this too, look what's already happening with social media, banks etc Data is big money. Otherwise I'd love to do this, not really to find relatives but just to know if I have any other ethnicity