Have you taken a ancestry genealogy DNA test? What did you discover?

[Leoie]

Did you find out something surprising about your heritage? Did you find relatives that you were looking for? Did you find people you weren't expecting? Just curious about others experience with these tests

Here's my experience -
I've done DNA tests on ancestry, 23&me and MyHerritage.
My motivation was to find my mums birth father who she never knew. A month ago I matched with my mums cousin which lead me to the identity of her dad after 55 years. Unfortunately he passed away when she was 4 years old and his only remaining sister plus the cousins haven't responded to my attempts to reach out which is disheartening. At least we know his name and life story a little now.

I've found a half Auntie from my paternal grandad. In the 70's, a one night stand lead to her conception and she had been trying to find her dad for decades. Through us matching she managed to meet him for the first time last week.

I've also discovered that my nanna who passed in 2020 had a half sister who she never knew about. I believe her dad had an affair in 1948. The lady matched with me and we've put the pieces together. She was adopted at birth and wanted to find her birth parents. She found her birth mum but knew nothing about her dad. Until we messaged and I was able to give her his name, photos, life story and tell her about the 3 sisters she had.

It was certainly worth you taking the test. Loose ends tied up and knowledge gaps filled.

I found through mine that I had Scandinavian ancestry (not much), which was nice to know as I have three half-Danish/Swedish god-children and the sentimental link is rather nice. It also identified Irish ancestry, which I knew about.

On Ancestry, I was contacted by a relative I knew existed but had never met, on my mother's side. I was quite excited and wrote back explaining how we were related. Then, silence. It seemed odd as he had contacted me.

I then saw a news article online that I am 99% certain is about this writer's father, who had been convicted for possession of sexual images of children around the time his son had contacted me. Presumably, the relative's son was ashamed and decided not to pursue our contact further. As the father had been very supportive of teenage me when my nuclear family was going through a tough time, it was upsetting to think he had done what he had done.

Typo

Not me but a friend did and discovered his dad was not his dad. Both parents dead so no way of asking them anything, he is now left wondering did his dad know and who his actual dad was / is.

I have not done any of these tests. I would strongly recommend anyone who is thinking of doing one to listen to "The Gift" on BBC Sounds before doing so. That covers the stories of various people who have experienced shocking revelations having done these tests. Even if everyone in the family believes there are no skeletons in the closet, that doesn't mean the DNA tests won't throw something up. There was one episode in which the family discovered that two babies had been accidentally swapped at birth in the hospital! By the time this was discovered, the babies were adults who had been brought up by the wrong parents.

Yes I did Ancestry and it was really helpful in confirming the family stories I’d heard. I’d been told for example that one of my grandparents was a Russian Jew - he died long before I was born - and the DNA results backed that up.

I did connect with some cousins from that side of the family too and ended up getting some photos of my grandfather, which was pretty cool.

I did one but it didn't uncover anything very interesting
DH's however did uncover something quite awful that I always had my suspicions of

My husband and I did one each. Mine was interesting on the ethnicity front, throwing up some percentages of odd and exciting areas that we have no idea where they tie in from..but otherwise pretty boring..my husband on the other hand discovered a half sister that was the result of his father's affair that we knew nothing about.
This sister had been trying to locate her bio dad for 30 years having discovered the truth when a medical emergency revealed her dad couldn't possibly be her reald dad.

Yes, I did an Ancestry test. My family is a hot dysfunctional mess. They’re all either dead or we are NC. I was secretly hoping that I’d discover some long lost family member who was lovely and had no idea I existed either. Or that I had some interesting ancestor from somewhere far away and cool. Unfortunately, all it showed is that I am in fact related to my hot mess of a family and am as White British as can be. 😂 It was nice to confirm a few things in my family tree though.

I discovered that my great grandmother had had an affair in 1874. I bet she thought she'd got away with that one!

Yes, lots of Irish ancestry which I didn’t know and 6% west African - I’m a pale redhead! Turns out my mums great grandad was black
and found a relative - my nan gave twins up for adoption which nobody knew

Yes, did a test in 2020. No surprise relatives yet, I live in hope. Able to confirm and extend my family tree. Got some interesting ancestors (not famous, just ordinary folk who nonetheless had interesting lives). Being able to find pictures of long gone ancestors (from other descendants) has been surprisingly moving.

I discovered that half of my dna is from a different but adjacent part of the country than the parent it came from. This potentially raises some questions as we were a bit surprised by this. Neither grandparent is still living.

It’s quite alarming the ease in which you can uncover a whole load of distant relatives’ deepest secrets. My DS says he wanted to do one as soon as he is 16, he’s currently 15 and I never mention the DNA tests anymore in case he remembers he wants to do it - a 16 year old (or even 18 year old) should not be the one to uncover any secrets in his dad’s family tree (I’m not worried about DH having secret children, but he has a lot of uncles and aunts and who knows what secrets may be there).

I did the DNA test myself specifically because I knew there was an 80 year old ish war baby somewhere who may be looking for answers. And I did find them, and it was great to be able to help them. But closer family members were not aware and I feel a bit bad for chucking this revelation into their lives.

It’s not all fun and games with Long Lost Family type reunions,

I think I did mine quite naively, thinking only of ancestry and genealogy rather than what I'd do if it turned up secret siblings or that a relative wasn't actually a relative.
I was relieved to find my uncle on there, and that he was biologically my uncle. So at least we know my paternal grandparents are who they purport to be. I was also able to connect with distant relatives from across the world who were able to share information and photos I wouldn't have had otherwise.

One thing is that I've always suspected my mother had told some tall tales about our heritage, and the DNA didn't back them up. This wasn't a shock to me, but it's reminded me how prone she is to embellishment and fantasy and that I need to take much of what she claims with a generous pinch of salt. I think it's disgraceful to co-opt a marginalised identity but she won't have seen it this way - just as a touch of exoticism.

Mine was boring as heck - I am 99.9% belonging to my region with the missing 0.1 % being nearby. The relatives on there I know. There's a little about a great grandmother but she's the only one I knew qbout anyway- pretty uninspiring

I really don't agree with these. People are snooping around in secrets of the past just cos they are bored and consider it a hobby. They cause all sorts of upset and damage and don't seem to care. People are allowed have secrets.

I learnt that my grandma had a half-sister she'd never known about.
Her dad had "run out on them" when she was a toddler, and gone to America. We knew that much. We didn't know he'd then been a bigamist by marrying another woman, and having a daughter together.
My grandma died long before we found this out, which was quite sad, as she'd always assumed she was an only child, and she'd always been a girls girl, having had long and happy friendships her whole life. She'd have probably loved to have had a sister. Her sister, as it happens, pre-deceased her by about 15 years.

I learnt that I'm much more Scandinavian than I thought. Didn't think there would be anything there, but it's something like 20%. Then my mum mentioned that she thought there was a distant grandparent who had been from Sweden or Norway...
Otherwise, mostly English, with good chunks of Irish and Scottish in there. No welsh, interestingly.

I discovered I have African ancestry. I also discovered Canadian relatives who are descendants of children sent to Canada from children's homes in the early 20th century. Some of these children were known about ( it was known my g grandfather had some children outside of marriage) but my grandmother didn't know what had happened to them.

Haven’t found much at all really, no random relatives, no one’s dad isn’t who they thought it was etc.
I was surprised to find out I have Scandinavian heritage though.

Mine has matched me to a person who Ancestry say is a first cousin. I have no idea who this woman is - no connection to her at all. I've left it. I don't want to cause any ruptures in the family, and it's none of my business.

I took a DNA test when they were first available. It mostly confirmed my paper trail.

I was surprised to find that multiple ancestors from a Derbyshire village had gone to Utah on the Mormon trail and that we are related to Brigham Young. I would like to understand why they went, but otherwise nothing unexpected.

Nothing I didn't really know before, zero English or Welsh but lots of German/Prussian/Polish and Scandinavian.

Some of us were the secrets so to speak and want to find out the truth once and for all.

yes OP like you I’ve done a test. A few years ago now. Trying to find my missing non British grandfather who met my grandmother during the war. He and his family never knew of our existence.

Massive closure for me , not actually found him, but I 100% know which country that side of me originates from as I have proof.

I was bullied terribly growing up (think mixed race type slurs) so it’s helped me with that.

Very interesting perspective on your mum. My DPs mum is the same with some vey tall tales. He did his dna test to support me, see above post. Which proved his maternal grandparents are 100% his grandparents. If you listen to his mum as we have for years she was adopted and an aunt was her birth mother and her father was from overseas.

as you will see from my other post I had had enough of racist stuff over the years aimed at me and hearing similar from her. so we thought the dna test would shut that down but she still says the same that her parents were not her parents. Very sad.

Well every human has African ancestry, so it shouldn’t have been surprising!? Anyway, I would personally be reluctant to have one of these tests. I’d be worried about the data getting into third party hands and being used with bad intentions in the future.

Nothing surprising. 60% English, smatterings of Scottish, Irish, Scandinavian, Icelandic, French and a bit of Ashkenazi. So west and north European.

There is a random senator in the U.S. I am a distant cousin (5th I think) to though. That was cool.