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.

Mine has caused good things. A guy messaged me whose dad was adopted. His dad has died and he is carrying on trying to find his birth family
me taking a DNA text has meant he now knows my gran was his dads mum and we are working together to find the rest out
me and my cousin are going to meet him, and I’ve been able to share photos so he can see his grandparent for the first time

I discovered I’m 97.7% Irish, 1.4% Eastern European and 0.9% Iberian peninsula.

I took a DNA test as wanted to find out more about my father’s side of the family as knew very little about them.

its been really interesting to find out more about that side of the family.

My favourite moment was finding a picture of my mother’s grandmother and being able to share that with her. She’s never seen a photograph previously, as grandmother has died when her father was away fighting in WW2. He didn’t have any photographs of his mother, as the house was cleared whilst ge was away. I got chatting to a relative and found out they had a photograph. It was so lovely to share that with my mother.

Have also come across some interesting and sad events during my research.

My DH did his DNA too and discovered one of our close friends is related via siblings 6 generations back, We had suspected there was a link, so doing DNA confirmed it.

i think you have to go into these things knowing that you may find out information that could potentially change how your view your family, or provide you with more understanding/knowledge about them.

I would like to do a DNA test but like a past poster I’m worried about the data getting into the wrong hands.

I do think it might help to do one though as my granny’s dad was adopted, unofficially, and I’d love to find where he came from and if the people who brought him up were actually related to his mother. I’m also interested in my Swedish side, I’d like to know more about them. Of course all this would only work if someone else related to me has done a DNA test.

Maybe I’ll change my mind one day and find all the answers.

No the test doesn't pick up from that far back. My results indicated in the last 5 generations.

I went to a dinner party and another guests mum had discovered recently she was switched at birth. Within a few weeks she had found who with and been in contact (they had no idea and decided not to tell anyone due to where she lived/religions etc). I’ve done it and went into with an open mind but it showed Im
very white very english/welsh and Im related to all the people
I thought i was.

That I am of Viking blood on both sides. I already knew it as I have 'Viking fingers' am very blond and I have tiny teeth. My mother's haplogroup are from Siberia.

DH's haplogroup are from the Tuareg/mid Africa.

He's always cold. I'm always hot.

I also found that various relatives went across to Utah on the Mormon Trail, that was really a big surprise. They came from both sides of my family. The ones who went weren't all from one place though, they came from various places in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.

.

My mum also did a DNA test and found (separately to the Mormons) a whole bunch of people living in the USA with the same name as her mother's maiden name.

After doing a lot of searching it turned out that a couple of cousins emigrated to America in the 1670s and became tobacco farmers. These people were all descendants of those two cousins.

Despite what some people say about the harm of "uncovering secrets" I think that DNA tests can be really helpful indeed. A DNA match of mine was trying to trace the birth parents of her mother who had been adopted (so, her biological grandparents). I was able to help her trace the grandmother and also a very good candidate for the grandfather.

Or another case where a DNA match had a grandmother that was adopted and then emigrated to the USA as a war bride after the end of World War Two.

She had no idea what happened to her grandmother before she married a US soldier and came to the USA and, to me, this person was just somebody on my tree who I had a date of birth for and nothing else (as she was later adopted).

Between us we managed to work out that it was this person who was the link between us and I was able to share with my DNA match her family in the UK and she shared with me her descendants living in the USA.

Overall, I think that DNA testing can really make a big difference.

I discovered 3 half sisters and 2 half brothers all born to 5 different women my father had affairs with through my parents marriage which ended after 14 years.

alls well that ends well.

Ancestry.com. Proved I'm mostly Irish heritage, which I knew anyway. Also Danish, Breton and Ashkenazi Jewish which prompted me to trace my ancestry & it was spot on.

😮

I'd be kind of interested to know percentages of heritage but I don't want to uncover any relatives 😂I also don't think it's a great idea to give your DNA to these databases to be shared and sold on etc.

I have got very into tracing my family tree through Ancestry though, I've gone back 10 generations and everyone has been dirt poor and done nothing of interest. Whenever I see people moaning about poor people having children they can't afford I think of all those 10 generations having 10 kids in grinding poverty being the only reason I'm here...

I did it. I hadn't actually planned to find family - although I knew there were likely family out there I didn't know about. It was more about understanding heritgage and genetic traits as we have very little information on either of my parents due to neither of them knowing much about their respective birth parents.

But we found family. A LOT of them. Some we've even started getting to know.

I discovered that my grandfather wasn’t.
always suspected because my dad was quite short as opposed to his two brothers.
I’m thankful I found out after my dad and grandfather had died. I’ll never know of my dad suspected but I’m guessing it would have been very difficult to find out.
also found out I’m 86% Scottish which was strange. My mum is Scottish so was expecting around 50% so a bit baffling. Though my paternal family lived in Cumbria for as far back as the doomsday book so guessing that there could have been some ‘cross contamination’ 😂
even my kids are more Scottish than English which they are thrilled with.

I did a dna test through ancestry.
It gave me a breakdown of my ancestral dna - which countries and percentages I originate from over the centuries. Initially I thought that was really interesting but over the years since then I periodically get an email telling me it’s changed, and it’s now completely different to the first result, so it seems pointless overall.
Nothing scandalous revealed, no surprise matches.

No immediate family shocks as from a small family , but the family in the 1800s had unusual names and their children were christened a few times over in local county churches . Turned out they were travellers / gypsies / and in those days called ( apologies if inappropriate / offensive today ) tinkers .
I am proud of my heritage and found there is a Facebook page for the ancestors of these people .
Some of them are still from the traveller community and others , like me , are not but want to learn more .

I did one, expecting the worst on my paternal side, but just found a lot of really interesting stuff.

I ‘met’ some new relatives and discovered that my maternal line was Irish catholic until my grandfather. We knew there was some Irish there (he was English but had an unmistakably Irish name) and we assumed it was generations back, but it was a lot closer than originally thought, so that accounted for such a high percentage of Irish. The odd sad thing, such as an adopted child, but overall really quite lovely and answered lots of questions.

On the paternal side I found a huge web of intrigue and some relatives I didn’t know existed. I only met her once or twice but it turns out my paternal grandmother was a nasty fucker. Nothing upsetting because I don’t have any emotional connection to that side of the family, but it was quite nice to be able to validate my DM’s opinion of her former MiL.

After I’d done my family tree, I thought it was very accurate, especially as it specified what part of England and Ireland my DNA matches come from, which matches what I know. I have a couple of percent for Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which I’m using as an excuse to pillage my DH’s chocolate stash. My only real puzzle is a percentage of Welsh, that doesn’t reflect anything in my family tree.

Yes. My grandmother was found as a baby in dramatic circumstances and we never knew more. Now we know her parents’ names, uncles, aunts, cousins and have been in touch. We know the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ but may never know the ‘why’.

Yeah I found out my grandad on my mums side wasn’t my grandad. Which was a shock. I matched with a few half cousins and thought that was odd.

both my grandparents and mum are dead so nobody to ask/tell. I don’t think for one minute that my mum knew. I wonder if my grandad knew/suspected. If so did he tell grandma? My mum was born during ww2. My grandad was I. France fighting for large parts of the war….so did her conception tie in with leave and grandma was able to pass the baby off as her husbands or not. No idea.

grandma before she died did tell me she had a “gentleman friend” in the war and that grandad found out and there was a fight. So I suspect he knew.

i wonder if my mums sister was a full sister or half sister, i think probably a half sister. And that grandad was my aunts dad.

my cousins aren’t very interested and wont tell me any info about any living relatives. Which is irritating as I could potentially have a half uncle or aunt still alive.

Im 100% linked to my area in wales.

i have over 1000 DNA Matches and more in the USA than the UK

I’m really into family history so have tested mine with all the main websites - and roped my dad, aunt, two grandparents and a great aunt in!!

Our most interesting discoveries are:

My grandmother’s mother was illegitimate - and the man we’d always been told was her grandfather wasn’t. It was a neighbour, and makes us part French which is cool! I then managed to use DNA to link us to the family in France - DNA testing is illegal in France but a few have done it regardless and we were lucky and managed to work it out with a match.

We discovered that my granddads grandfather - who we already knew was a bit of a rogue as he was a bigamist - had at least three illegitimate children in the 1920’s.

From my great aunts DNA we found that her great grandfather had a family in Ireland whilst in the Navy before returning to Suffolk and marrying (again) and having our line.

Probably our oddest (but ultimately nice) surprise is that my great aunt and uncle who everyone remembered were childless, had a baby who was given up for adoption. We don’t know why that happened, but we’re now in touch with two sons of that baby. I met up for lunch with one of them last year and it was lovely!