How to 'get over' finding out your ancestry is not what you were told?

[erwoo]

I was brought up being told that my great grandfather was Jewish. I recently took an ancestry DNA test, and I now know that this was not true. He had lied about his origins after 'running away' as a young man. He was actually from Newcastle. Growing up, this was a big part of my identity, as my grandmother was raised with stories about grandparents escaping from Russia et cetera. Now we know it is all a crock of

or your DNA report is wrong, which is actually very highly likley, and you are sticking your oar in and stirring up trouble where there isn't any

These DNA tests are not as reliable as people are assuming.

I think it's highly possible from back then that women fell pregnant with the wrong man and quickly married a different one to cover it up.
Also they were raped and it covered up.

Thank you I was going to say similar but with less certainty. I know the GGrandparents can only pass on a max of 4% of their DNA and it’s unlikely they are 100% anything genetically, so the chances they’d pass on only Jewish DNA is next to zero.

This happened in a family I know, an elderly aunt was found to have had an illegitimate child through rape, early in her marriage, she and her husband covered it up and the child was born secretly and adopted. It has now all come to light ( but not through DNA I have to add) and she says that she didn't know whether to keep the child or have her adopted at the time, apparently it was more usual to keep such children

How inaccurate is inaccurate?

Ii don't really get why you're so bothered tbh? Seems dramatic. My family did one and it turned out our grandad wasn't out grandad at all and all 5 of my mums siblings (and all the cousins etc as a results of them) were only half siblings and actually she had another 8 half siblings she knew nothing about .

I've not had to get over it.

You'll also find in the small print that they are for entertainment purposes only.

They don't stand up in courts. They don't stand up to a comprehensive genome sequence either.

Posted too soon.

I had done thirty years of research before I did the DNA test. I had all 2x great grandparents accounted for and thought I knew my extended family well, at least on paper.

Without exception, all my close matches are great or 2 x great grandchildren of two people I had never heard of. The timing and geography means that the Male half

DH’s maternal cousin did an Ancestry DNA test and very unexpectedly it threw up a German bloodline. There are no German ancestors on that side of the family and the % level (10%) indicates it must have come via a great-grandparent. The best guess we have is that DH’s great-grandmother had an affair (DH & cousin’s shared grandmother was the middle child of 5 siblings) as her husband was Irish. We’re going to try and get a descendent of one of the other siblings to take a DNA test and see what that’s says, if it has no German we’ll have a better idea of what went on.

There's a large Jewish community in Newcastle (well, more Gateshead). They aren't Ashkenazi, they're Haredi. Different lineage (I asked Jewish DH, we're fairly local to there)

That’s where you’re wrong. From a family matching dna pov they’re very accurate , from an ethnicity pov not very accurate.

im not sticking my oar in at all. I know I share a great grandfather with these women which they agree with. They don’t think we share a grandad, they think their grandads brother is my grandad. But our dna match shows only a 2% chance of that being true. So then I tracked down a granddaughter of their grandads brother……who would be my half cousin if the second brother was my grandad and we don’t share enough dna to be half cousins, only second cousins. Which means the first brother is my grandad. Dna doesn’t lie, people do.

For goodness sake, why all this angst?

Are you British?

If so you are related to every individual who was alive in 1400

hth

He might be Jewish but might not be your biological greatgrandfather

As others have said, I would believe what I was told over an ancestry DNA test- as others have said, these usually work by looking for certain "markers" in your DNA which match "markers" common in a particular group of people.

With a great grandparent, it's within the realms of possibility to have inherited none of these markers, even though you would inherit a proportion of your DNA from them.

They don't have the level of accuracy of a paternity test, for example.

Fair enough if you have now found out certain things through your own research, but an Ancestry DNA test doesn't have the level of accuracy needed to definitively say a great grandparent was lying. I'd say it's especially complicated with someone being "Jewish" when there's more than one jewish ethnic grouping, and it could refer to someone being a religious convert or a child of converts as well.

Those tests don't work in that if your mum is Spanish you get 50% Spanish.

It's the % of genes you specifically inherited from your hundreds of ancestors and which populations data they match with most.

He may have been Jewish but you just didn't inherit his genes.

I’d like to do one of these tests, but just for fun. On my maternal ancestors’ line I come from a lineage of unmarried women with no fathers on the birth certificates, so who knows what will pop up?!

Ask the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was more recent in his case.

@PenguinPete (& other knowledgeable people) can I jump on here (sorry OP!) & ask: I recently did a My Heritage test so establish if a potential paternal aunt was indeed that. It suggested she was & gave a 7% chunk for that nationality (Italian- My great grandmother was 100% Italian). It also gave me 5% Askenazi (so presumably ggrdparent level too). Interestingly it also showed a 'half sibling' for me whom I thought was an Uncle (75% liklihood). I have no close living relative to check with. Do I assume this is true, or perhaps take an Ancestry test as well to see if it agrees? I do now need to know !

Hi!

I mean you can do, but I don't know how much you'll find.

These tests weren't designed to show who you are and aren't related too. They could give you false infomation either way.

I think your best bet is to pay for census records and check this way. It'll confirm who you are legally connected too. Its hard to check your DNA against someone who has died some time ago.

When you get a DNA test done say, with your mother, it'll show a close to 50% match. I say close, you get half of your chromosomes from each parent. But when these genes on conception, they are separated and stretched.
Each gene will swap parts with its partner and often form new genes. These aren't specific to you on an individual level, but these can be noted and looked for in your off -spring. So a genetic match (passing a paternity test for example) is looking for enough genetic markers that match the relative in question. But this cannot definitively prove relation. Atleast not at the level these tests are at.

You'd need a full genome analysis to get these sort.of results.

So as stated my recommendations would be to check ancestry records and go from there. Look into synagogue records (might be difficult from 1930 to 1945 for contiental Europe) this could suggest you having some sort of Jewish ancestry. DM me If you want to know more x

I reckon almost everyone who gets into family history starts uncovering packs of crazy lies that branches of the family told to big themselves up or cover up huge mistakes , omissions of big events that no one wanted to remember, or crimes even, that our kin did. I have plenty I've uncovered lies & hidden stories, from the trivial to the wow-wow-wow.

So the interesting part is why the guy made up those stories about being Jewish refugee. That may be a juicy backstory.

A lot of young Italian girls / women were raped by allied soldiers during WW2. Some briefly became prostitutes. So it could be possible

You're saying it's your GREAT grandfather yeah? So not your parent, not their parents, but your parents parents.... this covers an estimated time of 220 years.

My great-grandfather would only be 80-90 years older than me
For there to be a period of 220 years between us each generation would have become parents at roughly 55 years old!

My own "my family history isn't what I thought" story was finding out last year that my Grandad's parents weren't killed in the blitz as we'd always believed. They'd divorced and it was decided that the children (at least the younger ones who had been evacuated) should stay where they were. They were told their parents had died as that was considered the better thing.

One thing you need to understand about 'ancestry' is that its all subjective and vague. Even the certificates have mistakes on them, or you might be looking at a different Robert Smith to the one you think you're looking at

Further back it gets even harder

I dont believe anyone who claims they know for sure their lineage back to mediveal times for example, unless they are extremely rarely fully registered all along the line.

Then there are the 'family stories'. I have Russian Jewish ancestry. Or do I? I havent found evidence of this yet, but then lots of Jews and other foreign people changed their name, and how I would I find evidence of this? My dads line certainly looks Jewish and has some habits that might have been a hangover from cultural ritual but we wouldnt say we are 'Jewish' as it were

I also had stories of Spanish ancestry, again this particularly person looks just like a little spanish grandmother, all the dark hair and eyes and skin. But can I find evidence of this? Not yet

Just enjoy the stories, enjoy the research, you never know when more records or information is released that suddenly puts part of the jigsaw together.

Facts are never really facts where genealogy is concerned.

True.

I’m Indian. I have 50% Jewish genes (Ashkenazi) and 20% Romani because my (Hindu) caste is descended from the same ancient tribes. (We’re descended from gypsies and on Mum’s side we have the same ‘origin story’ as the Ashkenazi ie from Assyria and on Dad’s side we have the same star / moon Romani origin story). But we have been Hindu since records began in the part of India they’re from (1500s at least).